In light of last week’s sad demise of British travel agent stalwart Thomas Cook, and talk turning to the struggle that High Street travel agents are currently experiencing, could the same happen to the High Street Estate Agent?
Here at Bromley Property Company, we are HUGE supporters of local businesses and our local high streets, but as an entrepreneurial business ourselves who have found a niche, knowledgeable and specialist way of running an estate agency without the huge overheads of hiring a premise (enabling us to bring much lower property selling and rental fees to the table), could successful models such as ours mean the beginning of the end for the traditional High Street estate agent?
As well as ourselves, other relatively new national online agents have also been snapping up market share thanks to the aforementioned lower overheads and their ability to market their listings nationally through sites like RightMove (although here’s why we’re different to Purple Bricks et al!). Last year a report by another national estate agent found that in just the last five years, 2,446 High Street agents have closed their doors amid falling profits.
Thanks to the internet, and a great word-of-mouth reputation in the Bromley area, we’ve discovered that the need for a brick-and-mortar store front to reach customers is no longer necessary, and those agencies who have failed to move with the times are finding that more and more prospective house-buyers prefer to search for listings from the comfort of their own homes and contact us directly rather than going in-store.
The fact that all of our staff are local to Bromley means that we are only a phone call and short meet up away 6 days a week to help any prospective buyers and sellers with their property needs.
So customers get the value-for-money that an online agent provides, but with the specialist local knowledge and dedication of a High Street agent for less.
What’s not to love?
We’ll be interested to see if other estate agents follow in our footsteps over the coming years, and if in 10 years time the High Street estate agent is a thing of the past….
