Estate agents offer ‘bargains’ in Christmas sale

Published 11th Dec 2008

The discounting sales tactics being employed by Debenhams, Marks & Spencer and other stores are being adopted by another sector desperate for custom – estate agents.

Countrywide, the UK’s largest estate agency group, is to hold a £1.65 billion three-day end-of-year sale, starting tomorrow. The owners of more than 7,500 properties have been encouraged to slash their prices by as much as 30 per cent – although some have trimmed by as little as 3 per cent.

Countrywide says that the Christmas bargain scheme, which it has been planning for several months, was intended to “kick-start local property markets” and was not prompted by Standard & Poor’s recent down-grading of the group’s credit rating. S&P asserted that Countrywide would run out of cash by the end of 2009.

Homes valued from about £50,000 to £1 million-plus will be on offer through 1,000 Countrywide branches. The business owns about 30 estate agency brands, including Bairstow Eves, Entwhistle Green, Faron Sutaria, Gascoigne Pees, John D Wood, Mann and Wilson Peacock.

Bairstow Eves’s bargains include a five-bedroom house in Muswell Hill in London, whose price has been cut from £999,000 to £825,000, down 17 per cent. At Gascoigne Pees, there is 20 per cent off a house in Oxshott, Surrey, while at Entwhistle Green, a plot in Southport, Merseyside, is down 20 per cent at £25,000.

Some of the properties lack the “kerb appeal” essential to attract interest in a difficult property market, but others are spacious family homes where the asking prices were previously possibly too optimistic. Owners did not need much persuading to drop their prices, a Countrywide spokeswoman said. “They are committed sellers, eager to tie up deals before Christmas. Some are desperate to make the step up, they have seen the properties they want to buy go down in prices and so they are happy to reduce their own prices,” she said.

Other estate agents will be watching closely to see if this is a sales gimmick that proves effective.

Source: ' Times '

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