Video: The estate agent debate

Esate agents are an utter waste of space. They are complacent and lazy and want to do as little as possible for as much commission as possible. I speak from years of experience dealing with both residential and commercial agents, all of them without exception added no value to the process what so ever.

I agree that this video lacks balance. You can use a High Street estate agent to sell your home (and agree that they rarely provide value for money), you can use an on-line agent (where you undertake the viewings yourself and the on-line agent negotiates the sale - these provide better value for money ...... OR

You can use Tepilo ... which is totally unproven, possibly untrusted ... and only getting any air time because Sarah Beeny is famous ........

Don't get me wrong ... I really hope Tepilo succeeds because I think the sentiment is right - why shouldn't people be able to advertise their homes on the Internet for free ......

But the interview was more a Tepilo advertorial than an informative discussion on the options available when deciding to sell your house without using a High Street estate agent,

I agree with Trenners that there is a third option of online estate agents not mentioned in the video - thanks for acknowledging that Ed.

This article wasn't really what it was billed as either. I initially found this article on Twitter as it was advertised as 'Which is better? Online of offline estate agents' - when in reality it was a comparison of estate agents (Bullman Booth in the video but there are many others) and DIY selling/property listing sites (Tepilo in the video, but there's Houseladder and many others);not a comparison of online and traditional estate agents.

The distinction between using an estate agent and doing it yourself is quite clear - as Ed and Sarah show in the video. What would be useful in the future is a comparison of high street estate agents and internet based estate agents (like Housenetwork and UppingSticks), as the online agents have the advantages Ed mentions in the video (e.g. they'll negotiate the sale for you so you don't have to do it yourself), but avoid most of the downsides mentioned around value for money (e.g. they're cheaper so presumeably the 10% of people who think their estate agent added value would be higher).

Cheers,

Dave