Due to very good turnout in this week's Fun Online Poll, I shall call the result after three days:
Which do you consider to be your 'nationality'?
English - 53%
Scottish - 7%
Welsh - 4%
Irish (Northern or Southern) - 1%
British - 28%
Some other country - 2%
None of the above - 5%
To cut a long story short, over two-thirds of people who could have chosen 'British' actually see themselves as English, Scottish, Welsh or Irish (i.e. 88 out of 127). So as Wonkontsane suggested, politicians who try to push the idea of 'Britishness' are probably missing the point.
UPDATE: As James D points out (in the comments) out of 127 who were eligible to choose 'British', 9 chose 'Scottish' and 6 chose 'Welsh', i.e. 7% and 5% of eligibles, which is very close to their share of the population of the UK 8% and 5%, so by subtraction, English people are most likely to have chosen 'British'.
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There's a fine article on the BBC about people calling for 'better regulation of estate agents to protect consumers'.
"The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) has given a clean bill of health to estate agents in a year-long report into standards in the industry. The OFT said sellers should shop around to save money on fees. But an estate agents' body said the report had failed to propose "robust" protection for buyers and sellers..."
As far as I am concerned, this is just a smokescreen (and a pretty thin one at that) for existing estate agents to raise barriers to entry and hence boost their own profits. Remember always, that less competition = higher prices; fewer estate agents = incumbents get a larger slice of a larger pie; and that estate agents have high fixed costs (basically rent on their high street premises), so a ten per cent increase in income leads to a twenty per cent increase in profits (or whatever the numbers are).
Will this benefit 'the consumer'? Nope, IMHO, they'll end up marginally worse off.
So that's the topic of this week's Fun Online Poll - who will benefit more from the regulation of estate agents? Established estate agents or their customers? Vote here or use the widget in the sidebar.
Thursday, 18 February 2010
Fun Online Polls: England & Estate Agents
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13 comments:
Sounds very much like a land grab by the Estate Agents (excuse the pun).
I voted British. And proud of it.
I'm not embarrassed to be English, quite the reverse but I'd much prefer to wave a Union Flag than a Cross of StGeorge (who was some Turkish bloke by all accounts). I defy anyone to watch old footage of the '66 game at Wembley and not agree that it just looked so much better.
What's interesting in those numbers is that the Welsh and Scottish figures are close to the proportions of the population of Great Britain and Northern Ireland that Wales and Scotland represent (4.9% and 8.4% respectively). English and Irish are way off. I'm not sure that that's exactly an earth-shattering revelation, but it probably shows quite how silly the "Britishness" line sounds in Wales and Scotland.
MW,
Trevor Kent's quote about poodle clippers is very true. Estate Agents should have been 'professionalised' decades ago. Most house sales are subsequently managed by someone who has no idea of how a house is built, what the conveyance process involves, the mortage system or what a surveyor actually does.
And people are willing to trust the sale of their biggest asset to an untrained, sometimes incompetent, individual?
"And people are willing to trust the sale of their biggest asset to an untrained, sometimes incompetent, individual?"
Ermmmmm, how competent do you need to be to pluck some sales particulars from the rack and say "Look, this one has 4 bedrooms and comes with downstairs cloak."?
Personally, I think they're getting a little above their station. Come on, really, I'd suggest your regular PC World salesman requires more skill than your average Estate Agent. All the important stuff connected with selling a house is done by professionals already.
The answer is for people to do some of the leg work themselves and stop trusting the Agents (whom often serve their own interests above yours). At the very least you should value your own property and, to a lesser degree, be prepared to negotiate with potential purchasers yourself.
Speaking as someone running a business in a highly regulated area - retail financial services - I should point you to another little piece of bureaucratic nonsense coming down the pipe from the FSA that will have exactly the same effect in my sector. It's called the Retail Distribution Review. Basically it's a bureaucrats wet dream as to how he'd like the world to be suit him. But it's main 'success' will be to remove lots of people from the business and to erect even higher barriers to entry.
As a businessman in the business I say goodee. As a citizen I say shame.
Go read it an weep.
http://www.fsa.gov.uk/Pages/About/What/rdr/index.shtml
JD, I have updated post.
WFW, JP, in my experience the 'professionals' (i.e. those who have already done the 'land grab') like valuers, surveyors, solicitors and banks are almost uniformly useless,
Estate agents and mortgage brokers are not the weakest links in the chain.
L, ta for more examples of this.
So as Wonkontsane suggested, politicians who try to push the idea of 'Britishness' are probably missing the point.
Well, we all knew that, didn't we? There is the disconnect between them and us.
Most of the estate agents have forign nationalities.
Well that BBC piece looks like lazy journalism to me.
From what I can see, the market study recommends ammending the old Estate Agents Act.
They argued against positive licensing of Estate Agents or introducing tougher regulation than current EU fair trading rules.
It'll be the homeownerists that wanted this kind of thing so they can't get gazumped.
In fact, gazumping would arguably be illegal under EU fair tradiong rules anyway - especially if there wasn't really a buyer.
SL, the Home-Owner-Ists are in two minds about gazumping - they're happy to accept a higher offer on their own house, but don't like it when they have to increase their offer somewhere else.
I am steadfastly English
I was born in Warwickshire
I reserve the right
"Well that BBC piece looks like lazy journalism to me."
Run-of-the-mill then.
My grandparents come from Estonia, Russia, England and England but the latter two are of Portuguese and French origin. I was born in Scotland and spent a fair chunk of my childhood there.
I can identify as British but not English or Scottish, in relation to which I am a hidden foreigner.
Oddly, and with the rise of these nationalisms, I find it more comfortable to live abroad as a proper foreigner. Then there is no ambiguity and I actually feel more connected despite language problems.
And it is so nice not to have to watch British politicians on the television.
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