Lettings chain Martin & Co gets set to enter sales market

Lettings chain Martin & Co is entering the estate agency sales market with a pricing model that threatens to disrupt the traditional ‘no sale, no fee’ system – and could undercut it by up to 90%.

Martin & Co will charge no sales commission.

Instead, it will charge vendors on a menu basis, with sellers able to pick and mix the services they want.

The basic charge of £299 is an upfront fee for property details, including EPC, floor plan and photos, plus listing on Rightmove, the other major portals and Martin & Co’s own site, with Martin & Co branches also stocking the properties. A monthly fee of £29 is payable to maintain the listings.

All leads can be passed direct to the seller to do their own viewings, negotiation and sales progression.

Alternatively, vendors can choose to pay Martin & Co to handle all or any of these services.

Martin & Co managing director Ian Wilson said that the new ‘price busting’ service would cut selling costs for vendors by up to 90%.

The expansion of Martin & Co into sales was announced in February, with franchisees able to buy an additional sales franchise for just £1.

Wilson said yesterday: “Our sales service is primarily aimed at residential property investors.

“Our feedback from them is that they are a fairly canny lot, who object to paying a full estate agency fee when they can handle much of the process themselves.

“The one thing they cannot do, however, is list their properties on Rightmove, and that is where we started to put our pricing model together.

“Online letting agents do offer something similar, but none have high street offices where people can go in and discuss their requirements.

“I cannot see why our pricing model should not work. Yes, it will set the cat among the pigeons, but I am a great believer in innovation.”

He added: “While the new service is aimed primarily at investors, we think it will also attract normal residential vendors – partly because they know they won’t have a large fee to pay at the end, and partly because they know that if the property doesn’t sell, then as agents, we can let it for them.

“The current system is outdated and over-priced and we believe that a different charging system is in the interests of consumers.”
 
Wilson said that the Martin & Co model would also encourage realism about asking prices, with agents not motivated by a sales commission, and sellers keen to conclude a deal.

He said: “The current ‘no sale, no fee’ system penalises motivated sellers, as those that do sell have to subsidise all the over-priced properties that the agent has to market.

“However, our service favours motivated sellers by encouraging them to have realistic price expectations, because the faster they sell, the more they will save on our fees.”

Every property for sale with Martin & Co will be marketed with a rental valuation and a buy-to-let mortgage quote. The firm says it has an ‘extensive’ database of property investors keen to buy and who are unencumbered by property chains.

The sales service is expected to launch properly on September 1 when Wilson is hopeful of having 1,000 sales properties to list. However, there are already 130 properties for sale with Martin & Co, and of the 187 franchised-owned offices in the UK, nearly half have already signed up and are ready to launch.

Wilson said: “It’s a new venture and we expected an understandable degree of caution by our franchisees.

“In fact, in just four months 80 offices have completed a very rigorous sales training programme and we expect to enter 2013 with the majority of our offices offering a sales service.

“Unlike businesses which depend on estate agency for their lifeblood, we already have a proven, stable business model with dependable income streams. We will be offering joint lettings and sales franchises to the public later this year.”