Estate agent check: CHIP puts estate agents under the microscope
by Eva Schuler
For a successful sale, it is all the more important to find the right estate agent. But in addition to experienced professionals, there are also "black sheep". Germany's largest consumer portal CHIP, together with the Munich-based start-up ProperBird, has now investigated more than 15,000 estate agents and, after intensive preliminary work, awarded the new "TOP Broker" award to the 25 percent of the best German estate agents.
Currently, around 80,000 estate agents are vying for scarce properties for sale. Most owners depend on hiring reputable and successful estate agents to provide the best possible support for their complex sales process. However, it is often difficult for laypersons to distinguish between good and not so good estate agents in the wide range of offers. This is because the term real estate agent is not protected in Germany. There is no legally regulated professional training to become an estate agent. Only an official permit (§ 34c Gewerbeordnung) is required to act as an estate agent.
Together with the start-up ProperBird, CHIP took a closer look at real estate agents. For this purpose, the experts evaluated the digital traces of real estate transactions: For the objective ranking, individual aspects such as the ratio between the achieved sales price and the market price (60% weighting), the speed of sales processing compared to the competition (20% weighting), as well as the quality and length of the exposé compared to the average value of the other estate agents in the region (20% weighting) were evaluated in order to identify the TOP estate agents in the respective region in the end in the overall score.
The conclusion: out of 15,000 brokers, the experts distinguished almost 3,900 as "TOP brokers".
With the first purely data-based estate agent ranking, we offer our users orientation in the intransparent market for house sellers. This form of analysis is new on the German market and allows us to find recommendable estate agents in the German real estate jungle.“
Eva Schuler
BurdaForward Communications
During my studies I discovered my enthusiasm for communication. Here, at BurdaForward, I have now been given the opportunity to live it out. When not in the office, you can usually find me somewhere in the mountains for mountaineering and skiing or on the Isar.
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