Don't rely on the portals

This won't be the last time I refer to the “good old days” of Estate Agency when a negotiator used their finely honed skills to match new property listings to their Hot Box of eager purchasers and created viewings before their colleagues did in an attempt to get the sale.

Not forgetting that every Thursday the Cambridge Evening News Property Supplement was delivered to Cambridge Curtain Twitchers and Forever Home Dreamers and it would be all hands on deck in the office as calls would fly in quicker than a Sophie in our office says "yes please" when someone says sushi.

In the late 90’s Estate Agents started to create their own websites, simultaneously property portal after property portal appeared, each jostling for position until those that need no mention rose to the top.

Where I am going with this is as property portals became the dominant way a purchaser looked for a new home the less effective many Estate Agents and negotiators became. The portal became the agent's way of property matching and creating viewings and an entire skill set was lost in a generation.

That was until recently, well for us anyway. We now have one of the cleverest applicant registration and property matching systems which allows the user to self register and be as detailed or as vague as they want. If you would like to live within a mile of a train station or in a particular school catchment area, we can send you properties that either perfectly match (100%) or closely match (91%).

We now know who our purchasers are, where they are looking and how quickly they want to move. Importantly we even match and send new properties to our buyers before we place them on the portals and in some cases sell them before they have gone fully on the market.

If you are looking for your next home and would like to hear about it before it hits the portals click on this link.