Cubitt and West: High Street Value
As the market turns, Cubitt & West warn against using cut-price “hybrid” estate agents
With more properties than buyers currently coming to market, it is more important than ever to choose a traditional high street agent, rather than one of the new breed of hybrid agents, if you want to be sure of achieving a sale at the best possible price. That’s the message from leading estate agents Cubitt & West, who have 44 offices across Surrey, Sussex and Hampshire.
“Hybrid agents claim to combine all the low-cost benefits of the online-only model with local market expertise,” says David Lench, Group Managing Director of Cubitt & West’s parent company, Arun Estates. But that, he adds, is nonsense. “The truth is, there is a lot more to successfully selling a property than simply sticking it on the internet and waiting for buyers to turn up!”
As traditional full-service agents, David explains, Cubitt & West take a highly proactive approach to matching buyers to properties. “To start with, we carefully qualify all prospective buyers, to sort the serious prospects from the timewasters, to gain a clear picture of their financial circumstances and their ability to proceed. We also keep a record of their specific requirements. Finally, each of our offices can use their database to identify special cash buyers and others who are in the best possible position to move, if a quick sale is needed.”
The truth is, there is a lot more to successfully selling a property than simply sticking it on the internet
This level of detailed market intelligence is critically important – particularly at the present time, when buyers are starting to enjoy a wider choice of properties than in the recent past. And, David emphasises, it’s something that hybrid agents simply have no answer to. “Because they don’t maintain a buyer database that they can proactively exploit in this way, hybrid agents are totally reliant on people searching online.”
Cubitt & West’s offices – all of which are in prominent High Street locations – are open from 8am to 8pm, seven days a week. They also have the ability to share instructions between them. “That might sound terribly old fashioned,” says David, “but only last month, new industry research claimed that 41 per cent of buyers start their property search by looking in high street windows – actually slightly more than those who register for alerts from the major websites!”
So, one way or another, using a hybrid agent means missing out on an awful lot of prospective buyers. “The simple truth is that we market properties to a far wider range of buyers,” says David. “That inevitably means that we arrange more viewings, which translates into more offers and ultimately produces the highest possible price. Hybrid agents simply cannot do this – with the result that the saving you make on fees is likely to be outweighed several times over by their failure to secure the best price!”
And the figures speak for themselves. In the quarter from April to June this year, no fewer than 60.7 per cent of Cubitt & West’s sales were agreed at or above the original asking price – and this during the run-up to the referendum, at a time when the national press were full of doom and gloom about the property market!
So, the message from Cubitt & West is clear. With estate agents, as in all things, you get what you pay for. So, why take a chance – particularly when it concerns your most valuable asset!
