Estate agents: Use 'em or lose 'em!!!

[baker210]

I cannot believe the utter selfishness of the house buying British public. If we fail to support these honest, hardworking pillars of our property owning democracy, we will simply lose our ESTATE AGENTS. Are you just going to sit by and let it happen? Something like 5,000 of them are forecast to go to the wall in the next year, if things do not pick up, so for pity's sake BUY A HOUSE!!!Ok, things are getting tough for all of us, but don't just think of yourself. Pay the 9% or even more, take on a 50 year term, or failing that, just send your local agent any spare cash you have. Didn't they help you when you wanted to buy or rent? Paltry commissions of �5000 were commonplace in return for a monumental amount of work, when you sold your house for 2 hundred grand. So forget the credit crunch, and HELP YOUR LOCAL ESTATE AGENT!!!

[sir.prize]

Ughhh!!!!!

[betterman]

To make a statement like that you must either be an estate agent or be auditioning for the next series of britains got talent.
Estate agents do nothing to earn the money they extort from people.

[redcrx]

Id happily lose my agent!

[joggerjayne]

Lose 'em, then.

[bednobs]

do people actually ever read the q's?

[dot.hawkes]

estate agents are lazy lying underachieving sneaky mopmney grabbinbg unprofessional theiving robbing wastes of space

[dot.hawkes]

no doubt their mothers once loved them

[flyciderman]

If you do not like estate agents, why is it that so many people use them?

Ther is nothing to stop you selling your house.

PS I am not an estate agent

[Twenty20]

Because flyciderman there is no good alternative at the moment. What's needed is a website like Rightmove and others that allow individuals to market their own homes. There are a few like Propertyladder but, unfortunately, they dont have a professional look or feel about them and therefore dont attract the same number of properties that sites like Rightmove do.

Once someone sets up a good alternative, and are prepared to spend money advertising it to get it known, estate agents will become a dying breed.

[flyciderman]

Oh so you need website to sell you home.

How did we sell houses before the internet.

You could put an advert in the local paper, a For Sale board outside your house with your telephone number, write up you sales details and off you go.

[ganesh]

They are solely responsible for putting up the prices to a ridiculous level and it is not the seller's greed. We rely on them to tell us how much we can get for our houses and we are not going to say,oh ok we'll actually put it on the market for �50,000 less then for the good of the country are we?
They don't do much for their 2% either but then we don't have to use agents.
I can't feel sorry for them when the going get's tough,it serves them right.
Mind you, all it needs is for the media to say house prices are beginning to look better this month and everything will go back to normal.