According to Nitin Aggarwal, founder of Property Deals Insight, when you’re running a property business the time between the customer briefing and closing the sale can be months. There are so many layers to buying and selling property, especially as an estate agent.
It depends on what kind of business you’re running, but typically you only get paid when the deal is complete. There aren’t many businesses where you have to do several weeks (or months) work before the money hits your bank account.
So, if you’re an estate agent, you only get paid when the seller receives the proceeds of the sale. To make cash flow work, that means you need multiple properties to sell.
Finding properties to sell
If you’ve got a good reputation locally, some people will come to you when they decide to put their property on the market. But in these digital times, many go straight to one of the big online platforms, like Rightmove or Zoopla.
While these platforms have an option ‘would you like estate agents to contact you?’, even when the seller ticks the box, you’re competing with big boys. Sellers like to play safe and are more likely to go with a known name and give an exclusive option. In the current environment is not surprising that they don’t want to invite lots of people into their home.
If they’re checking you out, your website needs to provide something that will add a dimension that other estate agents don’t offer. This will increase the number of people who visit your website and voluntarily give you their contact information.
Add a service others don’t offer
One thing sellers like is a means of getting a quick valuation. Everyone has their own ideas of what their property is worth, usually the result of uneducated guesswork or comparing their property with what a friend has got – even though the properties aren’t the same.
If you’ve got a WordPress website as most estate agents do, we’ve got a zero-code plugin that does precisely that. Your customers get a simple form that gathers the property information (and the owner’s contact details) and gives them an instant valuation based on up-to-date data.
A ‘Value your home now’ button is an excellent way to attract potential vendors. This will provide an accurate overview of current property value, along with other useful data – branded up with your logo. Accurate valuations build trust.
This valuation can be the ‘appetizer’, with more in-depth reports to follow once you’ve made that initial connection. For instance, an email thanking them for accessing their instant valuation and asking if they’d like more in-depth information. You’ll get a reputation for delivering massive value, which will bring in more sellers – word gets around!
Added value for the estate agent
It’s not just making customers happy that benefits your estate agency. Typically, most valuations can only be done by experienced personnel. If a lot of properties are being listed, a backlog can stack up – and sellers don’t want to wait around.
With the option to get an instant valuation – and an accurate one, not just a ball-park guesstimate – that takes the pressure off and speeds up the process. This means that your estate agency can take on more properties and expand your area too.
Quicker sales = money in the bank!
Estate agents that partner with us get a whole host of services that add value for their customers and benefit their bottom line too.
As well as property reports that offer a great deal of detail, our deal finder means that you can list your properties and get them in front of thousands of serious investors. This means that you can put your properties in front of more buyers to make quicker sales.
You can show your sellers reports showing like-for-like value comparisons for other properties in their street or neighbourhood. And all in just a couple of clicks. This reduces time-wasters and allows people who can’t visit you or are reluctant to have visitors to their home to get sound information.
As 75% of residential properties are second homes or bought by landlords as buy-to-let properties, your reports can offer a range of information on potential rental, comparisons of the local area rents and yield over a year.
All this gives you a competitive edge in a tough market. More properties mean more sales and more commission in the bank.
Nitin Aggarwal
Nitin Aggarwal is the CEO & founder of Property Deals Insight, a platform that delivers clear and accessible data to anyone buying a property or property professionals. Property Deals Insight uses comprehensive data drawn from multiple sources to provide instant, powerful property insights to estate agents, investors and more.
