2022 is set to be one of the most challenging years for the industry in decades.
We believe @rightmove will face their most arduous year yet; here are our top 10 reasons why.
Add your own. An accumulation of all that is written below will be behind any, long-overdue exodus.
1. Low stock levels make this platform very expensive.
Discount the notion you’re paying to advertise your SSTCs, it’s the number of AVAILABLE homes that eats up the fee. Some are paying full fees with NO available stock. Some may pay c. £2K per month for a single property!
Low stock levels mean that @rightmove visitors are seeing the same stock over & over again.
Browsing becomes boring & unproductive. This is driving potential buyers to agent’s own sites & getting registered directly.
Relying solely on portal alerts can mean losing out.
We’re monitoring the level of supply some parts of Yorkshire are experiencing. This is the critical factor that will decide what type of year the industry is to experience in 2022.
A lot of hope is being expressed about a ‘rush of new instructions’.
Let’s see if it happens.
We have chosen six activity centres (credit: @Robert_May_) to follow throughout 2022:
Mirfield (our town - 10,000 homes), Cleckheaton (8,000 homes), Wakefield (47,000 homes), Hebden Bridge (2,500 homes), Filey (4,500 homes) & Barnsley (44,000 homes). A varied selection we feel.
We’re 17 full days into 2022, the scores on the doors so far are (figure in brackets is the number of High St + off High St agents excluding online-only agents):
We’re seeing lots of chatter about ‘touting’ boards for unsold properties that could be out of sole agency terms.
With supply being so low, the cannibalisation of existing and under-performing listings might be an attractive proposition.
Is it though?
If you plan to approach @we_are_strike boards, are you prepared to sell the property for free?
Do you have a persuasive argument as to why they should pay you when they elected to avoid this in the first place?
Is a vendor with this approach, a good fit for your agency?
Thinking of targeting @PurplebricksUK or @YopaProperty boards? Are you prepared to refund any fee already paid or deduct same from your completion invoice if you’re successful?
If not, do you have a really persuasive argument as to why they should pay twice to sell their home?
Talking of progressive web applications & device agnosticism, the @Google Lighthouse audit process is the gold standard means for measuring the device-friendliness & how much @Google likes it (& will rank it).
The high buyer demand we’re seeing largely obviates the need for a property listing aggregation site.
We’re seeing lots of reports of 20 – 25% of sales taking place off-portals.
Portals fail to present a full picture of the market.
With currently 19 or 29 buyers for every property (which ever report you prefer to quote), people waiting for portal alerts or manual checking the feeds themselves are risking a ‘snooze, you lose’ scenario.
Many properties are snaffled up on the first viewing (FOMO in action).
Low stock levels cause agents a huge problem of a different variety; the return on the investment they receive from advertising on the portals.
Many agencies are spending £2000+ every month alone on @rightmove at a time when they have the lowest number of available properties.
We've posted before that it's currently a great time to be a vendor. Agents are desperate for stock so them offering a lower fee to secure the instruction becomes a widespread tactic.
But you want a motivated agent, right?
That person who agrees to gardening work for £60, when most others were quoting £100, although happy to have the job, he knows he's under-sold himself. He's not a happy bunny and, yes, he'll complete the work to a satisfactory standard but they're not going to give it their all.
Yes you can secure a low selling fee, there's even one company offering to do it for free (we'll see how that's going when their latest accounts appear), but this is your biggest asset. To maximise return, however, it's essential to have a truly motivated agent working for you.