Co-operatives

At the moment there are 100s of websites offering EPCs, both commercial and domestic, at low cost prices Nationwide.

These are more often that not middle-men, and there has been lots of cases recently where DEAs are not being paid and the "middle-men" firms are going under, shutting up and both the DEA and the clients are getting burnt.

In 2008 I was involved with trying to set up a "union" for DEAs - mainly because I am passionate about this industry and wanted to see it promoted more but also because I felt that DEAs NEEDED to work together to provide more coverage and to effectively "cut out" the middlemen.
I feel that this, more than ever, is required. DEAs need to be working together - to provide holiday cover for each other, support and if there were enough DEAs working together to be able to provide a service to larger nationwide estate agents and clients.

If there was Nationwide coverage from a co-operative of DEAs then they would be able to have a larger pot for advertising - putting them "up" there with the middlemen on google rankings and therefore the DEAs would benefit by getting more clients and therefore more work. It would benefit the client because they would be speaking with trained and accredited DEAs and not a call centre operative who would simply be passing a message on.

This solution of a co-operative would benefit all concerned and is definitely on my Christmas wish list this year.