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Originally Posted by roadrunner_0
i know what you are saying, but you are coming at my point from teh wrong angle, you point stand, and go a long way to showing why central london house prices are so absurd. What i was saying was, the main way of selling houses in this country is controlled by people who are paid (generally, not always) a percentage of what they make for you, and therefore the temptation is there for them (estate agents) to encourage the upward trend, and, for the more unscroupulous agents to use tactics such as telling people that there is already an offer in at the asking price to make the properties involved go for artificially high prices (as an example, albeit a specific and afaik not a specifically huge probelm in and of itself). Yes, estate agents want to get the best prices for the people involved, however, the people involved in the transaction happen to be themselves.
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You are describing capitalism. There is not a single product sold in this country by any other method.
What we do is ensure that there is never a monopoly.
So yes it is an estate agent's personal interest to push up prices if he can.
What we do in capitalism and why we decided this system worked best is pit all of these competing interests against each other. Housing is a relatively simple system. The cost of the product makes it the largest single purchase, or semi-purchase, that 99% of the market will make in their lifetime. The seller wants to sell but the buyer will have a finite amount of money.
Estate agents as salesmen really have very little room to manoevre. This is (by the way and just in case i haven't already bored you to death) why estate agents are the salesmen who are the most constrained salesmen we have.
Freshly squeezed orange juice salesmen can keep pushing up prices because they are limited to what people are used to paying, add a penny and 90% of your consumer base won't even notice.
Estate agents do not have this luxury. Their problem is the nature of their product.
If you do not believe that then the next time you meet an estate agent ask yourself "was he an estate agent in 1991". Because when you look at him you'll realise that he's too young. The reason being that the market crashed in a big way and those estate agents shot themselves.