Don’t kick a man (or even an estate agent) when he’s down!

News that the worst of the housing downturn in Northern Ireland may be over (see the latest report from RICS, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors) is welcome indeed – not least for beleaguered estate agents who have often been unfairly blamed for the collapse in the market.

The sheer vitriol on many blogs, accusing estate agents of being ‘greedy’, ‘grasping’, ‘deserving of punishment’ and basically right down there with journalists in the ‘most hated professions lists’ has to be seen to be believed.

A sense of perspective is needed and a recognition that it was not estate agents that were forcing prices up to artificial levels. Global market forces (not forgetting the role of the banks), property speculators and a growing number of ordinary individuals wanting to earn some extra income from ‘buy to let’ properties all played their part in pushing prices up to unsustainable levels, and estate agents like everyone else have suffered in the inevitable fall out.

Like journos, estate agents have a stereotypical bad image, continually portrayed on TV in a way that bears little reality to the local staff working in a small, accountable community like Northern Ireland. It makes for more colourful TV – and bloggers can puff up their chests believing they have ‘outed’ the pariahs of society – but it’s hardly fair. Is it??