Having announced our new nationwide expansion programme for haart, with Partners working from home or Local Property Centres, you’d have thought we’d stated an apocalypse was on its way with meteors raining down and causing mass destruction, judging by some of the negative comments we’ve received.
That’s fine by us; agents who have no interest in changing the way they do business will be left behind, at their cost.
I don’t seek to defend our position, merely to explain the motivation behind moving with the times. Consumers want instant results. They’re used to Deliveroo bringing food instantly, Amazon Prime delivering goods in hours, a service at the tap of a button like Uber. People will pay for ease of use.
We’ve seen the market shift towards online and hybrid agencies – albeit many unsustainable because of the associated marketing and technology costs involved. We’ve seen the portals use our collateral to make their millions.
We’ve seen branches in some locations closing – though there is definitely a place for high performing Elite branches where the public still likes the choice of visiting a branch in person.
What’s really worrying is how some agents want to stick with the old ways of doing things, failing to invest in decent tech or training their teams in how to create great video or getting their customers to leave 5-star reviews on Google or Facebook, or using Zoom for online showrounds.
It’s now all about speed to lead. Those agents who can get the leads in quickly and turn them around faster than everyone else will be the winners. We need conveyancing to speed up, we need the lenders to turn mortgage approvals around more quickly. Those who deliver a speedier tech solution will reap the rewards.
We’ve invested £6million in our technology, with our teams using their mobile phone ‘Office in their Pocket’ linked to our systems to streamline our processes.
This coronavirus pandemic has forced estate agents to rethink their businesses. The tragedy is that some people have lost their jobs over this – not just in estate agency but in hundreds of other industries. Walk up any street in the UK and find out who’s working, who’s been furloughed, who’s been made redundant. Nearly everybody has been impacted in some way.
What agent hasn’t been working tirelessly since lockdown was lifted to cope with the huge number of enquiries that have come flooding in, with many more predicted thanks to raising the Stamp Duty threshold? But it’s the calm before the storm.
Firstly, it takes time to get income from these transactions. More significantly, once furlough is over at the end of October, this country could be catapulted into a full-blown recession with the inevitable consequences for the housing market, even if the Government thinks it can build its way out of trouble.
As we move towards a new post-coronavirus era with increasing numbers of estate agents swapping some of their expensive High Street leases for home-working, the focus on marketing technology and website positions in search engines becomes ever more important.
It only takes a second wave of coronavirus and another lockdown to knock the industry to its knees again. Are you prepared?
How many estate agency closures are looming?
It is always sad when a long-standing estate agency closes its doors for good and I was desperately sorry to read about the Andrew Grant agencies in the West Midlands.
The lettings and property management business is continuing but the estate agency side has gone completely, with the loss of 54 jobs. It’s an agency with a 50-year history and a good track record. Yet it could not withstand the final death knock from Covid-19.
The brand, however, will continue under a new management team focusing on lettings and property management ‘with a different model and without a branch network… using internet technology to drive the business’, according to one of its investors.
How many more agencies are set to follow suit, especially the larger groups carrying massive debt with no real chance of paying their debt back who are still giving false hope to their hard working employees? It affects everyone in the supply chain too, with the inevitable knock-on consequences.
The Government has announced it is going to rebuild the economy in a different way, to try and protect jobs. I, for one, am behind the New Deal, based on the US President Franklin D Roosevelt’s speech in 1932 where he set out to restore the economy after the Great Depression.
As our Prime Minister says: Build, Back, Better. We all need to build our new look businesses, come back stronger than before and be better than we have ever been.
Never before in the history of Estate Agency are we going to see so many changes.
Paul Smith is CEO of independent estate agency chain Spicerhaart
Comments (23)
Haart in London are/were an absolute shambles. luckily for Mr Smith he can wind down the operation under the cover of covid. No one is buying these ramblings not least his (few remaining) disenfranchised staff.
This is Paul Smith trying to get himself out of jail. You are judged by what you do and boy he has so much history. If your branches were so good, why close them and terminate the staff. You are trying to cut corners …. again and put the liability onto others while cutting costs and trying to maintain your ‘Empire Image’.
Wake up Paul we are all on-line hybrid agents that are on the high street, a service that the public 95% say they still want and actually do need. You haven’t the financial baking to make it work and there is every risk for further closures and misery for those that work for you. You are not offering the consumer anything new, an industry that is consumer driven.
The industry will automatically adjust for changes dictated by the consumer. You sound like the gas cooker salesman to the little old lady that lives in a village, only to discover the village isn’t on the grid. Big is not great, nearly all the big agents have gone under over the last two decades or need massive financial injections to keep going.
The High Street is safe and will remain so with the small independents that are motivated, go getting and HAVE the ability to adjust as new technologies come along. Hiding in the bedroom is a joke and solely reactive to a market they have relinquished control.
Amen Brother
Individual EA offices are fiefdoms, if only corporate could get their head around that fact, used to be that they could with career ( proper good ) agents at the helm well managed and remunerated, all gone now.
Just ask any staff members at Andrews, a brand I used to respect and considered on par with Connells, no longer.
Ever since the lock down ended for agents we have seen a significant increase in business as i’m sure have most agents but that also includes increased levels in office visits. Many of our vendors and buyers like to visit the office but then we are a village agent. I don’t see how working from home will be of benefit to anyone except for companies who are looking to cut overheads.
The industry is definitely not shifting to online agents, although PB are the dominant force with the onliners their market share is still very small in comparison to the high street offering. Technology has its place but when considering the purchase of a home nothing beats that personal touch.
Negative much?
Estate continues to evolve, and as usual the better estate agents find a way, regardless of market.
There’s no seismic change here – this will pass and the market will continue with its peaks and troughs.
Working out of your bedroom isn’t good for morale or consistent work ethic – look at purplebricks…
People buy from People.
This mantra hasn’t and wont change. I don’t think moving to a hybrid or on line format doesn’t actually change anything. If you think about coffee shops they cant go online as the point of meeting someone for a coffee is meeting someone for a coffee !!!! If you want to sell or buy a house you want to meet someone and discuss it either at the property or in the office. Once a sale has been agreed buyers and sellers want to meet face to face and chat about the sale, yes they email and phone but they also like to eyeball the person involved. The property isn’t always a convenient location for this and in many cases not even ideal. If you have to drive for an hour to the nearest “property hub” it adds more annoyance to all parties. Finally an estate agent is usually involved with the local community, its part of the business model. If it wasn’t then why haven’t purple bricks made a profit?
I think Paul has always been innovative and forward thinking and has always loved tech to support this. But the reality is that he sacked off loads of staff at lock down and is now shutting a load of branches. This will be because they are currently not profitable or only just breaking even. The proof is in the pudding Paul, and you’re masking poor performance as innovation here.
That said, I don’t necessarily think he’s wrong with his plans, just not transparent in motivation. Whilst a previous attempt at hybrid with iSold was a unmitigated disaster, I am sure that with Paul Vickerstaff’s boundless enthusiasm for a model like this they’ll attack it with renewed vigour.
It will be interesting to see in reality what a Partnership deal looks like- my guess is that the ‘fully employed’ partner will take a lower basic than usual and higher commission- a hybrid in contract as well as model. But will they end up the way of so many LPEs flogging themselves to death for very little reward? Time will tell but I wish them every success.
If the people charged with delivering the model are good enough it will be a success .Its looks to be a good strategy with key physical branches remaining and an employed v self employed model. Ultimately it will be about the people as it is always.
The name “Paul” means ” Small ”
Meaning. “Humble”; “scarce”; “rare”; “small” Paul
Now put cartman meets a dwarf into YouTube.
Does Paul Smith pay to have a space on this site? All he does is pitch his business to the industry and talk about what an amazing job he’s doing. When you have an opinion piece from anyone else who runs a business they’re always to the point and from a considered perspective.
It’s just strange that you allow this to go on and makes me think there’s something going on in the background???
There is one point in here that is breezed over which I personally think is the revolutionary topic for the property industry over the next decade, and that is conveyancing.
Automate it or speed it up five fold and the need for agents to do most of the back end work will die out.
This would rebalance the Agency industry and listing only solutions will then grow alarmingly. At the moment our greatest advantage is the ability to oversee the transaction not just the listing
I’ve recently retired from our profession and can see that some of what Mr Smith has said is on point, he said open your eyes and calm before the storm so the comments above can be construed as trying to remain positive and talking a good fight or being ****** minded and seeing today’s business but not next months.
yes you are busy, that’s the back log of buyers like me but I’m certain there is a storm to follow and if it weren’t for the web sites doing your job for you, a lot of you wouldn’t have viewings, sales, a job or even a business!
Honestly if I opened up in the West Midlands I’d probably clean up, I’ve registered with loads of you but apart from Hamptons and F & C you lot rely on the web sites keeping the public updated on new instructions and the first you realise of any good buyer is when they come chasing you, because you are either not bothered, not aware that we are sitting on your data base waiting for a call or worse, you are negligent, any of those I find hard to believe and really don’t want to but here I am waiting and between me and the web sites we are covering your job! How many more of those buyers are out there, waiting for a proper est agent to make contact and build a bond with a buyer and secure a sale because nobody else is bothering.
Mr Smith has made some good( and some antagonistic points) but he has one or two things right, please (as Harold Melvin and the bluenotes said) WAKEUP everybody.
Lol. So your looking for a property in the focused area of the west Midlands…
Do you want an ice cream with that?
Lol, brummies with ice creams, they usually get down as far as Pershore.
Ignorance and disrespect, nothing less than I expected.
Professional you aren’t, firstly I’m from London and secondly “focussed on West Midlands” would you prefer I gave you a 50 mile radius! You keep your small mind and business turning over and be happy boy I’m genuinely seeking someone up to the job, you, please don’t apply.
Actually no, you come across as the sort of entitled buyer who DEMANDS that they are in the conversation, the type who phones up to complain when we list as SSTC because we’re sharp enough, know our applicants, to show the right person over at measure up, if you know this industry then you will know that the go to applicants are not the ones 100+ miles away that will want to schedule for the weekend, know nothing about the pro’s and con’s of a given location, why would I phone you when I’ve got somebody already local, in rented, have viewed with us and we understand them and their motivations?
Oh no, forget them, lets give the lovely londoner Essjaydee51 a call with his 50 mile radius.
Give me strength.
Is this the genius that sacked his staff by text? The only thing wrong with the industry is people like him.
Sounds like the ramblings of a mad man.
Don’t see how trading a focused office to a neg in a bedroom speeds up the process.
Best of luck Paul you are going to need it.
This story is not aimed at us. It is centered straight between the eyes if all those poor heart staff. I suspect he will have a problem trying not to explain or complain!
Life has changed and lots of us are adapting well in this new world but the old corporate dinosaur has had her day.
I don’t know about you guys but business around here (thanks for closing your offices Paul) is doing very nicely thank you.
This kind of post is never a good idea. It makes the writer sound like he doesn’t really believe in what he is doing. Never complain and never explain. Confident companies just quietly execute, incrementally improving every day until one day you wake up and find that they own the market. Alternatively raging and defensible rambles like this are a symptom of muddled strategy (at best), panic, at worst.
Spot on.
from working at home throughout lockdown I can safely say. Its a bad idea.
Staff training, ethos, energy. Support etc all go out the window.
You won’t be able to retain staff. It will cost as much in Google ads as an office and 2 staff..
Best post on Eye for a very long time! Love it! Not for its comment about Paul’s project just for it’s ‘senior partner wisdom’ anyone who was taught to do agency properly and well benefited from when we first joined the profession.