Belief in private sales falls as property market falls

Step back a year or so ago when all seemed right with the property market. Prices were steadily advancing and buyers were plentiful, this was a time when the pervading view was selling a property was as easy as selling a second hand car. All you needed was the web and a sign board, this was the time when people were questioning the very existence of real estate agents.

Well come back to today and the reality of the market which has shown all the symptoms of a significant slump with the total sales for the first half of 2008 falling just short of 30,000 representing a 43% decline. Now it appears from research released today that sellers are turning back to the real estate agents to help sell their house.

The annual Nielsen Online study into the behaviour of buyers and sellers of property provides a rich insight into the market through the eyes of a sample of consumers actively using real estate websites. The survey examines many aspects of real estate marketing online as well as the buying and selling process.

One of the key finding of the report is that in the past year there has been a significant increase in homeowners planning to get a professional real estate agent to sell their property instead of planning to undertake a private sale.

41% of vendors say they will DEFINITELY list with a real estate agent compared to 35% last year.

In total last year the survey said half of all sellers would at least try to sell without using an agent, that number this year is 46%, with just 14% this year said they would definitely sell privately.

It is clear from these figures that as a consequence of the change in market conditions, sellers better recognise the value of a real estate agent to be better able to secure buyers and close a deal on their property.

This renewed confidence in the role of the agent to support the seller has not in any way diminished the critical importance of the web as the primary search and marketing tool for all parties in the real estate industry. In total across all websites monitored by Nielsen Online the total daily average number of browsers now exceeds 100,000 and in total these visitors consume over 1 million hours researching real estate website information per month, both of these traffic statistics represent growth over last year 22% in the case of daily browsers and 30% in terms of duration.

Examining the attitudes of prospective sellers to the real estate agent in general shows some interesting pointers. The factor potentially effecting the selection of an agent the most is reputation, for whilst “previous experience” of real estate company came out top with 39%, the fastest and most consistent growth over the past 2 years is reputation of the agent – from 34% 2 years ago to 37% now.

It is clear from reading this blog in the past you will be aware of the growth in individual agents writing their own blog – this is judged to be the most effective tool for an agent to demonstrate through open and honest communication a passion and competence and through blog comments attract genuine feedback. The Voices platform of blogs for agents has been a catalyst for this change with now over 50 agents actively blogging – all from a base of virtually nothing 6 months ago.