Words: Ashley Rigg
Published: 1st May 2008
Agents report dip in April lead volumes
Leading overseas estate agents report lead volumes have dipped significantly over the last few weeks. The decline corresponds with a succession of negative press about UK house prices which began on 8th April when the Halifax announced the
average UK home lost £5,000 in value during March.
John Treagust from Costa Blanca Live says enquiries are significantly down and he's "been lucky to receive 3 leads a day" during April from Kyero, one of his best lead referrers.
A close contact at a large multi-national overseas agency selling to the second-home market says: “The week beginning 21st April was the worst on record [for leads]…we usually generate over 150 leads a week but in the last two weeks, numbers have been under half that”. They have begun focusing their attention more towards investors, as he believes the second-home market is in for a rough ride.
However, the news at investor specialist Someplace Else is little better. Marketing Manager Charlotte Williams says they had lots of leads from portals coming through in the early part of year but that they’ve “seen a marked drop in the last few weeks”.
It’s not bad news for everyone.
Rightmove.co.uk last week announced that property searches were up 40% year on year for March and Overseas Director, Justin Figgins says lead volumes are up 21% over the same period. However, the disparity between the two numbers suggests there are more window shoppers in the market than this time last year. Figgins believes many second-home buyers are currently “sitting on their hands waiting for the pound and the euro to come back into line”.
Much of the dip in lead volumes is obviously price led. Figures from both
Primelocation.com and Rightmove.co.uk suggest searches and leads are up significantly for property in the US, where the weak dollar and significant price falls have made overseas property investment relatively attractive. Europe seems to be suffering more than other property destinations with “Bulgaria figures falling off a cliff”, according to Figgins.
Lead volumes are clearly related to consumer confidence. Negative
house price press coverage has clearly had a short-term effect. Let’s hope the market gains some perspective. The house price dip is a drop in the ocean compared to rises of recent years. The fundamentals of the UK economy are much stronger than they were in the 1990s.
Agents will be need to cleverer with their marketing budgets to ride out the storm. The quickest and easiest way to generate leads is still property portals, in our opinion. With the new
property portal feeder tool just launched it’s now easier than ever to test the effectiveness of a wide range of portals. Find out which ones work and stick with them. It could be a tough ride.
User Comments
Leads are still coming in, albeit at a lower rate during April. We clearly feel the recession pinch, and the weaker pound, with clients not easily making that sale decision, or even some retracting from a closed contract, where the loss of their deposit is even accepted to avoid to buy.
We will be focusing more on other euro countries, and make our resale vendors accept lower prices, as the French are not buying either.
A local notary commented that we where the only ones bringing pre-sales contracts in!
Benjamin Haas,
SARL Burgundy4u
With regards to Kyero.com? We have upgraded our account, which has cost €137pm instead of the €69pm we have been paying. We have received 80% more enquiries over the last few days. Perhaps we should have done this earlier! And with the new website launch of www.costablancalive.co.uk and a full time SEO person now in place we should see a significant rise in enquiries very soon.
JOHN TREAGUST,
www.CostaBlancaLive.co.uk
It's definitely true that all of the portals we use have been sending fewer genuine enquiries in the last 3 weeks. At the same time the numbers of desperate individuals and developers using portals to request a 'sale by owner' listing has hugely increased. Maybe when the portals send out their invoices and get challenged on the lead validity, they will not be quite so bullish!? Also, year-on-year increases are irrelevant with portals that are new to (say) overseas property. You would expect this growth. For example, we are up over 10,000% on last year (we launched one year ago last week!) The reality for agents is what happens week-by-week!
Jake Holloway,
Overseas Property Centres
I can report we are still seeing a rise in interest in European property, albeit slightly slower than previously. However, countries such as Australia, USA, Brazil and Uruguay are continuing to provide increasingly positive lead numbers.
Peter Mindenhall,
Propertyshowrooms.com/Global Prospects