Placing its faith in the high street is major regional agent Beresfords.
The firm, based in Essex, has just relocated two of its branches to high street locations.
One is its Brentwood branch, which has moved from a side street off the high street where it had been since 1981.
The second is the Shenfield office, which has moved to a central location directly opposite the station.
Paul Beresford said: “We have relocated offices in towns many times before to get us into higher profile positions where we are more visible to people.
“On every occasion, the level of enquiries has risen significantly.”
Comments (5)
We’re based in the same town as Beresfords in Brentwood and run from a first floor serviced office, where clients pop in for a chat all the time. We have more people turn their nose up to the idea of a high street shop front because they know it’s not necessary. It’s true that Beresfords have a huge amount of stock in the area, but they’ve been around for 50 years. It’s about the brand, mainly online and a little offline, not a stupidly expensive looking high street office. We were 1st in the town for new instructions recently and we’ve grown our market share substantially in the 4 and a bit years we’ve been open. All without a high street office. The people that are obsessed with wanting their property in a shop window are the wrong generation of clients to focus on. This is just my opinion. Just to add. We’re not the biggest, but we’re definitely the best, and people recognise that.
Give me another 5 years and I’ll be writing an article about the decline of the high street shop front and most Agents that are focussing on the belief of high street will be in my rear view mirror lagging behind.
There aren’t many firms that have longevity in our business and many that do are just scraping a living.
If the other company still has a such a strong market share after all those years, I’d say they must be consistently doing it right and keeping pace with change if they are still top of the class.
Maybe instead of rubbishing a competitor you could learn a bit from them?
Generally more timewaster enquiries rise.
I am not convinced anymore that enquiries rise on a high street. We are seeing a decline year on year.
How are other agents finding it?
Alpplicants do not walk through the door but vendors do. I think vendors feel reassured to see a shop window, the number of times they ask will they be in the window and why am I not in the window shows that they, if no one else look. Sure you can go on line only but if you move from a high street to do that I think you will see a gradual decline in instructions. Call me old fashioned, I am!
I agree with both of these points.
We left the High Street for a few years to move into a nice business centre – it’s amazing how quickly you disappear from vendors minds when you do not have a shop front.
With all the info available on line – it is easy to understand enquiries generated this way.
I still believe having shop frontage gives both vendors, landlords, buyers and tenants assurances that they can visit and speak to someone face to face in what is considered such an important decision in their lives.