How would you like to choose your agent?

Try and imagine the future, and that you have a magic wand so you can create it exactly as you’d like it to be.

Mine would be a future where all properties agents advertised were in one affordable place where we owned the data being submitted.

I would want anyone coming to the site – portal is an old fashioned word and am struggling to think of an appropriate name – to be able to compare estate agents by what they have actually done and not what they say they’ve done.

I would want to know at the click of a button how many they’ve let/sold, in what price ranges, how long they took, how many price reductions, and when, so that I could see patterns of agent behaviour, how often they re-listed the same properties, ratings and comments from those who’ve used them and selling prices compared to the original listing ones.

I would want a guarantee that all this data and comment is verified.

I would want my properties to be naturally on page one of any Google search and I would want punters who click on my properties to go to my webpage, not a page owned by the site.

I would like a simple, safe and affordable software CRM system – owned by everyone – that was capable of talking to other agents. This would naturally facilitate simple chain management.

The word that comes to mind is a level playing field, not just for estate agents but more importantly for anyone looking to buy services from them and enable them to, at last, make objective and unbiased decisions.

This may well be Utopia but could it be here sooner than you think?