Would you buy a property without knowing its location?
- 14% of buyers want better property details, including location map (Kyero)
- 95% of property sales in Spain include both the listing and buyer’s agents (Resales Online)
- Could buyer verification be the answer to Spain’s listing problems? (Kyero)
The recent customer satisfaction survey from Kyero.com, the portal which lists Spanish property sales, holiday and long-term rentals, raised some interesting points.
Customers showed a great deal of love for the site, with 32% feeling positive about the vast number of properties advertised from a wide range of estate agents, 28% raving about the news, articles and weekly newsletter, 26% loving how easy the site is to use and a further 26% enjoying the market analysis that Kyero.com provides.
However, 14% of those surveyed advised that they wanted to see better property details, photographs and full location information. The figure highlights a key problem with the way that Spanish properties are marketed, as Martin Dell, Director of Kyero, explains,
“When you’re looking to buy a property, the first thing you want to know is where it is. You want to see it on a map and check it out on Google Street View to see what the area is like and what amenities are nearby. It’s a simple concept, but one that the Spanish system has actually turned into a complex issue for estate agents here.
“Exclusive or sole agency contracts are not common in Spain and seldom enforced even if they are in place. This means that as soon as the agent who has gone to the time and expense of photographing and advertising the property pinpoints it on a map, other agents can use that information to list the property, either with or without the owner’s permission.”
It’s easy enough to see why – the agent who copies the listing has to expend very little energy in order to advertise the property and, should they find a buyer, they have the option to either negotiate a commission split with the original listing agent or contact the owner directly. The system is so competitive that research from Resales Online has shown that 95% of property sales involve both a listing agent and a buyer’s agent.
Yet what buyers want is to know where the home they are looking at is actually located, meaning that the vast majority of Spanish property listings are presented in a sub-optimal format. It can be an off-putting and frustrating process for buyers, as the Kyero.com survey has revealed.
So what’s the solution?
“There is no easy answer,” continues Martin Dell, “But one option would be to only allow agents to advertise their own direct properties, like Idealista already does. The problem with this comes down to enforcement though. Another option would be to verify the buyer prior to revealing the location, in the same way that many websites require an email address to verify their account setup process. Of course, a determined agency competitor could always pose as a buyer and get around the verification process, but it would at least be a step in the right direction.”
While Spain works through potential solutions to this problem, buyers will continue to view houses whose locations they can’t quite determine. Thankfully, many properties on Kyero.com include listings with sufficient description to identify at least their general location, if not their specific one, such as this beautiful house in the Gothic quarter of Pals (Girona) or this stunning villa with sea views in the exclusive Altea Hills area in Alicante.
For further details on properties to rent and buy across Spain, visit www.kyero.com.