A website allowing people in England and Wales to compare the performance of estate agents goes live this weekend.
Estateagent4me.co.uk claims it can identify the country’s best-performing agents based on criteria including sale price achieved compared to asking price, the number of properties actually sold, and speed of sale.
It says the three agents that were consistently able to secure the highest amount over asking price over the past six months are all based in London.
The Rotherhithe office of Hastings International managed an average of £31,105 over asking price, while Winkworth, Palmers Green (£16,215), and Douglas Allen, Dalston (£15,083), came second and third respectively.
“This compares very favourably to the UK average performance of £12,742 below asking price,” the site says.
The three agents that scored the best individual percentage increase over asking price were Whitehouse Estate Agents, Bournemouth (108.9%), Hastings International, Rotherhithe (107.7%), and Connells, Southville, Bristol (107.2%).
Meanwhile, the average length of time taken to sell a property over the past six months is put at 55 days – though this disguises wide regional variations. The “quickest” areas were Reading (26 days), Bristol (26 days) and “outer London” (43 days), while the slowest were Liverpool (85 days) and Leeds (62 days). The fastest agents for selling were Lawson Rose, Southsea, Portsmouth, and Leaders in nearby Waterlooville (both eight days).
Those behind the website say many sellers choose an estate agent based on “instinct, word of mouth and how many boards they see in their local area”, but that it is enabling people to make a decision about which agent to use “based on real data rather than gut feel”.
Sellers can use the site to look at things such as an agent’s “success rate” – ie, the percentage of properties that have sold compared to the total number of houses listed with that firm – plus the average time taken to sell a property, how often they are able to achieve a sale at or above asking price, the number of properties each agent has listed in the location of the seller’s property, and an indication of the fees charged.
