Five Years From Now, Will Your Estate Agency Still Be In Business?
Hi, how are you? Now imagine the year is 2021. Maybe house prices crashed, maybe they didn’t or they continued upward, a correction happened, whatever, it doesn’t matter. What’s for sure is the business of buying and selling houses is not going away anytime soon.
The question is, are you strong enough to adapt to changes in the marketplace to ensure your business continues to grow? Before Rightmove and Zoopla and online estate agents we were kings of the high street. Now the information empowered home owner holds all the aces and you the sucker?
I speak to many estate agents about their businesses and it seems to me that the property portals, owned by a few agents have them by the balls. This is not necessarily a bad thing since property portals provide a great service.
The question is one of control. Control over your own future. If your marketing is shit and you have to depend on Zoopla and Rightmove for vendors and landlords then I think you have a problem.
If you think about it, why do people use property portals? The answer is simple. Value. Rightmove and Zoopla do not sell anything. They simply provide value. In exchange they get all the homeowner traffic and sell you leads. Which if it works well then great!
As we all know conflicts of interests exists in these arrangements. One of the immutable laws of marketing is the law of duality, which states that in the long run every market eventually becomes a two horse race.
Coke and Pepsi, Macdonalds and Burger king, Google and Bing, Windows and Macs, Labour and the Tories etc. The list goes own. How will the property industry be shaped by the law of duality and what are the far reaching consequences?
I feel a little bit sorry for estate agents like Aqeel in my area who are seeing their commissions and stock levels continue to decline and are barely surviving. I am also very frustrated that many are not willing to take strategic time out and make the investment to re-invent their businesses as property information or media companies.
Information is power. Knowledge is king. Everything else is commodity that could/will be gotten cheaper somewhere else. The question is who is making the recommendations? You, your competition or a blogger with time on their hands?
Rightmove and Zoopla do a good job but if you are an entrepreneurial estate agent, looking to thrive in the coming years and want control of your own destiny you could essentially leverage the need for human beings to connect with shared experiences and technology to create your own local, mini property portal.
By focusing on your strength, which is the local area and story telling you become a trusted, authoritative source of information for property owners in your coverage area. Rather than focusing your website on static sales information, you can curate dynamic content for the people you really care about.
Plug in portal API for data and charts and create your own content too. The result is a strategic advantage to get all the local traffic, which creates opportunities to build trust, local authority and therefore generate higher quality leads.
Conclusion
Not taking strategic time out to re-invent your business as a property information or media company is going to cost you in the long run. It’s like been currently addicted to doughnuts and not wanting to change habits to eat healthy. You can either have control of your own future or leave it to the likes of Connells and Countrywide to decide.
If you need help in developing a digital platform to engage local home owners rather than just another website. Please give me a call on 07450247253 for a free consultation.
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