Estate agents are often labelled as being the least liked of professional service providers in the UK, but it is really not obvious why as the vast bulk of us persist in using them whenever we want to sell a house, especially if we are hoping for a Quick Property Sale. One reason may be the fact that their fees can seem quite large in relation to the amount of time and effort put in to completing that house sale. There would appear to be a general idea that estate agents more often than not make a big profit for very little effort and that may perhaps the cause of much of the national loathing.

However, the issue of excessive profits may well prove to be unsupported. In the recent economic crisis the property market has been very badly hit with sales falling to about half of normal levels. This means that the commission from house sales by estate agents is down by a similar amount and has caused real problems within the industry. Some estate agents have closed down altogether, a lot have closed some of their offices and estate agency staff have been laid off all in an effort to lower costs in line with the reduced commission amounts. That suggests that most agents fees are not excessive, if they were we would see the industry dealing with the recession more comfortably.

In addition there is the competition factor. House sellers have a reasonably wide choice of which agent to use in most towns and can shop around for the best fee deal. This healthy market competition will make certain keen pricing by most agents. Without a doubt, there are often instances of emerging new agencies which come into the market at much lower than average fees, but these rarely seem to last very long. It seems that these low fees are simply unsustainable and it suggests that the present average fee of around 1.5% of sale price is most likely a good rate.

Comparison with estate agency rates in other countries is interesting. Fees in America for example are around 5%, more than 3 times the UK average. It would appear that the UK has one of the lowest estate agency fees structure amongst equivalent property markets.

There has been little to test the customary estate agency. Recent launches of DIY property selling websites have made little progress and in any case estate agents have all embraced the web as an aid to selling properties. So though we continue to grumble about estate agents and their prices, we all continue to use their services. That would suggest that we usually consider what they do to be reasonably good value for money and that they can usually Sell Home Fast, or at least faster than trying it alone. For people currently calling for the estate agents to“Sell my Home fast” it is encouraging to know that their aim is exactly the same as yours i.e. to bring in some commission as quickly as possible by selling the house fast.

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