What challenges do you feel estate agents face today?
Luke Loveridge sat down with Verona Frankish recently to get her views on challenges and opportunities with technology in today’s property market.
Verona is an industry expert who has worked as Managing Director at disruptive Estate Agent Purplebricks, responsible for their mortgages, conveyancing and lettings businesses as well as at Mortgage Advice Bureau as Head of Business Development.
Luke: What challenges do you feel estate agents face today?
Verona:
So I think the most immediate challenge that all estate agents are facing is the lack of stock in the market, but of course that kind of ebbs and flows. It’s very much a seller’s market right now, and funding is actually better than ever with mortgage rates at record lows. But of course, that will change in the future.
I think if you look into the wider challenges, the biggest challenge today for estate agents is actually the growth of new models. There is more and more competition in the market for business. And of course, coupled with the lack of stock today, that’s a real challenge that they’re facing on a daily basis. In terms of the growth of new models, there’s a lot more technology at play, there’s a lot more self-employed models out there.
So it’s becoming more and more important to stand out as an agent. And the days of an estate agency and customers accepting that an estate agency was just ‘it is what it is’. We don’t really get great service and we pay ridiculous fees for that. Those are long gone and agents have really over the last few years with the disruptors entering the market, have really up-ed their game across the board. Those who are good are using technology to their benefit, but also providing brilliant service.
The other challenge that they face is that, of course, customers only move home typically on average once every seven years. So retaining clients for the longer term and generating referrals from those clients within that seven years and therefore establishing a longer relationship with an estate agency is a challenge.
And a lot of agents are attempting to do things in between those two milestones to build that relationship with the customer. But that still remains an opportunity, I would say, for agents to establish that longer term relationship because, of course, every single interaction with the customer, whether they want to buy today, next month, next year or in three years time, every opportunity, whether that’s physical or digital interaction, is really, really important.
So providing that service and engaging in a way that customers don’t just feel like a number is really, really important. So was there are challenges, there’s also opportunities within that.
