March 10.
With respect to Beverley Brown (March 10) my letter of February 22 did
not suggest that house sellers should avoid estate agents but that it
would not be in the long-term interests of the public for conveyancing
to be controlled by estate agents, who have no appropriate
qualification, training, or insurance.
However, a seller should know their interest may, however innocently,
be prejudiced by their estate agent's in-house loan broker acting for
the purchaser in arranging the loan. Why? Because there is inevitably a
conflict of interest and one may lose out. A solicitor selling a house
is prohibited from acting directly or indirectly on behalf of the
purchaser.
The seller should also be made aware of the extent to which the estate
agent may overcharge them for advertising. I am looking forward to
lunching with Beverley Brown's managing director next week, at his
invitation, when I will discuss Slater Hogg & Howison's advertising
costs compared to The Herald's own direct rate.
Why should Beverley Brown think that selling houses is anathema to
solicitors? They have happily sold properties for centuries and happily
continue to do so.
It is a demonstrable nonsense to say that Edinburgh sellers have not
made any choice to use the ESPC system -- 80% of Edinburgh sales and 85%
of Aberdeen sales are dealt with by solicitors.
Estate agents first appeared on the Scottish scene in Glasgow in the
late 1960s. They gained a hold simply as solicitors' own practice rules
prohibited advertising and self-promotion and actually prevented
solicitors from competing in any effective way.
By the time estate agents spread to Edinburgh and Aberdeen solicitors
there had already established their property centres. The rules were
only finally removed in the early 1980s, by which time the estate agents
had secured a grip on the Glasgow market.
The Glasgow Solicitors Property Centre will shortly offer Glaswegians
the same benefits of lower marketing fees and advertising costs as are
available to those in Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Dundee, Perth, and other
areas where solicitors are aggressively and successfully providing the
best service for sellers.
For instance, the GSPC booking fee of #135 will include advertising in
the weekly property list (distributed free) and by computer link through
100-plus solicitors' firms until the property is sold.
The recent flurry of articles, correspondence, and circulars from
estate agents and Glasgow Seal appears to me to be signs of growing
panic that their business will be bled away.
An estate agent once said to me that his was a business trying to
become a profession and that solicitors were a profession trying to
become a business.
For our part, solicitors have the professional training, ethics, and
practice rules which make a professional but we now also have the scent
of blood.
Alasdair C. Sampson,
17 Strathmore House,
East Kilbride.
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