Elegy for Estate Agents

The Independent reports that “up to 1,800 estate agents may go bust by the end of the year unless lenders ease up their squeeze on new mortgages, as fears grow that the UK is heading for a full-scale housing crash, with price falls of up to a fifth.”

Maybe the warm weather has dulled my sense of sympathy, but I cannot help thinking that this will be good news for the housing sector as a whole. The property boom has lasted long enough for estate agents to make plenty of money and the best ones should have little difficulty surviving - the true test of an estate agent is the deal that they can provide for the home-seller during difficult times. A phase of Darwinian ‘survival of the fittest’ will be no bad thing. Rosie Millard writes in the Sunday Times:

“Well, there’s a silver lining in that somewhere. With nobody selling any property — at least not for about another five years — all the estate agencies will go out of business, which means high streets up and down the country will become a bit more interesting, as they will start having proper shops on them again. Except that nobody’s going to have any money to spend in them, so they will all go bust too.”