Tag: Property for Sale

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Agencies still getting leads and completing deals despite lockdown

Agencies still getting leads and completing deals despite lockdown

It may seem a long time since normal trading took place but many agencies are now finding they are picking up leads and some deals despite the lockdown.

Midlands agency Centrick says it’s seen positive results in recent weeks thanks to what it calls its ‘digital-first’.

Since the lockdown began on March 23 it has edited and uploaded over 140 virtual viewings. All the viewings were filmed before restrictions were put in place and the agency says that it has since had the time to edit and release them.

The agency has also devised a contactless handover so that tenants can sign contracts digitally and collect keys without having to meet face-to-face.

“Despite lockdown restrictions prohibiting people from moving home unless it’s absolutely essential, we are still seeing leads pour in thanks to the marketing campaigns we have in place. By providing services which allow consumers to engage with us while following social distancing rules – such as virtual viewings and instant online valuations – we have been able to find opportunities and keep the business ticking over” explains Andy Butts, Centrick’s group sales and lettings director.

The firm says its commitment to digital marketing has allowed it to continue generating leads, even though a large proportion of the market has been on hold for a number of weeks now.

For example, Centrick generated over 200 rental property leads over the Easter weekend alone. The agency has also continued to generate vendor and landlord leads through its ValPal instant online valuation tool. Many of these leads have come directly from Facebook ad campaigns, while it has also been promoting its hugely successful virtual viewings across social media platforms.

“Centrick is a model agency. It is adapting to a challenging market and still managing to interact with consumers while adhering to the government’s lockdown rules,” says Craig Vile, Director of The ValPal Network.

“The agency’s results show that the market is still active and demonstrate why committing to digital marketing during this tricky period can be hugely beneficial. Encouraging consumers to carry out instant online valuations of their properties can help agents to keep consumers engaged in the moving process now and fill their sales funnel so they can hit the ground running when the market becomes more active in the coming months” says Vile.The ValPal Network is a product of Angels Media, publisher of Estate Agent Today and other Today titles.

Meanwhile John Bray and Partners in Rock, north Cornwall, says it is still negotiating new sales and taking on new property.

“Last week we agreed a sale on a property with a guide price of £275,000. It was empty having recently been refurbished throughout … A local buyer viewed the particulars, and the video walk through, and entered into competitive bidding to secure the property above the guide price. Launch to agreed sale happened in just two days” explains John Bray partner Josephine Ashby.

“Another recent deal involved a brand-new property in North Cornwall. One of the buyers had seen the house, but the other hadn’t managed to visit prior to lockdown. They decided they were happy to proceed on the basis of a video walkthrough and the sale is progressing” she adds.

“Video walk-throughs are becoming common-place for vendors who aren’t happy to wait out the lockdown. Where property is vacant we are able to produce these videos safely, and serious buyers are often happy to buy without visiting the property in person.

“We are also using virtual staging for vacant properties to help buyers get an impression of what the property would look like furnished.”

Ashby says some vendors prefer to put their property on the market under the radar, appearing on the agency’s own website but not on the portals.

“Our web traffic is up 50 per cent since the lockdown, and 80 per cent of that figure is made up of new visitors. Telephone calls are dramatically reduced, but buyers and sellers who call are very serious. We have time to spend talking everything through in great detail.”

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Reapit’s PropTech deal aims to accelerate completions and cut fall-throughs

Reapit's PropTech deal aims to accelerate completions and cut fall-throughs

PropTech big names Reapit and ViewMyChain are joining up to try to accelerate transactions when the lockdown finally ends and the sales market returns.

They say that 55 per cent of all housing transactions in normal times are in chains, making it more essential than ever that agents know the status of each transaction.

This will be particularly crucial post-lockdown when agents have to rebuild pipelines and cashflow, especially if furloughing staff costs is no longer an option.

Reapit and View My Chain have therefore created a Chain View platform that provides “a dynamic, data-driven view of the entire chain status” against key milestones.

There are no upfront charges but agents pay when individual transactions complete – £25 at the point of each completion.

“The partnership of Reapit and View My Chain will help expedite transactions in the immediate post-COVID-19 market. With £125-billion worth of impending sales commission waiting for agents, linking the Chain View platform with Reapit’s agency software will ease the burden on resource-tight agencies to gently pull chains to completion” explains Gary Barker, chief executive officer of Reapit.

View My Chain’s chairman Ian Lancaster adds: ”This has been an incredibly difficult platform to create and many have failed before us in successfully aggregate both property chains and all the relevant milestones. The View My Chain platform done it now through strategic partnerships to become the single eco system that can finally transform the UK residential housing market.”

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2020 house sales to hit peak in September predicts leading agency

2020 house sales to hit peak in September predicts leading agency

The peak of the 2020 sales market is likely to be September instead of the usual early summer – but that depends on many of the lockdown measures being relaxed in time.
 
Knight Frank has calculated that sales transactions peaked in July last year before tailing off towards the end of the year, reflecting the typical seasonal pattern of activity.
 
Tenancies agreed followed a similar pattern, with a more marked decline in the second half of the year.
 
The agency now says that once lockdown measures are relaxed – which will be in May at the earliest, with the current period of restrictions expiring on May 7 – a spurt of sales activity could push this traditional July peak back to August, September or later.
 
“The traditional August exodus is going to disappear this year,” said James Clarke, Knight Frank’s head of London sales. “A lot of the completions that traditionally take place in the summer will be pushed back into the third quarter of 2020,” he adds.
 
For markets like London’s, which has a significant international buyer sector, the delay may be more pronounced if international travel restrictions stay in place even after some domestic lockdown measures end.
 
Meanwhile, outside the capital, where seasonal buying patterns are more entrenched, there is a similar belief that 2020 could prove to be an exception.
 
“If we’re up and trading by the summer then we will have a prolonged market,” says Edward Rook, head of Knight Frank’s Country Department. “However, if this re-opening only happens later in the year, sales are more likely to be deferred until 2021.”
 
Christopher Bailey, head of Knight Frank’s Waterfront department, believes sellers are pragmatic about the current restrictions and are not looking to take property off the market, which bodes well for a busy second half of 2020 as supply is able to match renewed demand.
 
“No one’s in a rush. Low interest rates have taken the pressure off sellers who remain positive about the market and there remains plenty of pent-up demand from buyers” he says.
 
The number of new prospective buyers increased by 14 per cent across the UK in the year to January 2020 compared to the previous 12 months.
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Love it or loathe it? Help To Buy to be beefed up after lockdown

Love it or loathe it? Help To Buy to be beefed up after lockdown

The controversial Help To Buy scheme looks likely to be expanded in breadth and extended in duration to help kick-start the housebuilding industry after the lockdown.
 
Currently the scheme helps buyers of new build homes with an equity loan worth 20 per cent of the value of a property; it is due to be phased out between spring 2021 and 2023.
 
It’s been widely reported that the housebuilding industry and its trade bodies have told the government they fear a long-term slowdown will impact on new build volumes; Savills estimates that work has stopped on sites which could accommodate some 200,000 new homes.
 
Meanwhile the former head of the civil service and permanent secretary at the Ministry of Housing Communities and Local Government is also urging Whitehall to beef up Help to Buy.
 
Lord Kerslake told the Housing Today magazine: “I think the challenge is going to be to restore confidence after what has been a big health and economic shock. The sort of things you’ll be looking for is where the government can give confidence to the market, particularly on build for sale, with things like Help to Buy… I think they should at least be putting it on the list of things to be talking about.”
 
Help To Buy has had a mixed reception in the months leading up to the virus outbreak, with critics suggesting that many of its buyers did not need the financial assistance it gave, and that the single biggest effect of the scheme was to inflate the stock market value and profits of many of the country’s largest housebuilders.
 
Supporters say it has helped large numbers of purchasers – the majority of them first time buyers – on to the ladder in better quality homes than they would have bought without the intervention.
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How will the economy survive the current crisis?

There is no doubt that the current crisis, is one of the greatest tests our economy has faced in decades. There are without doubt, many small to medium sized businesses that will suffer greatly, despite the drastic steps taken by the chancellor to lessen the blow. Personally, I feel that rents, rates & interest should have been suspended during this period, to minimise the damage of this terrible situation.

However, moving forward, the question we may all be asking ourselves is, how will the economy cope with this? What will happen to the property market when it is brought out of deep-freeze? Despite the alarming figures suggested by many media sources, this is not the same as the banking crisis of 2008. The banks are in good shape, borrowers are not in negative equity and there is a very large number of businesses that have been able to continue operating though this crisis, albeit at a skeleton level.  The manner in which the nation exits from lockdown may have serious implications on what happens within the first few weeks, which is of paramount importance.

There are also factors at a greater level that once again, may save this island nation of ours. Whichever side of the fence any of you may have been during the charade that was Brexit, I would hazard a guess that even the most ardent of remainers must now be doing their sums and breathing sighs of relief (quietly of course) that the prospect of our economy being shackled to the chains of a financial abyss that may well be Europe after this, will be safely independent.

After the financial crisis of 2008, money poured in to the London market from countries outside of the EU because were WERE NOT part of the Euro, indeed, we were a safe haven. Most rising property markets are ‘bottom-up’ markets, that is, property at the bottom rises and pushes prices up throughout the market. The ripples that begin at the bottom in London, work their way upwards and outwards, not only throughout London, but gradually throughout the whole country. However in 2008, this was not the case, it was a ‘top-down’ rising market, investment from the top, raised the prices at the top end of the market in London, which for the first time , worked their way downwards pulling prices upwards. This is without doubt testament to our wonderful currency, the faith in our first class national credit rating.

It is without doubt, that if the forthcoming weeks and months are handled correctly, which I am very confident of, not because of party politics, but due to faith in the fiscal policy of those in charge, that our economy will not just bounce back, it will actually REBOUND.

Therefore, the issue we currently face is to get through the current crisis safely and to use this time to re-connect with our families, to re-connect with that which is most important and also to prepare to re-start our nation and recover, socially, commercially and financially.

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First ‘virus’ survey shows sellers expecting a five-month delay

First 'virus' survey shows sellers expecting a five-month delay

What is thought to be the first survey of sellers since the start of the Coronavirus outbreak suggests that they anticipate a five-month delay to their plans.
 
This means that the usual spring market surge may take place in late summer, assuming restrictions allow something like normal business to resume.
 
A survey conducted for online mortgage firm Trussle by polling organisation Censuswide shows that 49 per cent of those planning to buy decided to stop looking for a new home as a result of the lockdown.
 
However, fewer sellers pulled the plug with just 20 per cent deciding to halt proceedings on the sale of their home.
 
Overall, both would-be buyers and would-be sellers expect to defer their property plans for an average of just over five months.
 
“With the government’s latest plea discouraging buyers from moving house, It’s entirely understandable that people are putting off their housing plans” says Trussle chief executive Ian Larkin.
 
“At a time of financial uncertainty, it’s a good time to think about your personal outgoings. We know that people could save an average of £4,100 per year just by switching their mortgage to a better deal.
 
“During these uncertain times, people are taking steps to protect themselves financially. Reducing mortgage payments, the biggest monthly outgoing most homeowners will face, is a priority for many.”
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Planning for post-lockdown – how to hit the ground running

Planning for post-lockdown - how to hit the ground running

Over the last two weeks we’ve seen the country come to a standstill and the property market effectively put on ice until we are out of lockdown.

The next few months are going to be incredibly difficult for everyone, but it is vital that agents take this time to start planning for the future. Taking the right steps over the next few weeks will be key to ensuring that you’re ready to hit the ground running as soon as some of the current restrictions are lifted.

Unlike after the last recession, current predictions are that the market could recover relatively quickly, but what evidence do we have to support that theory?

Following the General Election in December, pent up demand from people who had been holding back due to Brexit uncertainty, flowed into the marketplace. Could that stand us in good stead for a quick recovery?

Let’s look at the figures…

The data – exchanges

Looking at the change in volumes of Exchanged triggers, we can see that the largest increase in exchanged properties came from the £1 million+ price bracket, with property prices from £400,000 to £1 million not far behind.

Planning for post-lockdown - how to hit the ground running

Both top brackets were experiencing unprecedented double digit growth year-on-year.

In addition, the £200,000 to £400,000 price bracket was also seeing a very healthy growth in exchanges year-on-year.

You could, however, make a strong argument to suggest that a large portion of this effect was not as a result of electoral stability, because it takes so long to complete a property purchase.

Looking at the volume of changes in sales agreed (or SSTC) would perhaps provide an even better view of what happened in the first few weeks of 2020 compared with the prior year.

The data – sales agreed

This chart adds the Sales Agreed (or SSTC) trigger changes to the Exchanged triggers and it certainly makes interesting reading.

Planning for post-lockdown - how to hit the ground running

Firstly, we can clearly see that the changes to SSTC volumes were far more dramatic in all price brackets – roughly double the growth in exchanged triggers.

In properties above £400,000, we were seeing north of 23% growth and the £200,000 to £400,000 bracket, a more than healthy 15% growth in sales agreed.

The only slight downside is that the sales agreed growth rate in properties under £200,000 was comparatively very low.

The high street agent effect

Now let’s look at the market share of high street agents versus hybrids (those without a traditional branch network).

Planning for post-lockdown - how to hit the ground running

The market share of new instructions by price bracket for hybrid agents is shown in this chart.

What we see here is that a hybrid agent’s market share was highest in the poorest price bracket where sales agreed volumes were growing much slower year-on-year than they were in the other three price brackets.

This means that the benefit of the increase in sales seen since the election of 2019 will have been disproportionately felt by the more traditional high street estate agent.

Of the growth in sales that has been experienced to date in the £200,000 to £400,000 selling price bracket, nearly 93% of this will have gone to high street agents.

As we move onto the £400,000 to £1 million selling price bracket, just under 95% of the benefit will have gone to high street agents.

And finally, in the specialised £1 million plus selling price bracket, nearly 99% of the benefit will have flowed through to high street agents!

So what does this mean for the future?

Unfortunately, no-one knows how long lockdown will continue or indeed, exactly what the future of the property market looks like. However, looking at the performance of the market up until mid-March 2020 tells us a few things;

– A high volume of people actively wanted to move
– This was most prevalent for properties in the £200k+ price bracket and even more so at £400k+
– The majority of this activity was taking place with high street agents

Although unfortunately some of these agreed sales will recently have fallen through and many properties will now have been withdrawn from the market, the likelihood is that most of these people will still want to move once they are allowed to.

This should create increased demand on available stock, thereby encouraging more new instructions. The best news is that once these vendors do return to the market, sales should continue to be high value and skewed towards high street agents.

What can you do in the meantime?

It is essential that you maintain contact with those vendors either already on the market, or who have recently withdrawn – both your own and those of your competitors.

Now, more than ever, you must look after your pipeline so that you’re not starting from scratch when the market inevitably picks back up.

This is an opportunity to establish a ‘trusted advisor’ relationship with these vendors, offering them help and guidance when their future move now seems uncertain.

At times like these how you treat your customers and potential customers is paramount. They will need far more hand-holding and direct communication. Some agents are not going to do this and, as such, we are likely to see even more agent switching once we are out of lockdown as vendors become frustrated with a lack of support from their existing agent.

It is vital, though, that what you’re sending is sensitive to the current situation and you don’t just continue to send the same message as you would have done a few weeks or even days ago.

Now that you’re not spending your time on the usual day-to-day tasks use it as an opportunity to really work on the content of your communications and make sure the messages you send highlight the changing requirements of the current marketplace.

Talk about the services you offer that can help vendors restart their property sale as quickly as possible once we’re out of lockdown; share your plans on;

– Virtual tours
– Accompanied remote viewings
– Floor plans
– Live streaming of ‘virtual open houses’
– Online auctions
– ‘Little Black Books’ promoting ‘the best kept secrets’ or houses not openly marketed and see if sellers want to be on it

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Rightmove on the ropes? 2,500 branches interested in new portal

Rightmove "taking appropriate measures" to shore up company

Some 2,500 estate agency branches have expressed an interest in a new portal, Homesearch, launching next month.

Although the Homesearch website lists the branches as having “joined” the new portal, a statement from the two founders refers to the branches as having “signed up to register their interest and follow the development of the new product.”

Homesearch says it has information on Britain’s entire 29m housing stock and pledges to be not just another portal but “the future of the industry” when it debuts on May 25.

The statement also says that while the portal will not directly charge agents for listings or leads, it will offer an optional – and so far unexplained – service called Network which will cost £155 per bench per month, capped until 2025.

Homesearch has been a supplier to the industry since 2017, until now specialising in data for agents.

Co-founder Giles Ellwood, who is the owner of Homesearch, says: “Homesearch is not a portal in the traditional sense. We won’t charge to list instructions, nor will we ever charge to deliver leads. As we approach the launch we will detail exactly how the Network piece will serve agents to deliver buyers, sellers, landlords and tenants from day one.”

And the other co-founder, Sam Hunter, adds: “Homesearch will always be about giving an agent the information and technology needed to connect with more people. Now we’re just giving the public an opportunity to connect back.”

Agencies registering an interest so far include those from Foxtons, Winkworth and Purplebricks, although the majority appear to be small independents.

The website say that from 2025 the Network cost will be £395 and will rise thereafter in line with the Consumer Price Index “which is circa 1% to 2% per annum.”

It also adds: “We’d be open to discussing how members of the agent community could participate in our board meetings as an added layer of transparency.”

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Poorly-treated agents will change firms after the virus – forecast

Poorly-treated agents will change firms after the virus - forecast

A leading human resources expert predicts that agents who are poorly treated by their employers now will wreak revenge and move elsewhere when the virus subsides.

Recruitment guru Anthony Hesse, managing director of Property Personnel, says that when some form of normality returns “Those who have been treated poorly by their current employers won’t forget the experience in a hurry, and will start to look for other jobs – either within the industry or elsewhere.

“I expect to see a seismic shift in people moving around from job to job, and from profession to profession, with some of them making the move to becoming self-employed. Inevitably, a number of experienced and talented staff will leave, who we will be sad to see go and will be hard to replace.”

He says that one of the lasting legacies of this outbreak will be an increased understanding of why a good work/life balance is so important – and he forecasts that those agencies that recognise this will retain and attract the best staff.

“Over the past week or so of lockdown, I’ve been speaking to a number of senior directors in the big estate agency firms … the perspective I’ve been getting is that we are inevitably going to see some massive restructuring taking place in the estate agencies of the future.

“Most obviously, a new awareness of just what technology can do is going to drive decision making going forward. The ease and speed with which people have taken to communication platforms such as Zoom, Skype, and Messenger – and some of these individuals doing so for the first time – mean that virtual viewings and even virtual valuations could become the norm.

“Directors will ask why their agency doesn’t do more of what worked so successfully during time under lockdown. This means that operations are likely to be streamlined, and people previously brought in as temporary staff – such as those carrying out viewings at weekends, for example – might find that their workloads have melted away.

“Similarly, agencies with several branches across a relatively small geographic area will decide that a single office can do the job of three, with significant cost savings as a result.”

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Poorly-treated agents will change firms after the virus – forecast

Poorly-treated agents will change firms after the virus - forecast

A leading human resources expert predicts that agents who are poorly treated by their employers now will wreak revenge and move elsewhere when the virus subsides.

Recruitment guru Anthony Hesse, managing director of Property Personnel, says that when some form of normality returns “Those who have been treated poorly by their current employers won’t forget the experience in a hurry, and will start to look for other jobs – either within the industry or elsewhere.

“I expect to see a seismic shift in people moving around from job to job, and from profession to profession, with some of them making the move to becoming self-employed. Inevitably, a number of experienced and talented staff will leave, who we will be sad to see go and will be hard to replace.”

He says that one of the lasting legacies of this outbreak will be an increased understanding of why a good work/life balance is so important – and he forecasts that those agencies that recognise this will retain and attract the best staff.

“Over the past week or so of lockdown, I’ve been speaking to a number of senior directors in the big estate agency firms … the perspective I’ve been getting is that we are inevitably going to see some massive restructuring taking place in the estate agencies of the future.

“Most obviously, a new awareness of just what technology can do is going to drive decision making going forward. The ease and speed with which people have taken to communication platforms such as Zoom, Skype, and Messenger – and some of these individuals doing so for the first time – mean that virtual viewings and even virtual valuations could become the norm.

“Directors will ask why their agency doesn’t do more of what worked so successfully during time under lockdown. This means that operations are likely to be streamlined, and people previously brought in as temporary staff – such as those carrying out viewings at weekends, for example – might find that their workloads have melted away.

“Similarly, agencies with several branches across a relatively small geographic area will decide that a single office can do the job of three, with significant cost savings as a result.”