Subscribe Feed (RSS)Who Will Survive: The Times Analyses Estate Agents Prospects
November 13th, 2008 by Karelia | No Comments | Filed in Property Market NewsMusings of a London Property Search Agent
An article has appeared in The Times today, analysing who will stay and who will go, as the property market remains soft. Clearly some will falter – sales are down 50% so clearly there is 50% less revenue and 50% less fee-earning work.
We have been surprised at the complacency which has prevailed with some of our contacts over recent months and the continuing lack of ability to be flexible or think outside the box, particularly at some of the larger multi-nationals. A lack of morale has been equally evident.
Anecdotally, it would seem that Foxtons have shed half their sales force, but losses at an agency which relies very heavily on commission seems to be newbies with no contacts. We knew there had been redundancies at Savills but Countrywide, Humberts and Halifax have also had problems with the latter closing 50 offices, according to The Times.
Countrywide, the owner of Mann, Bairstow Eves and John D Wood has had its credit rating downgraded by Standard and Poor, however Chief Executive Grenville Turner has been quick to react, saying:
“At the end of the [3rd quarter] we had around £106 million of cash on our balance sheet to protect us from the impact of this market, which is I suspect more than all of our competitors put together. We intend to keep it that way,” he wrote.
Perhaps staff should not feel reassured as if there is little business being done, the business will have to shed bodies to retain a healthy bottom line.
Inevitably there were going to be losses and good people will lose their jobs. Interestingly the credit crunch doesn’t appear to have put enterprising agents off going it alone – we know 3 such cases who have opened shop in the last 9 months. What should be welcomed is the plethora of small agents with little or none of their own property who turn up when they want, masquerade as (bad) property finders with no knowledge or understanding and have no idea about developing relationships, selling, showing property, in short how to do their job. Numerous sales agents have moved into rentals, which is fine if they know what they are doing, but adds a lot more work and aggro for us if they don’t, as so often seems to be the case. This London Property Search Agent works through these difficulties to enable people to fulfil their aims.
Tags: Estate Agents, Estate Agents Close, Estate Agents Go To The Wall, Halifax, Humberts, London Property Search Agent, Savills
