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With the housing market slowing down, times are hard for estate agents. But given their reputation – however unfair – will people care?
“Sympathy” and “estate agent” are not words often found in the same sentence.
Characterised as pushy and insincere, the good ones, just like journalists and politicians, are viewed as the exception rather than the rule.
But given the doom and gloom headlines about the housing market, how badly are they suffering?
As they depend so directly on sales, the fall in mortgages does not make happy reading. Between November and February, the monthly figure for mortgages on new homes fell from 80,000 to below 50,000, according to the Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML).
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It’s tough out there, says Peter Bolton King, chief executive of the National Association of Estate Agents, but save your sympathy because it’s only the bad ones who are going to the wall.
“Estate agents offering a good service, qualified people who know what they’re doing and employ quality people, they always rise above others in this kind of market. The cream rises to the top.
“So far the people closing offices and laying off staff, the feeling I’m getting is it’s not our members – it’s not the older established agents – it’s those who set up in the boom period and thought ‘Anyone can sell property’.
“I don’t have massive sympathy for those who aren’t doing a proper job.”
Knowledge base
Overall it’s a mixed picture with agents in some areas prospering and some not. Lettings are doing well but the corporate sector has wielded the axe, with big names like Countrywide among those closing offices in this sector.
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 They may be taking home less money than they need to pay the mortgage, with the obvious irony that entails  Henry Pryor, ex-estate agent
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“A lot of estate agents haven’t seen this sort of slower market before, and it will come as a shock to them. But it shouldn’t because it means it’s a proper negotiating, selling market when you have to know what you’re talking about.”
He is confident the market could pick up again soon because – unlike in the crash of the early 90s, when interest rates and unemployment were high – there are plenty of people eager to move.
A bleaker picture is painted by Henry Pryor, a former estate agent and housing expert, who says that with sales falling so dramatically, it’s a desperate situation for people dependent on commission.
“A lot of estate agents are paid a basic salary and a performance bonus.
“Through no fault of their own, they will not be doing the business they would expect to be and this will have very serious repercussions on relationships and marriages because they may be taking home less money than they need to pay the mortgage, with the obvious irony that entails.”
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Sweden’s credit crunch lessons
Posted on: April 14, 2008
- In: Bear Stearns | credit | crunch | economy | JP Morgan | lessons | shareholders | Sweden | united states | World
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It is recognised as one of the oldest central banks in the world.
Yet it seems that Sweden’s Riksbank could even teach America’s Federal Reserve a thing or two about recovering from the current debt crisis.
As the IMF becomes the latest body to call on governments for concerted global action to calm troubled markets, policymakers are studying how Sweden managed to rescue four of its biggest banks when its own credit boom turned to bust in the early 1990s.
House prices had slumped, the currency was out of control, and unemployment and bankruptcies were rising rapidly.
Rescue plan
If the Riksbank had failed to act rapidly and chosen not to inject capital into its major banks, the entire financial system of the country may well have collapsed.
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You do have to act swiftly. You can’t say this is a banks’ problem, because it is also your problem Lars Heikensten, former governor, Swedish Riksbank
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At a cost of some $11bn (£5.5bn), Sweden guaranteed repayment of depositors and creditors at all of its stricken banks.
But the state aid was skilfully targeted, so none of the cash went to the bank’s shareholders.
Indeed, most of the money was regained by the Swedish government as the national economy recovered.
Moral hazard
Sweden’s affluent economy could have been threatened
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Perhaps without even fully realising it at the time, the Swedes had identified what was to become known as ‘moral hazard’ – the risk that the state might bail out private investors who risked their money on the stock market.
One man with a ringside seat at the time of the Swedish crisis was the Riksbank’s Lars Heikensten, who subsequently served a term as central bank governor.
“One of the questions we had to ask was quite simple. Will this bank be solvent or not?
“If the government was to step in with taxpayers money to deal with solvency problems, it was made clear that the owners would have to give up all their rights. That was important for political reasons – and for moral hazard reasons.”
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