No Buyer's Agent? No Problem! What Americans Can Learn from Home Buyers in the UK | Ep. 3

Full Transcript:

Nick Aufenkamp (00:01)

Hey y'all and welcome to the DIY Homebuyer podcast. My name is Nick, your host. This show is all about empowering home buyers to represent themselves in real estate transactions. In the process, you can save thousands of dollars by not hiring a costly buyer's agent, but you also gain really valuable skills that will serve you your entire life.

And in this episode, I am so glad to have my new friend, Chris Webb on the show. Chris is coming to us from the other side of the pond. Chris is in the UK. He has been an agent over there for 20 years and has had tons and tons of transactions and experience. But one of the things that's really fascinating is that in the UK, buyer's agents are kind of non-existent. so...

Really looking forward to this conversation to dive in to hear from Chris, what does real estate look like in the UK? What does it look like from the buyer's perspective? And hopefully by doing that, give us in the United States a different sort of plausibility structure or picture for how we can purchase real estate and hopefully save money and be more efficient. So Chris, thanks so much for coming on, man. Really grateful to have you.

Chris Webb (01:20)

thank you for having me on. was really good. Thank you. Very kind of you, Nick.

Nick Aufenkamp (01:23)

Yeah, yeah. So I obviously want to get into the particulars of the real estate market, what it looks like to transact things in the UK, just as I'd said. But maybe even before we do that, just at a high level, I'd love to hear how you even got into the real estate industry. What was it that drew you to it and how you got your start?

Chris Webb (01:45)

Yeah, it's a bit of an ongoing joke in the UK that no one actually ever wants to be an estate agent in the UK. You just kind of fall into it one day and you kind of wake up and you're like, well, I'm now an estate agent and it's kind of here we are for the long haul sort of thing. And mine was pretty much no different. So I finished college in the UK, which is kind of a step before you guys go to college, kind of 18 years old, and then went to university for a very short period of time. I had the recollection very quickly that the

Qualification I was going to gain was going to help me in no way shape or form with my life and I would just end up in a load of debt and in the same position still wondering what I'd want to do sort of thing. So that was kind of how that sort of ended effectively and then like all good parents I came back to my family and they said well you've got you know two options it's either kind of like you know go back to university next year or it's get a job. So obviously the the latter option was probably more attractive in the grand scheme of things and quite embarrassingly my mum found an advert in the paper

Which is that that used to be a thing and said why don't you have an interview with this estate agency group? So I went for an interview with them knowing absolutely nothing about property in any way shape or form Didn't even have a suit which obviously in property back then was like a must-have sort of thing and Got through the first interview and that was really good and then the guy said to me You know, do you want to write you know have an interview tomorrow with our area director? We'll get him down who come an interview specially and we kind of go from there

Nick Aufenkamp (03:01)

Right.

Chris Webb (03:13)

He said to me, have you got a suit? And I was like, well, yeah, of course I've got a suit sort of thing. He's like, well, great, wear it tomorrow. Obviously walked out the front door straight away, phone called my mom, need to go to the shop tonight, get a suit sort of thing for tomorrow. Long story short, had that second interview and didn't get the job. So got denied and didn't get that position at all. But the conversation I was having with the area manager about kind of what the day looked like and the job and the negotiation, the sales and the competition, all that sort of stuff sounded really, really good. So like a very,

Nick Aufenkamp (03:28)

You

Chris Webb (03:42)

super keen person. That night I wrote a letter out saying, hi I'm Chris and this is what I'm interested in, this kind of role I'm looking for in various companies, stapled that to my CV and went around the town I live in and delivered CVs to every one of those estate agents that evening. Got a phone call the next day, went for an interview the day after that and then started the day after that. So that is my very scenic route into getting an estate agency and that was at 18 years old, so that's two decades or so ago.

Nick Aufenkamp (04:09)

Yeah, that's amazing. And 20 years later, you built a successful career. And obviously you've had more and more opportunities. You were talking just pre-call about then managing many, many agents in the States and now even making some other transitions that perhaps we can get into later in the show. to familiarize the listeners with just real estate in the UK, there's even just some different vocabulary that you all use in

terms of the parties that are involved in the transactions. And so would you mind just giving us like a 30,000 foot view of what are the different steps and who are the different parties that are involved when you're selling and buying real estate over there?

Chris Webb (04:55)

Yeah, sure. mean, the most obvious one is obviously real estate agents aren't called real estate agents. They're called estate agents in the UK. That's the obvious one out of the way. You've got the owners of properties who are known as the vendors. So vendors, sellers, kind of.

tomato, tomato, all sort of same thing. And then you've got kind of the viewers slash buyers of the property and those who actually want to buy the property and actually purchase this sort of thing. And then outside of that, you've got solicitors which come into process later on, which are exact same as you guys would have over in the States. And obviously they get involved with sort of when it gets a bit more legal down the line with regard to who owns what and who's buying what sort of thing, they get involved later on down the line. So that's the main sort of differences with regard to the lingo side of things.

Nick Aufenkamp (05:38)

And actually, so solicitors is one that we don't use. I'm assuming that that kind of functions as like the title company and helps with the legal recording. Are solicitors typically attorneys or have some sort of legal background?

Chris Webb (05:55)

Yeah, so I'll be

careful what I say here because generally speaking it's one of the easier jobs in the solicitors world because it's more of a checklist sort of exercise rather than anything else you know no one's going to jail or anything like that at all it's purely have you got this form back yes I have no I haven't sort of thing so there are conveyancing companies who are sort of a step below a solicitor who look after that specifically so those are sort of you're absolutely right they are there to act on behalf of the buyer and the seller and they do sort of all the nitty-gritty paperwork sort of thing.

For a very basic level the the buyers list is there to make sure that their client to the person actually wants to buy the property is Buying a property which isn't going to fall over next Tuesday. And so it's you know, it's not by nuclear power station. It's standing up all okay There's not some sort of dispute with the neighbors. It doesn't flood every winter all that sort of stuff So they can then go forward to their client and go right we've all checked out the local area We've checked out the searches the local area you're buying a decent house. Do you want to go ahead with it basically?

Nick Aufenkamp (06:55)

Got it. And is that somebody that the buyer then hires or is that somebody that's provided to them by the seller?

Chris Webb (07:02)

So everyone will have their own solicitors. So a buyer, for example, so normally buyers don't instruct a solicitor until they've actually found a property they want to go for. So they would go out and they would view homes that they like the look of and go and have a look around with the agents and say, yes, I like this property sort of thing. They would then negotiate on their own behalf. So they would phone up the estate agent and say, great, thanks for showing around that property yesterday. Really like the look of it. Would they accept half million pounds or whatever the offer might be? That goes backwards and forwards just with the buyer and the

agent and so eventually they get to a figure where everyone agrees and they go great let's agree it for £520,000 everyone's happy with that. At that point the next question from the agent will be great who's your solicitor because they will need to send out a confirmation letter to all parties to the buyer to the seller and both their solicitors as well who are two different people saying just let you know we've agreed to sell this house here's the address here's the amount here's anything that's included in it time scales etc etc just to give everyone a good idea about kind of where we're going from day one.

Nick Aufenkamp (08:03)

Got it. So the solicitor really, they're more like a transaction coordinator and they're not involved in the negotiations, but they're just there to really make sure one, they do have some regard of where they're looking out for the buyer's interest because like you said, they're helping with property inspections and making sure that the property is as represented, it sounds like. But.

then they're also just making sure that the timeline of events makes it all the way until the transaction is finalized.

Chris Webb (08:34)

Absolutely right. So they're there to protect their buyers best interest effectively. They're there to make sure that the buyers of that property are moving to a property that is 100 % on board sort of thing and although they won't do the survey on the property themselves for example, they will see a copy of the survey that a survey has done on the home to check out that it is all structurally okay and it's not going to fall over etc. So they're sort of actually correctly say kind of like the coordinator of the entire thing to make sure everything is going through and everything correctly and they're there to kind of suppose dumb it down for their clients because you're not expecting

to be an expert in property when you're buying a home so you want a solicitor to say here's those are complicated solicitor jargon this is what it means in the real world sort of thing do you want to go ahead with it yes or no

Nick Aufenkamp (09:14)

Got it.

that's super helpful. what I would love to hone in on now is you alluded to it in describing what the solicitor does. But one of the things that's unique in the UK compared to the States is you said the buyer calls the estate agent who has the listing directly and sets up the showings and view or viewings of properties and then ultimately starts the negotiations directly with that agent. And so

I would love to maybe just zoom in a bit more on what that looks like from the homebuyers perspective as well as what sort of duties the listing agent has to that homebuyer and other things that that listing agent cannot do in the best interests of the seller.

Chris Webb (10:05)

Yeah, sure. So effectively the cards from an agent's point of view, that the agent that has the instruction or the property for sale kind of holds the cards quite a lot. So they've got a direct relationship with the owner of that property and they are on board to provide the best possible service, get as much money for that homeowner as possible and they kind of work for them. So it is one of those kind of weird situations that I have to kind of remind my friends quite a lot. They're like, I viewed a property with an estate agent. They were lovely and they were really nice. I'm like, yeah, they work for the vendor.

Nick Aufenkamp (10:33)

you

Chris Webb (10:35)

They're going to try and get as much money as possible and their fee is related to them getting as much money as possible. So they might have been lovely and really friendly, but just kind of remember where their loyalties lie. They've never signed a contract with you, they've signed a contract with the homeowner.

So from an agent's point of view, you would get called out on evaluation for properties. So someone might say, yes, I want to sell my home. You would then go around, see that property, give them an idea on price and how you're going to sell it and your fees and that sort of bits and pieces. You would then sign an agreement with that vendor, which basically says, I will act on behalf of your best interest. I will try and sell your property in line with your timescales and pricing, et cetera, and then kind of go from there. So they are sort of the hub of that property. If you were a viewer of your

your property, you deal directly with that estate agent. So if you saw a property online, so right move is our Zillow sort of thing. So you'd go online, see a property on there, pick up the phone, it would go directly to that estate agent. They would then book you in a viewing on that appointment.

You would then meet with that agent, they would show you around. If you like it, you then phone that estate agent the next day or you speak to them at the time and say, great, I really love this property, kind of put an offer forward on that home. And then that agent will be negotiating on behalf of that vendor. Obviously they keep them in the loop. So you mentioned about kind of the compliance aspects and what they can do and what they can't do.

the UK sales market is very unregulated in the UK. So it's very sort of, I wouldn't say wild westy, but it's certainly in that sort of direction. Really the main rules in a state agency are don't make up offers. So you can't just say, I've got an offer for you Mr. Jones and just make it up. And you have to all offers forward to the vendor in writing within a couple of days.

Pretty much that's 101 when it comes to the compliance of being a real estate agent in the UK So there's not many rules to follow by obviously you've got a duty of care to your client You have to kind of do the right thing on that side But with regard to actually things to follow if you get an offer from a buyer put it forward to the vendor You'll say great. I've got an offer. It's this sort of money. They're in this sort of position This is their sort of timescale. What do want to do? They'll go

accept it, don't accept it, higher, lower, whatever it may be, then the agent goes backwards and forwards a few times until the offer is hopefully acceptable and then they create from there. So you're very much from a buyer's point of view, you've got no representation apart from yourself and your negotiation skill is only as good as you're willing to negotiate effectively. And I saw a stat a little while ago and it was something like, I'll be very grey on the stats, it's going to be a bit of a ballpark figure, but it's something like one in three, one in four people who want to put an offer

afford on a property are hold back on putting that offer for because they don't look stupid. Because obviously they've got no experience in negotiation, don't know whether, you know, do they come in at half a million pounds, they offer 480, they offer over the asking price, like they've got no idea. So they're very much led by the agent about where they should offer. But obviously, as we mentioned earlier, that agent is representing the homeowner. So therefore, you kind of need, you know, they say, I've had a hundred viewings this week and it's really, really popular.

they shouldn't be making that up and they most definitely shouldn't be doing stuff like that but it's hypothetical they could do because they're there to kind of drive interest in that property. that's how it looks like. there's people that will be negotiating on properties that have never negotiated anything before in their life. They might negotiate on a car they purchased a couple of years ago, a rug they bought in Morocco and then trying to buy a half million pound house. So it's very much in the deep end. You haven't got anyone on your team effectively apart from yourself.

Nick Aufenkamp (14:03)

Yeah. And so for those home buyers, what kind of resources are available to them to help ascertain fair market value for a property? Are there tools, resources online? Are there things that are kind of provided within, whether it's a realistic commission or the government where they're able to get property data? Okay.

Chris Webb (14:25)

not really.

So you have places like our right me visual Zillow as I mentioned, and you can go on there and anyone in the public can see what's online at the moment and what's under offer. Now we have the land registry in the UK. So land registry is a government sort of department and basically it records how much everyone paid for any bit of land in the UK at some point. The bad news is it only registers with the land registry three months after someone's actually moved into the property. It's not the most efficient system in the world. So you can have your next door neighbor who's under offer at the moment,

Nick Aufenkamp (14:51)

Okay.

Chris Webb (14:56)

you've got no idea what they sold for. You've got no idea whether they accepted the asking price, they're below the asking price, short of you knocking on the front door and saying, hello, I've got your house on the market, what do you sell it for? And they may not even tell you, you've got no idea what they went for. You'll only find out if you check three months after they actually move out, and by that point you might've sold, not sold, whatever it may be, and then you can compare how it actually done. So there is something you can do to look at it, but it is very sort of backward facing, it's not live or far, far, far from it.

Nick Aufenkamp (15:26)

But obviously the system has worked because it's not like this is a new thing in terms of how real estate is transacted. And so even though buyers might not have as much experience in negotiation or they fear looking stupid and putting forward an offer, real estate is still being bought and sold in the UK. And so...

In that regard, like I guess I'll turn the question this way. Do you think that buyers in the UK would be better off if they did have some sort of an agent that was representing them and helping with the negotiations? Or do you feel like the current system, even though it puts inexperienced buyers in the driver's seat, that ultimately it makes for a more financially efficient market?

Chris Webb (16:18)

I think there's no sort of black and white rule for it.

I think for some people, if I was going to take my 95 year old grandmother and say this person is going to charge you a couple of percent, but they're to work really hard for you and make sure it's a smooth transaction and you get your sort of money's worth, great. Go nuts and things, absolutely kind of the right move in that sort of situation. Do I think that most people are up to the task or the negotiations are things? Absolutely. And I think if people put a bit of work behind the scenes and actually went out there and sort of researched not necessarily the property market, but if you've got some legwork in or they haven't got access to the same sort of portals and information that agents have.

you can go on enough websites you can probably get 80 % of all the agents can see in front of you so you can clue yourself up quite nicely about what's going on the marketplace and a lot of it is demand based as well.

So if you view a property and you're the only viewing that week, then it's probably not that popular. Whereas if you go to an open day and there's literally a queue around the block and you're at the end of it, then yes, it's quite popular. a property is only worth what someone's willing to pay for it. So if it's very competitive, chances are the property can go quite high. If it isn't, then chances are it won't be. So I think that the system we have in the UK has many faults to it, but I think that is quite a good thing that actually people can act on their own and they can kind of there at their own free will. For some people, yes, they could do with some help.

would see the benefit to paying 1, 2, 3 % of the asking price, debatable, but I think for the majority of people they are kind of clued up enough to make it work in their situation.

Nick Aufenkamp (17:48)

So because you've been on the involved in so many of these transactions, I think it'd be really helpful for our listeners to hear what are the most effective things that unrepresented home buyers in the UK do to protect their own best interests or what are the negotiation strategies if you're willing to give it away that you're kind of like, hey, whenever the home buyer, you know, makes these kinds of moves, I'm like, shoot, their experience, they know what they're doing.

Chris Webb (18:09)

Yeah, fine, yeah, that's what I'm talking about.

Nick Aufenkamp (18:19)

Maybe you can help our listeners by just some of those those tips for negotiation and

Chris Webb (18:23)

Yeah, sure. Well, I would generally say in my sort of views, there's usually three steps to every offer.

So there's the price that the buyer wants to pay, which is usually sort of the lower end of the spectrum, let's call it. There's sort of a middle ground, which is probably, let's call it hypothetically a fair value for the property. And then there's kind of like a third final offer, which is probably more what the vendors are looking for and kind of more in their sort of direction. So the mistake that lots of buyers make is they kind of skip out step one and go straight to step kind of two and three sort of thing. And instead of putting forward their sort of angle of how they're a good buyer, they'll come forward and go, it's just the

money. That's all people care about is the money. Which I appreciate money is important but if you're you know a person living in rented for example great you can be flexible with the timescale or great you've got your mortgage all approved so therefore you're kind of a bit more vested in it therefore you're more likely to go through sort of thing. So it's about sort of seeing your strengths as a buyer and then leveraging those as much as possible.

you know, obviously it's two-sided coin. So if you're in a massive chain with lots of buyers and you haven't got a mortgage statement done yet, all these sort of bits and pieces, yes, you're on the back foot slightly. So kind of maybe sort your life out slightly before you put those offers forward. But it's about going forward and saying, this is our position, this is what we have to offer, and this is we can go forward with. So although the agents in the UK are based around sort of commission models, so a percentage model like you are in the US sort of thing, obviously they want to get paid something rather than nothing. So for them, although yes, they want to get their vendors

as much money as they possibly can do, a deal is better than no deal effectively because they don't sell the property because everyone's offering too low then they're getting nothing as opposed to an extra £100, £1000, whatever the number is. So that's kind of crucial in the equation. So for anybody who's looking to view the property

look online, spend some time looking about what is going on in local marketplace, what's going up, what's going down. Because when people value property, especially in the UK, they will just go around with the same research that most people can get online. They'll go around and go, right, here's all the three bedroom houses in the local area. The ones that 400,000 are selling really quickly, the ones that 450,000 aren't selling very quickly. Let's give it a go at X, Y, Z price and then kind of go from there.

So it's about getting yourself prepared and getting clued up as much as you possibly can do. So when you go forward, you go, right, here's all the good bits about me. Here's all the positive bits I bring to the table. That might include price as well, or it might be your position or financial status or time scale, whatever it may be. And with all that in mind, I'm willing to offer this amount on the property on the provisional of X, Y, and Z as well. So it's understanding your worth and the value in the equation. So you can come forward and say, look, I have a decent product in myself buying your property. So therefore, this is what I go forward with.

The trick to play here is, it's kind of being a little bit of a shrewd negotiator and a bit harder than people normally would be. So it's about saying, actually, if someone asks you for an increase in your offer, don't go up by 5,000, go up by 1,000. Or try and find out what the homeowner will accept. So we're very lucky today that there's a million videos on a million different platforms about how to do these things.

So it won't take much searching to go onto YouTube and type in how to negotiate a house purchase, for example, and there'll probably be a thousand videos that come up that all do probably a really good job of saying, step one is prepare this, step two is prepare this, so you've only really got yourself to blame if you don't do a very good job, because all the information is out there for you to take advantage of. If you don't take advantage of it, you've got no one else to blame.

Nick Aufenkamp (21:49)

Yeah, and.

I'll only speak for the US side, but I think that if any homebuyer were to go and watch just four or five hours of videos on how to be an effective negotiator, you'd probably be a better negotiator than 90 % of the real estate agents in the US market. There's this perception that the agents here are these masterful negotiators, but the reality is that I've experienced at least is very different. Most of these people are not the most

or effective negotiators. Most of them are really amazing marketers, but not necessarily awesome when it comes to putting together a deal. And so by home buyers using those resources like what you're talking about in educating themselves, I absolutely agree that they can become effective. And I like the way that you put that in terms of the number one thing that home buyers can do is really leverage their strength as a buyer, because it is so much more than just the price, right? Like the vendor, the seller,

even the seller's agent wants the confidence that the deal is going to close like it a ridiculously high offer on a property that also has a ridiculously low probability of actually closing is not that amazing of a deal because that money doesn't mean anything unless the deal closes so

Chris Webb (23:12)

100 % I think that know agents like most people in the world are looking for an easy life and if someone comes forward and goes I'm a safe bet I'm a safe bet I'm a good deal I won't mess around I won't put my phone on the first ring I'll come actually straight away sort of thing that that is kind of what we'll go for then that is kind of a quite appealing to an agent I remember I had a situation that must have been about five six years ago and this doesn't happen that often but we had a property for I think about half million pounds six hundred thousand pounds sort of direction and it'd been on the market for

Nick Aufenkamp (23:17)

Yeah.

Chris Webb (23:42)

month or two we're having conversations with the home about should we drop their price down etc etc and then in the same weekend two elderly couples who are both cash buyers both wanted to buy it in the same weekend and over the space of the next 24 to 48 hours it got bid up by an extra £120,000 and the homeowner was and all the guys who were offering on it were saying to me this must be brilliant for you the amount of commission you must be making off this you must be really grateful we're going over the asking price and I was like no in no way shape or form I excited about you going over the asking price

me as a negotiator or whatever I was back then with regards percentage wise for the entire day's work I probably earned 20,000 pounds, sorry 20 pounds extra so you know the homeowner was making a hundred and twenty thousand pounds I was making like 20 pounds so in no way was I interested in that going a huge amount over the asking price although it was a brilliant result for the homeowner so you know it's not necessarily always about the money

It's about going, you're a safe bet, who's not going to mess around, you can get from start to finish and with as little grey hairs as possible between those two, that's an attractive package. Whereas sometimes people who offer a high figure or an over the asking price figure, etc. The agent will say to the homeowner, you're never going to see that money. It sounds really good. They've offered over the asking price, but they've never returned my calls. They've not come forward with their proof of funds at all. They've been messing around from start to finish. It's all hypothetical. So don't undervalue how important it is to be a good buyer for that agent.

and for that homeowner as well to actually go from start to finish.

Nick Aufenkamp (25:08)

Yeah.

That's the money line where you said that agents are looking for an easy life. And I think that that's in part why agents out here are having such a hard time with the possibility of buyer's agents becoming less common because buyer's agents do make the listing agent's life a lot easier having another experienced professional that's on the other side of the transaction. But I think you're absolutely right that if home buyers, unrepresented home buyers can give the listing agent confidence that,

I'm not going to complicate this process for you. I'm not going to make it any harder I am going to be even more responsive perhaps than a buyer's agent would be Those listing agents are going to be much more happy to to work with you with I know it could just be a mirror image, but I want to ask What are some of the biggest mistakes that you see home buyers make and obviously we could surmise that well somebody who doesn't make a strong case for themselves that hasn't gotten that the pre approvals, but I wonder if

there's anything else that when you think on the weakness side you might add to that or mistakes that homebuyers should be aware of.

Chris Webb (26:15)

Yeah, I think generally speaking it's a lack of preparation. So buying a home in the UK, you probably view a property for 20 minutes, half an hour. If you bought a car, you'd at least got a test drive for half an hour, 45 minutes, and that's probably 20, 30,000 pounds sort of thing. Buying a home, it's 15, 20 minutes. Yeah, great, it fits. Our kids will fit here. They've got a nice sized garden right on to the next one sort of thing. So it can be quite a short-term impulsive sort of purchase on that side. But to get to that stage, you need to be quite boring and quite

organised beforehand so you've got everything lined up. Nothing's worse than being an agent and saying, great, you want to offer on the property, have you got your mortgage sorted? No, I've not done that. Right, I've got your slits and stuff, you know I've not done that yet. So what sort of time scale do you think about? I've only thought about time scale too much. You're kind of like, right, okay, well, throw me a bonus, Lali. I'm trying to go to the homeowner here and say, I've got a brilliant buyer who wants to buy your property, who's really keen to move things forward. Give me a little bit of ammo to go forward with so I can then paint a good picture sort of thing. Because if you're saying to the vendor, look, they're offering this amount of money, no idea about

finances, know abouts, know abouts list, there's no idea of that time scale, they're still in rented, not handling their notes in yet at all, you're kind of pitching a bit of a bad dream there. Whereas if they can come forward and go, actually we've done a little bit of work beforehand to kind of make your life a easier, great, I can sell that to the homeowner, that's a strong message you go across with.

Nick Aufenkamp (27:31)

Yeah, yeah, that's

That's incredibly helpful. I, that lack of preparation, I can see how that's, definitely a key issue. And then, just in terms of like the, the, with the inspections, with what the solicitor does in the UK, as those kind of inspections and things are happening, is it very common for a buyer to renegotiate, terms or price based upon things that are found

there and how do those negotiations get handled just downstream of the initial agreement?

Chris Webb (28:08)

Yep.

So you get it sometimes, which I appreciate is a very gray metric for it. I would say that one in every 10 property sales, I'm picking that figure out the average roughly and my personal experience, one in every 10, you'll get some sort of renegotiation. So the solicitor is there to make sure that legalities are okay. So it's not on polluted land and there's not an airport being built next door, there's not building a new housing block next door or anything like that at all. But you have a separate person, a surveyor who goes out to the property

and they go around there, look in the loft, tap the walls, all that sort of stuff, to make sure the property is structurally sound. So generally speaking, if there's any renegotiation, it's when the surveyor goes around there. Because the surveyor will go around there and go, actually, the windows are all shot, or the foundations are failing, or the brickwork's falling away, or whatever it may be, and it needs X, Y, Z doing to the property.

Usually at that stage you then get a sort of specialist in that area to go around because the surveyors are kind of jack-of-all-trades, they kind of see everything, whereas you know might say for example the roof needs repairing. Okay great well the surveyors report will give you an idea the roof needs repairing, now let's get a roofing company around, give us quotes, so we're talking about £5,000, we're talking £50,000, know what's the of the ballpark figure and that will give the buyer some idea to go back with. My personal viewpoint with regard to renegotiation, if it's something which is obvious on the viewings then I would say that kind of falls out

of renegotiation. So for example if I showed you Nick ran a property that hadn't been lived in for last 20 years and it was like falling apart inside and you came back to me saying Chris I've had a survey report back and it's falling apart inside I'd be like well what did you think you're looking at sort of thing. Whereas if it was a nicely presented property but it had a wall that was falling down I go fair play you know I didn't know it you didn't know it you know it's kind of a surprise to you so therefore that makes renegotiation kind of quite an open conversation. And it varies from situation to situation with the guy

Nick Aufenkamp (29:43)

Yeah.

Chris Webb (30:00)

severity. Sometimes people buying properties will go actually not for me you know that's too big a deal to take on or I'm not a builder and I don't want to pay 20,000 pounds for a new roof sort of thing but usually what it results in is some sort of renegotiation on the asking price and that will go back to in the same way that when the agent was negotiating the initial sort of value for the property it will go back pretty much to that stage again.

and the buyers will come forward and say, we're paying £400,000 for it, we've just found out it needs £20,000 worth of work, we'll offer £380,000 for example, or we'll split the difference or whatever it may be, and they'll go backwards and forwards on that. If they can agree that figure, then great, it'll move forward. If they can't, then it all goes to the wall. So in the UK, a property purchase isn't binding until you get to exchange your contracts. And that takes on average in the UK, I dread to think, on average it's probably about four months.

So it's a long time for someone to change their mind, find an issue with the property, find another property, all that sort of stuff. The industry average in the UK is about one in three sales fall through.

So if you get three deals as an agent, one of them is going to fall out of bed. Now that is a very poor statistic and anyone I work with, they have those sort of statistics, I will literally throw something at them. So that is a very bad metric to have, but generally speaking, that's the sort of figures you're looking at. But the main reason that does happen is because it's such an elongated process that anything that takes four, five, six months to go through, motivation starts to wail off, et cetera. So anything that speeds up that process reduces fall through rates very, very quickly.

Nick Aufenkamp (31:32)

Yeah, yeah, they say that time is the greatest killer of all deals and I've...

Chris Webb (31:38)

100 % 100 %

Nick Aufenkamp (31:39)

Certainly certainly experienced that and so whenever there can be greater efficiency That's a good thing and not to jump around too much here, but I did want to ask another question just even about scheduling viewings because Out here. I don't know if it's just that it's it's uncommon for buyers to work directly with the listing agents Maybe it's that listing agents are a bit lazy, but listing agents out here It's like once they've got the property listed. They don't really want to have to go there anymore

they just sort of expect that buyers are going to come with their buyer's agents, the buyer's agents will do the showing. So for estate agents where you're at, how available are estate agents for showings? Like if you've got a listing and somebody calls you or you drop in whatever it is that you're doing to go and show that house.

Chris Webb (32:31)

It depends on the marketplace. So generally speaking in the UK, it's generally a seller's market. So what mean by that is that it's better to be a seller than a buyer. So there's more buyers than there are sellers effectively. you know, if I listed a really nice house today, for example, in the right sort of era, in the right sort of price, you'd probably get 20 viewings on it in a week, should we say, for example, you're roughly speaking. that's a kind of fairly popular property, not so popular properties obviously get absolutely tumbleweed on that side. So it's not like a case that a viewing phone comes in and an estate agent is like, you know,

everything guys, let's put our shoes on and run out the front door sort of thing. It's not that sort of marketplace in the UK. But certainly you would expect to view that property within, certainly within a week or so. That's quite easy. mean lots of estate agents in the UK do evening viewings and weekend viewings. Lots of agents do launch days where they'll start viewings on a certain day. It's a bit like the open house scheme in America, but instead of having everyone turn up in one day and one time, they'll just schedule it. So they'll have, you're booked in Nick at 10 o'clock, I might turn up at 10.

next guy's turn up at 10.30 sort of thing so everyone's got their crack of the whip and looking around the property. But it is pretty easy to view a property. You probably can't do it the same day or the next day because obviously someone lives in the property and they need to actually tidy up and whatever else. But outside of that, you're not waiting for weeks on end, far from it. You're probably viewing within a couple of days a week if you're unlucky.

Nick Aufenkamp (33:36)

Nice.

Yeah, yeah. And I love that that's just the cultural norm too, of that the listing agent is going to be accommodating to make that happen and not throw up a bunch of resistance like what we have here.

Chris Webb (34:07)

Yeah, well, you know, the reality is if you want to sell the property, you need to have buyers around to see the property. No one's going to drive past it and go, I love the look of that driveway. Here's half a million pounds or half a million dollars for the property. You you need to get people inside to actually view and actually want to go for the property. So whoever does that, whether it's a buyer's agent or the seller's agent or even the homeowner or whatever it may be, people need to see inside the property before they're to make any offers in any way, shape or form. So that is kind of obviously key to the process.

Nick Aufenkamp (34:32)

Yeah.

This kind of leads to my last question, which is just so here when agents are setting their fees, they'll have one fee for the listing agent. All the big lawsuits were about sellers also having to set the fee for what they would pay to the buyer's agent. They're trying to make that go away with the lawsuit against National Association of Realtors as well as the Department of Justice is looking to step in.

But my point is that listing agents would have a higher commission that they would receive if they're working with an unrepresented buyer. I'm just curious with the way that you set fees, it sounds like with the assumption being that buyers are going to be unrepresented. Do you just have one fee or is there a reduction if there's going to be in that 0.1 % of transactions where a buyer's agent is involved?

Chris Webb (35:30)

No, not at all. mean, there's so few buyer's agent purchases in the UK that you can count them on one hand sort of thing. So the only time anyone would use a buying agent in the UK, if you had things like a company relocation. So for example, if Nick, you want to move to the UK and your company was like, look, Nick will make your life as easy as possible. We'll even employ a buying agent to go and do the viewings for you and find, know, narrow down your search view sort of thing. Cool, great. You're paying for it. So go nuts sort of thing. So that's probably one of the few occasions you would do it. If you were a famous footballer for Manchester United, for example, you might have a buyer's agent.

to do that for you because you can't be traipsing out of training and whatever else, but outside of that, 99.9 % of all transactions in the UK will not involve a buying agent in any way, shape or form. So that's kind of the remit to start off with. The fee side of things is just one fee. So regardless whether it's a buying agent, whether you sell to a first-time buyer and it goes through really quickly, whether you sell to someone who's got a massive chain behind them, it takes forever to go through. There is one fee, the vendor pays and ...

you get your invoice to at the very end and you go great that was worthwhile or actually that was a complete pay in the backside for that amount of money you find out at the end so that's the only fee you'll pay as a seller.

Nick Aufenkamp (36:38)

Yeah. Well, having been on the agent side, I'm glad to know that at least that pain is the same that all agents over here feel of that. You really don't know if it's worth your while until the deal closes. Yeah.

Chris Webb (36:50)

No, you find out all the while. As soon as you take it on, you find out pretty quickly. But yeah, it's too late by that point.

Nick Aufenkamp (36:56)

That's exactly right. Well Chris man, this is such a helpful conversation. I love hearing how things are done over there I'm really grateful for you sharing your expertise with me and with our listeners Would love to just know how folks can connect with you I know that you're kind of transitioning out of being the estate agent and now doing a lot more with consulting estate agents businesses helping them grow their businesses and so but for anybody that wants to follow along with the

stuff that you're doing. you have website or social media places that you'd like for them to check out?

Chris Webb (37:29)

Yeah absolutely so hopefully if I'm doing my job correctly if you go on to Google and type in estate agent consultancy I should be pretty much everywhere so you can find me on

Instagram, LinkedIn, TikTok, YouTube, podcasts, go onto Spotify, type in the estate and consultancy. I've got a book out you can download and read. I've got a second book coming out in two weeks time. You'll be sick of the sight of me. So yeah, anything type in estate and consultancy, you better DM me pretty quickly. I try and be everywhere as much as I possibly can do.

Nick Aufenkamp (38:01)

Fantastic. Well, I'll include some links as well down in the show notes for our listeners to be able to check out. Listeners, before you go, do make sure that you check out that description, make sure that you've liked, subscribed to the podcast, and then be sure to share it with a friend as well. But Chris, man, this is a really great conversation. Love making the connection with you. Again, thank you so much for your time. Absolutely. All right, on,

Chris Webb (38:23)

A pleasure, thank you for having me on Nick.