A research conducted by IME GSEVEE and the Athens Chamber of Commerce for real estate brokers. According to the president of the EEA Yiannis Hatzitheodosiou, "The research unveils interesting facts and one of them is that despite the market challenges, demand for brokerage services remains strong."
Main research results:
- Real estate transactions primarily concern residences and, secondarily, commercial housing. 87% of the sample has made one or more real estate transactions.
- 77% consider it likely to make a real estate transaction in the next five years, 11% unlikely and 12% do not make any prediction. In the event of a future transaction, 51.9% will start their property search online, 24.2% through a real estate agency and 14.6% through relatives and friends.
- 76% of those who had a transaction related to renting a home (either as owners or as tenants) and 55% buying and selling a home. This is followed by the transactions for commercial housing, with 30% for renting and 10% for buying and selling. A significant percentage of transactions (26%) concerns the purchase and sale of plots of land and a minimal percentage (3%) concerns the rental of a plot of land.
- 52% of those who had real estate transactions used brokerage services. 45% of those who used brokerage services made the transaction in the last 12 months.
- The main reason for not contacting a broker is the handling of the transaction by the person himself (67.4%). 26.7% avoided brokerage, due to a lack of trust.
- Brokerage services were mainly used for renting (56.3%) or buying/selling a house (54.4%), followed by buying and selling a plot of land (20.13%), renting a business premises (14.1 %) and the purchase and sale of commercial housing (7.7%).
- 54% of those who used brokerage services turned to a broker from the beginning, while 45% did not.
- Almost 50% of those who used a broker are very or fairly satisfied with the services they received.
- 64% consider the broker they worked with reliable or rather reliable, 20% maintain a neutral attitude and only 16% consider the broker they worked with unreliable/ or rather unreliable.
- 61.7% of respondents consider the broker they worked with to be very and fairly informed. Moderately informed considers that 24.6% of the respondents were, and much lower are the percentages of responses that find the broker little or not at all informed, i.e. only 12.8%.
- Professionalism (62.7%), provision of reliable information (47.3%), knowledge of the market (43.9%) and experience (35.8%) stand out as the most important factors for choosing the most suitable broker ). The cost of the services offered (21.2%), the recommendations from trusted persons (14.3%) and the flexibility - availability of the broker (12.8%) are also considered important, while the reputation is rated low ( 5.4%) and the available reviews - reviews of previous customers (3.9%).
- As points that need improvement by the brokers, the greater accuracy of the information offered (52.7%), the more specialized knowledge (32.8%), the cost of the services provided (29.3%), the courtesy and professionalism (25.1%), transparency in fees (24.6%), flexibility to customer needs (24.2%), speed of service (22.3%) and the increase in available properties (22 .1%).
- 51% of those who have used real estate services in the past are willing to recommend the real estate agent they worked with to third parties, compared to 26% who state that they are neither likely nor unlikely to provide recommendations and 22% who rule out such a possibility.
- 61.5% of those who have used brokerage services for a real estate transaction consider their contribution important, compared to 23.6% who consider it neither important nor insignificant and 13.7% who characterize it as insignificant.
- The main sources of information for finding a suitable broker are the internet (74.5%) and recommendations from friends or family (53.7%), while advertisements (9%) and newspapers or magazines (4.7%).
