Fine & Country agents will save at least £1,000 a month, the network announced yesterday.
Their licence fees are to be cut by £500 per month, while between April 1 and June 30, all national advertising fund contributions payable by licensees will be suspended, saving another £500 minimum.
CEO David Lindley said that Fine & Country would still be advertising during the period, but focusing its spend on digital advertising rather than newspapers.
Fine & Country regularly takes out full page advertising in the property supplements of weekend national papers. This high-profile, expensive advertising is to be canned in favour of social media.
Lindley said: “Through our change in strategy, we will still be able to support our licensees by reducing their costs while still delivering effective advertising campaigns.”
Fine & Country agents can also have free six-month use of Zoopla, in a deal co-funded by Fine & Country parent company eProp Services, and which is a month longer than Zoopla’s free offer to agents generally.
There is also a deal with TwentyCi, which will provide data to Fine & Country agents free for a year.
Comments (7)
Franchisors with little to no overheads compared to their Franchisees should step up and reduce the monthly percentage. Yes, their income will drop anyway, but if support is poor or marginal then their reputation will be tarnished, and they will just be deemed as parasites.
They should probably stop charges altogether
My mate who has a franchise says his franchisor has been largely silent
Agreed, they claim in the marketing to be there to support their franchisees, yet when push comes to shove, to date they appear to only be looking out for themselves. Not in the spirit of a franchise at all. Unless anyone knows differently? Any Belvoir, Martin & Co etc franchisees on here who can enlighten us?
Interesting thoughts Simon, I’m not quite sure the term “supporters” is an applicable term for companies that you pay a large amount of money. I can’t claim to be a F&C member but I do have experience with The Guild and the offers they have made are not unlike Zoopla’s with long tie in clauses. I agree that the whole industry and society should come together at this incredibly difficult time, but the reality for those in our sector is that a huge amount of good agents are losing their jobs right now. This is not a short term blip for a month or two. The nature of agency means that there is likely to be a period of 6-9 months before fee income starts to be received by agents and even for the most robust and well run offices, this is not sustainable. There will undoubtedly be far fewer agents in existence once this crisis is over and those that are still here will have vivid memories of the way that suppliers have responded to them when looking to build future partnerships! No amount of “support” from a BDM is going to pay the wages of your staff! Good luck to you and genuine best wishes to everyone!
This is a weak gesture that fails to understand the gravity of the situation.
There is a one time only opportunity for companies like Fine and Country not to turn its members into Failed and Closed!
Rightmove style climb downs do nothing to build goodwill and every industry supplier needs to realise that this is a national emergency, fee holidays need to happen and happen now!
Very respectfully SWAgent17… I disagree.
The response from Fine & Country, it’s sister company the Guild and other affiliation groups including Relocation Agent Network have been very swift and substantial.
In fact I would suggest that the response of the overwhelming majority of suppliers ( or as Peter Knight refers to them … “supporters” ) to our industry has been AMAZING and I actually thank them all.
I can only say that I have never felt more supported in my business life than I do now and we need to show appreciation and understanding to our suppliers and supporters rather than criticism. They feel the pain too.
‘They feel the pain too’. Some do, some don’t, interesting to find out who your ‘friends’ are during this traumatic period for the industry.