Manning Stainton has been announced as the best agent in the country.
In the allAgents awards, which counts customers’ reviews, north-based Manning Stainton won the overall accolade as well as best UK sales agent.
Northwood, part of Belvoir, was the winner of the best lettings firm in the UK.
Other award winners included Alex Neil, in London, for the best small chain, Yopa for the best online agent, and Bradleys for the best chain.
Martin McKenzie, a director at reviews website allAgents, said that over 17,000 agents and 25,000 branches were automatically entered, with the results based on reviews posted from September 1 last year to August 31 this year.
He said: “All our reviews are in the public domain for all to see, and more importantly, they have not come from any third-party review websites so we have confidence in the validity of these reviews.”
The gold winners list is:
Overall Winners – Manning Stainton
Sales Winners – Manning Stainton
Lettings Winners – Northwood
Best Overall Branch – Alex Neil (Canary Wharf)
Best Branch Sales – Manning Stainton Leeds
Best Branch Lettings – Alex Neil (Canary Wharf)
Best Online and Hybrid Agent – Yopa
Best Franchise – Northwood
Best Mortgage Advisor – Ryder & Dutton
Best Large Chain – Bradley’s Estate Agents
Best Medium Chain – Manning Stainton
Best Small Chain – Alex Neil
Best Estate Managers – Estate Management Solutions
Best Industry Supplier – Vericheck
Manning Stainton boss Mark Manning said: “allAgents is still the most recognised estate agency specific reviews platform, and so for our team to be voted the best agent in the UK by our customers is a real honour and something we are very proud of.”
The full list of both local and national winners is at: https://www.allagents.co.uk/agent-awards/
Comments (23)
Anyone who reads my comments on the subject will know I’ve never been AllAgents’ No 1 fan – quite the reverse, in fact.
That opinion isn’t going to change anytime soon – so stop reading now if you’re expecting me to jump up and down screaming that I’m a convert.
I’ve just done an agent search for my area – three postcode areas that I know very well, having worked in all of them – NE3 (Newcastle), NE24 (Northumberland) and DH1 (Durham).
In all three, HouseSimple came up as an Estate/Letting agent for that postcode area. Absolutely ridiculous, as HouseSimple do not cover the North East – however a pop-up on their site tells me that although they can’t sell my home, they will give me some FREE mortgage advice instead.
Another two online Agents share the premium first few positions for all three locations – Property Eagle (whoever they are) – as of course does the virtual Estate Agency equivalent of the every corner shop – YODA.
NE3 and NE24’s lists were woefully inaccurate. Anyone wanting a truly local agent having to skip five and eight out-of towners – or worse again, long-closed branches to find the real players (good and bad alike) – showing just how relevant this bunch are to homeowners.
They did slightly better in DH1, but again there seemed to be no rhyme or reason to the order of the list – a mish-mash of review totals-then alphabetical with a bit of poetic license thrown in for good measure.
All in all, I would say their offering makes for a horrible experience for prospective users – and not somewhere that I would recommend in a million heartbeats as a plausible way to search for an Agent.
Agree wholeheartedly.
BUT …. You and i are sadly not able to advise every person where to look and what to look for. If agents are winning instructions incresing market share and becoming more profitable from the “Armchair Experts” doing their own research, is it not worth joining the party?…….. Just a thought.
I think (and i have fallen into this camp before) some agents give a certain level of competence to the public which frankly they do not possess.
So we have a choice accept a number of agents will take a commercial descision and ‘game’ the market while we sit by with our morals OR we play them at their own game and add a few more pounds to our back pocket and eat away their market share and make it as hard as possible for them to survive.
I know how it sits with you just giving a clear view from someone that has changed their mind in recent times.
Judging from what you say, I think i’m right in suggesting that you have not changed your mind – but you have felt the need to put your opinions to one side and conform to the way the industry is being steered.
Or “dumbed down”, as you so rightly put it in a slightly earlier post.
I think a few agents are missing the point.
If you gave me £600 p.a. per office, and i could demonstrate you could get called out to an extra 20 vals a year and 75% of those vals had no other agent coming out, would you pay it?
If you are a member of the public and you had three agents out with very little to choose between but one has all their literature branded as a “Gold winner” who would you choose?
Maybe the penny has started to drop …..
Hi smile please
A penny has, in fact, dropped for me. The penny in question being the realisation that you appear to be commenting in a rather positive manner on the subject of awards – something I have never detected before.
Pray tell, when and why have you have this apparent sea-change of opinion?
Basically, if you can’t beat them join them.
All awards are guff we know that, all review sites are guff as well.
But others are using it to their advantage, we should all look at them otherwise we are gifting the winners of these awards (or any other award) a bigger competitive advantage.
A bit like RM we do not need them, but if we are not on RM we are giving the competition an advantage over us.
I believe it pained you as much to write it as it did me to read it, mon ami…
It saddens me this is the way they industry is going (Dumbing down) but we need to adapt to prosper!
Whichever way you look at it, over 1300 of their clients took the time to write reviews in the time period they were looking at – not to be sniffed at if they can get their clients to engage on there for them. And they arent all positive reviews. AllAgents give out their own awards, which as the comment above shows, carry some weight, whether you think that AllAgents should give awards out or not, the reviews left for Manning Stainton on there are testament to the hard work carried out by Mark and his employees, that people actually want to leave a review for them. Well done again.
Thanks Kitkat and not surprisingly I agree!
These are the awards that ASA appeared to endorse when it declined Purplebricks complaint last year, so they clearly do carry a lot of weight
https://v3.propertyindustryeye.com/purplebricks-complains-to-advertising-watchdog-about-rival-emoov-but-told-no-problem/
I’ve got my Cycling Proficiency Badge – surely that has more value than an AllAgents Badge?
At least your potential clients will know what it is!
Rebel – Just had a look and it clearly states that it’s their mortgage department? Assume it’s based at Head Office. Well done to Manning Stainton and their individual branches and departments.
Agreed but that award is supposed to be for SALES offices.
This is laughable. The bronze place winner in Leeds is not even a branch of Manning Stainton – it’s their head office. Zero credibility! How many of these bullsh*t awards are there these days? No. one. believes. them.
You mean the office that scores 2.3 out of 5 on Google? Mind you the rest of their offices appear to have twigged that Google reviews are where it’s at. I expect they have worked out that if you get people to write the review to allAgents first and then only invite nailed-on certain 5 star reviewers to go on to post to Google you will look great there; pity it’s a) illegal and b) against Google T&Cs, risking, in the case of a) enforcement action by the CMA and b) having all Google reviews deleted and being red-flagged by Google for future reviews.
Dont really post much on here but thought it would be useful to shed light on this. Our head office is where many of our dedicated sales progressors sit which is why they have found their way into the office rankings. Possibly a little misleading from allAgents but I can assure you still genuine reviews from customers they have dealt with.
I say WELL DONE to you Mark and your excellent team at Manning Stainton – in my eyes your company remains one of the very best estate agents in the country and your reviews validate that.
CONGRATULATIONS!
Congratulations to Mark and his team. I know how important winning this award is for him.
Thanks statman87!
Martin McKenzie and his AllAgents creation? Issuing Awards?
No credibility whatsoever in my view however I’ll give him this – he conjured up nothing from nothing & makes it appear to be something
Paul Daniels worthy successor – truly magic
Another chunk of meaningless (to potential customers) perspex to add to the likes of the ESTAS (what that?).