As you may be aware, I founded Mercury Homesearch in 2001 because I was fed up with the estate agents in London.
There were several aggravations, but one of the biggest that I still hear time and time again is:
“The estate agents in London keep sending me properties that are clearly totally unsuitable”.
Now, and excuse me for this unsubtle but brief moment of self-promotion, one of the reasons why the clients of Mercury Homesearch enjoy working with us and recommend us so frequently is that I offer a financial guarantee that ensures that our clients’ time isn’t wasted. I will tell you more about this later.
But why do the agents waste everyone’s time “throwing mud at the wall”?
Well, there are several reasons:
- Their job is not to find you the best property your money can buy. It is to sell any one of their clients’ properties to any buyer for the highest price possible.
- You are not their client. They are paid by the seller. You are referred to as an “applicant”.
- Many buyers are hopelessly disorganized/don’t really know what they want, so inundating them with every type of property actually makes sense.
- Their systems are still relatively unsophisticated. While you may give them lots of information about what you want, they probably only register the number of bedrooms you need, the areas you like and your budget.
- Some of the agents are just not very good or are simply lazy.
I could go on, but please don’t think this is a diatribe against estate agents. Some of them are very, very good and achieve exceptionally high prices for their clients even when the property is decidedly poor or average.
This is one of the reasons why we don’t sell property for our clients.
The good agents are very good at selling – we know who they are, recommend and manage them for our clients but we won’t actively sell the property.
However, the agents cannot have your best interests at heart if you are a buyer – a fact that the majority of people seem to forget which adds to the frustration in what is already a time consuming and often aggravating experience.
Of course, every agent will tell you that they won’t send you rubbish, but they still do because there is no financial disincentive, which is why I created the Mercury Service Guarantee which states:
“If I show you or even send you the details of a property that does not match the requirements we have discussed, then I will give you £2,000 or donate it to a charity of your choice every time this happens”.
How often do you think our clients have their time wasted?
This is just one of several financial guarantees that I have created to give our clients the peace of mind and confidence that we will do what we promise in the time frame promised.
Frankly, this is the minimum one should expect in business, but if you would like to know more about the guarantees we offer our clients, do make contact.
Contact Mercury Homesearch
If you would like to discover more about how Mercury Homesearch can assist you, simply email me at [email protected] or call 02034578855 (+442034578855 from outside the UK).
Topic: Estate agents in London
