The UK housing market has been ably steered in the downward direction by the intransigence of Mr Brown and Mr Darling, who cannot seem to organise a booze-up in a brewery between them. Our Gordon, previously the self-promoted "safe pair of hands" is left looking culpable with his inept handling of the Northern Rock debacle, taking many weeks to decide what to do and allowing the market to create a huge level of uncertainty. I never thought I'd say this, but the US Government managed significantly better with their sorted-in-two-days approach to Bear Sterns and they sailed on almost regardless. OK, so the oil price has not helped, but is a compounded problem on top of the housing market. Yes, there were other factors too, like the no-brain who invented the >100% mortgage.
UK estate agents are having a bad time, with house sales by volume quoted as the worst for anything between 30 and 75 years (dependent on which news source you choose to believe) and some agents already laying off staff. Over the last 5-6 years particularly, the internet has revolutionised house selling, and I am expecting the housing sale downturn to play in favour of the internet due to its low cost base. By the time the market picks up (you guess when!), the most savvy websites are going to be the winners. Unless they really pull their fingers out, the first generation property portal sites will also be losers - Rightmove, PropertyFinder, FindAProperty, PrimeLocation etc, and if I were a betting man, I would put money on the second generation property sites (more like search engines now) to be the winners. So watch closely for Globrix, DotHomes and Zoomf to make their marks, along with agents like Foxtons whose business model is built around their website being the #1 selling place, rather than the office. Thus most of their selling staff are home-based and there is one central admin office for dealing with the legal side of things once a sale is agreed, and that can be in a lower-cost location.
UK estate agents are having a bad time, with house sales by volume quoted as the worst for anything between 30 and 75 years (dependent on which news source you choose to believe) and some agents already laying off staff. Over the last 5-6 years particularly, the internet has revolutionised house selling, and I am expecting the housing sale downturn to play in favour of the internet due to its low cost base. By the time the market picks up (you guess when!), the most savvy websites are going to be the winners. Unless they really pull their fingers out, the first generation property portal sites will also be losers - Rightmove, PropertyFinder, FindAProperty, PrimeLocation etc, and if I were a betting man, I would put money on the second generation property sites (more like search engines now) to be the winners. So watch closely for Globrix, DotHomes and Zoomf to make their marks, along with agents like Foxtons whose business model is built around their website being the #1 selling place, rather than the office. Thus most of their selling staff are home-based and there is one central admin office for dealing with the legal side of things once a sale is agreed, and that can be in a lower-cost location.
