Digital marketing agency Angels Media and digital platform Gazeal have announced an exclusive strategic partnership to help improve and speed up the homebuying and selling process.
Angels Media - publisher of Estate Agent Today and owner of PropTech platform The ValPal Network - has endorsed Gazeal as the best way of driving the market to change for good, by helping to increase the use of upfront information and reservation agreements.
“More than ever, a greater amount of upfront information has become important to ensure that buyers know what they’re getting and are really serious about entering the buying process” says Nat Daniels, chief executive of Angels Media.
“Equally, there has long been a need to cut the amount of gazumping and gazundering that goes on in the property market, and reservation agreements are the best way of achieving this.”
Momentum has recently been building for agents to provide more upfront information on property details and the portals, rather than waiting until a buyer has expressed interest to take this step.
The National Trading Standards and Letting Agents Team recently carried out a survey – which ended last week - asking agents how this can best be achieved, while also revealing a new document called The Case for Change: Improving Provision of Material Information In Property Sales and Lettings.
NTSLEAT released the results of a survey of people who have moved in the last three years or are looking to move in the next three years; some 90 per cent of respondents who use portals would prefer to find more detailed or key information about a property when they’re searching.
Meanwhile 87 per cent of respondents agreed that portals should include all key information about a home in their listing, and more than half said that they would be less likely to buy or rent where information was missing on the property listing.
Further to this, the research revealed that 40 per cent of respondents assume that missing information means something wrong with the property.
“This research shows the increasing importance of upfront information and the expectations consumers have of agents to provide it” Daniels adds. “There are so many factors that buyers consider before searching for a home, and these have changed and become more focused as a result of the pandemic.”
And Bryan Mansell, co-founder of Gazeal, adds: “At Gazeal, our goal is to help revolutionise the buying and selling process to make it secure, transparent and fast. We want the holy trinity of empowered buyers, safe sellers and happy agents, and clearer upfront information and reservation agreements play a key role in that.”
He suggests this is even more the case with the market under stamp duty holiday pressure, the introduction of the government’s 95 per cent mortgage guarantee scheme, and agents having to follow Covid guidelines.
“Conveyancers, surveyors, agents and removal firms are already snowed under and up against it, so anything that can be done to help speed along a still often frustrating, cumbersome and time-consuming process will no doubt be welcomed” Mansell states.
“The homebuying and selling process has long needed to move into the digital space and keep up to speed with the modern world, and we can see the first green shoots of that happening. But the pandemic should help to sharpen minds and push forward progress.”
Angels Media and Gazeal will be working together to highlight the benefits of reservation agreements and better upfront information as the right thing to do to really help the industry to thrive, improve and cope with the ongoing market surge.
June is likely to be a particularly busy month as the stamp duty holiday reaches the first part of its two-stage conclusion, and there has been no suggestion that record high levels of demand will be falling away anytime soon.
Daniels concludes: “We know that Gazeal has a great concept and a clear vision to change the homebuying and selling process for the better, and that Bryan – as a former agent – inherently understands the challenges and frustrations that agents face in keeping buyers and sellers happy and transactions moving through the system.”
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Yawn!
Why make this comment at all?
Every transaction would be helped by the accumulation of up front data. However, there needs to be a financial commitment to prove intent. Paying for Searches is a good gauge of appetite to move. An agent is expected to spend money on day one and a vendor that refuses may not be as motivated as you would like.
Asking the buyer to financially commit (pay for the already ordered searches to refund the vendor 100%) show an immediate commitment too. Asking people in a transaction to pay for anything in excess of what is required appears a little unnecessary. If money is to be spent, ask it to be spent on something that will actually progress a transaction.
Well said.
This is a nuanced response, unlike some commentators on this site!
Just like with the planning reforms there are no magic bullets to solve the problems of conveyancing or the housing market in general.
On the topic of conveyancing, a good first start would be just like a house, to declutter the process of badly thought through red tape.
Agents and lawyers must work together to improve the process generally, but all of this would be a pointless exercise if MPS keep piling on the red tape.
and many people who move place the property on the market in a hopefulyl way and not not really sure they will sell or find what they want but end up moving so will not pay up front HOW MANY MORE TIMES
If I was a buyer I would not be paying for searched until I knew the chain was complete
Just bored with hearing the same thing for yet another person with yet another web site.
"If I was a buyer I would not be paying for searches until I knew the chain was complete" and you would be entitled to do so 'Jan Byers'.
Sales should not be booked until the chain is complete.
A memorandum of sale should not go out until the chain is complete.......your point???
My point is that IF a vendor is committed to a move and has got together all upfront data, because they were serious, as soon as the chain IS complete, things can happen much more quickly... A buyer can obtain the Searches much sooner themselves than if the act was left to the conveyancer some 6-8 weeks after the sale is agreed.
HOW MANY MORE TIMES?!?!?! Until the message sinks in!!
And as I said MANY vendors place their property on the market and are not 100% committed to move but end up doing so.
I build new homes. Searches are just not a problem. The hold ups we have are with lenders.
The comments clearly indicate the biggest problem in the UK property market- too much noise and no desire to find a solution to the broken process. Personally feel that this partnership is in the right direction and hopefully shuts all naysayers.
Thanks Jan, good to know. You are entirely missing the point here. Information about the property can be seen right at the start of a sale being agreed rather than 10-15 weeks in, IF information is sought up front. You are fortunate that Searches in your area are not causing anyone an issue. Long may that continue.
It does not take us that long we have a 28 day deadline
The whole architecture has to be changed, the legals, finance and the sales process, focusing on the minutiea is pointless, we have seen and met the future, and work daily with those interested in engineering that future, the digital natives want to do property in a faster more efficient way. One company in one sector of realestate however good it is, is but a tiny cog, the bigger changes which we see are playing out through real estate, not just in residential agency in the UK, in fact of course CRE is and always will be the bigger brother, but the planning, building etc verticals are moving forward based on tech, but the closed mindsets of estate agents - (and I was one for 30 years plus) is only going to leave them wondering what went wrong - when they failed to adapt to modern agency.
I only partially agree as I would consider every transaction and client to be important. IF you are saying that we should not focus on the individual and wait for the entire system to be ready I cannot agree with you.
Estate Agency is getting lost in the tech, so much so that the basics of estate agency, good practices that are really effective are being forgotten or simply not practiced.
The future does not have to be in the form of a microchip, just decent practices and a good understanding of what needs to be achieved.
When did it stop being a 'People' Business?
EVERY move is important and is, in itself, the "minutiea". Don't forget that every client not offered a great solution today is another opportunity lost to drive change, education and reduced stress......for the client!
You are basically saying that everyone should be a follower once the system is fixed....utter nonsense given that functioning solutions already exist.
"closed mindsets" (for many) I'll give you that.
There is so much paperwork information produced in the transaction that buyers are actually overwhelmed with information.
One of the key benefits of upfront information is going to be digitisation to easily search, share and store this information in one place that is securely accessible from any device.
Much of this information will need to be held by the new owner for years after so it is key people have the ability to access offline as well as online copies.
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