Could we do without estate agents?

With everything the internet has to offer, do you still need estate agents to sell your home, asks Merryn Somerset Webb. And John Stepek looks at how to go it alone.

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We should all admit that we need and love estate agents, says Lucy Kellaway in the Financial Times. Kellaway is moving house. When she started the process, her main question was, "Why do estate agents still exist?" We used to need them just to tell us what was for sale and where, and to take viewings. But "now the internet does this".

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Merryn Somerset Webb

Merryn Somerset Webb started her career in Tokyo at public broadcaster NHK before becoming a Japanese equity broker at what was then Warburgs. She went on to work at SBC and UBS without moving from her desk in Kamiyacho (it was the age of mergers).

After five years in Japan she returned to work in the UK at Paribas. This soon became BNP Paribas. Again, no desk move was required. On leaving the City, Merryn helped The Week magazine with its City pages before becoming the launch editor of MoneyWeek in 2000 and taking on columns first in the Sunday Times and then in 2009 in the Financial Times

Twenty years on, MoneyWeek is the best-selling financial magazine in the UK. Merryn was its Editor in Chief until 2022. She is now a senior columnist at Bloomberg and host of the Merryn Talks Money podcast -  but still writes for Moneyweek monthly. 

Merryn is also is a non executive director of two investment trusts – BlackRock Throgmorton, and the Murray Income Investment Trust.