Estate Agency fees - it's all about differentiation

An interesting piece in the Eye this week - a detailed analysis and breakdown of estate agency fees. The main conclusion is that the average fee, as expressed as a percentage of the sale price of the property, has fallen over the last four years. 

These charts show the marked move away from fees over 1.5% in the last four years

 
The full article is here, so we will concentrate on the aspect that we can influence: differentiation.

Differentiation?

Yes, it's a horrible word, and we've struggled for years to find an alternative, but we seem to be stuck with it for now. What, in the context of reviews, does it mean? It means setting your business apart from your competitors in order that...

• You gain the instruction
• The client is willing to pay a decent fee

This is just one exchange out of the many the article prompted; the former is much more likely to be our client!

And that is what Dialogue is all about. If it can enable our clients to gain just one more instruction and charge just one tenth of a percent more in fees, then it's more than paid for itself. If it does better than that, then everyone is in clover (if you missed the recent post about a new client's experience, read it here).