Estate Agent Network Blog

Merry Christmas from the team @EstateAgentNetwork.com

We wish you all a lovely break period for the year, hopefully some of you have gone home to see family, some are on holiday to escape the manic over commercialised christmas day, and some of you are probably thinking of christmas shopping. For those that are still sat in the office working hard and making phone calls then that’s the spirit.

Not much news in the media this week, my local Estate Agents was closed so things are normal. Not really good to see any Estate Agents working over Christmas. Hopefully things will pick up in the new year and hopefully we have this site luanched and ready for use.

Firstly Happy New Year all. For those of you that worked over New Years Day super congratulations, you are the ones that are trying whatever you can to keep the market moving.

Yes, it may feel quiet and this is fairly normal as most of us are either still on vacation and with family. Those of you in the office prepared for a 2009 launch should be able to get alot done over the next few days. Some have arranged viewings for clients which is nice of you.

I have thoroughly googled for property news, not much happening this week, feels good to not have news (bad news that is) for a change. The Land Registry is ready to announce Novembers figures so that is something to look forward to in the next week or so. As predicted a fall, hopefully not as much as seen in October but data suggests a trend to fall much more.

Hopefully a few of you Estate Agents can tie up a few loose contracts and exchange over this festive period, and keep transactions moving. In order to prevent a gridlock over December/January the market needs to see a jump start to 2009 and this will work towards the stabilisation of the market.

Ok, I have to get back to my left over Turkey, see you all in the New year and hopefully there will be a bit more news.

At EstateAgentNetwork.com we work very hard to try and deliver this quality product to London. We sometimes forget when we would like to launch it.

We have agreed a soft launch date for EstateAgentNetwork.com for January the 12th 2009, just in time for everyone returning from a festive break.

Also this week we have a deployed a team of marketers/sales staff (however you see them), they will be in your area very soon. Those that have left your emails with us will definitely get priority and be contacted first about our new platform.

We have kept our product reasonably quiet and soon you will find out how we will make our London Estate Agents happier.

So this week we see that the Bank of England has made interest rate cuts by 1.5 % to a 54-year low to 2%.

The Government is hoping that these cuts will be passed onto new mortgage lenders and hopefully the public will start buying again.

What implications does this have on our London Estate Agents? Is this a long term solution to stabilising the property market?

This week Halifax have stated that house prices are continuing to fall see BBC in November 2008 by 2.6%.

The Queen has also announced a 2 year mortgage protection plan by our Government to insure homeowners are given a chance to prevent repossession.

I guess we can look at this from two perspectives, first if there are less repossessions then Estate Agents inevitably get less transactions, with already Landlords not selling and ‘holding on’ attitude with Buyers waiting to ’see what happens’, transactions are less fluent.

The positive reaction from this ‘mortgage protection’ would be a long term rejuvenation plan for the already damaged market. So good in the long term.

With a little help from the Government we still see another low week for our London Estate Agent.

With the current credit crunch, high commodity prices and a downturn in the property market, the future for estate agents is not looking too good.

So what does this mean for our London Estate Agents?

House prices in London are continuing to fall. The property market fell further last month, dropping by another 1.5% in October according to the Lands Registry, making an 8.6% fall compared to October-to-October figures for London.

London Estate Agents are suffering as targets are unrealistic and commissions are squeezed. Many Estate Agents have let go of a significant number of staff because of current economical factors.
In October the number of transactions came to a standstill, however in November we see reports that transactions have magically increased compared to the previous month (October), as cited in the Telegraph. November’s performance shows how erratic the business can be, with predictions for December not so optimistic. Estate agents will be working hard over the festive season to meet tough targets, fearing for the worst.

An estimated 50,000 Estate Agents nationwide will lose their jobs by next autumn because of the worsening economy according to experts cited in the Evening Standard. Agents in London are fearful in the short term future and are preparing for a rough ride in 2009.

For now estate agents need to sit tight and hope that Christmas can bring in a few surprises, but until results for November are published we can say that due to house prices falling, estate agents are hurting.

Welcome to the EstateAgentNetwork.com blog. We’ve been keeping ourselves very busy with development of our new website which will be launched next year. This blog will keep you updated on our progress and anything else we think of.