Agents urged to be more choosy about 2024 listings…

Agents should be more picky about their listings during 2024 and focus on sellers that will help speed up sales by providing upfront information, an industry executive claims.

Industry analyst and chair of The Home Buying and Selling Group Kate Faulkner has predicted that 2024 is going to be another tough year from a sales perspective, but said it is an opportunity for the more professional agents.

She said: “This isn’t the year just to take on ‘any listing’, especially with the difficulty in the time it is taking from listing to completion. 

“One thing that should help with this is the new material information requirements from Trading Standards. Any seller that isn’t keen to help or provide the information required may not be worth taking on in 2024.

“It’s also giving the ‘good agents’ that always comply with new rules and regulations one of the biggest opportunities to set themselves from the poor agents that don’t.”

She said agents should be taking the Trading Standards guidance to every instruction to help explain the new rules and encourage information being share upfront.

Faulkner said: “I think it would also be great for agents to pass this information over to legal companies with the memorandum of sales and to surveyors going out on valuations or condition checks so they know you are ‘one of the good guys’ too. 

“Hopefully with this change we can save everyone a lot of wasted time by having this information upfront.”

In addition to taking on instructions that are ‘legally ready’ to sell from day one of marketing, Faulkner said it would be good to make sure buyers have the funds to purchase a property. 

She added: “Of course this mustn’t be done just through in house mortgage experts, but accepting from external brokers that they can afford properties ‘around’ £250,000.

“A shocking third of people according to the OntheMarket Sentiment survey suggests that around a third of people are shopping for property without knowing if they can afford a property or not, we shouldn’t be wasting anyone’s time taking buyers on viewings that we don’t know if they can afford. 

“Overall 2024 will be a similar year price and transaction wise to 2023 and the better communication to buyers and sellers that people can still afford to buy and there are some, potentially, great value properties available for them. Add to this spending time testing out ways of reducing fall throughs and the time it takes to buy will really help the ‘good guys’ to survive and thrive.”