It has been a strange month.
Leaving any company after 21 years – especially one as good as Douglas & Gordon – is always going to stir the emotions, and being able to say I’m not an estate agent after 37 years is also weird but somehow liberating.
Life now, however, is like the beginning of a Marvel Comics movie where the pages flash across the screen at a rate of knots, and it’s not slowing down.
The range of services being offered to the industry is both increasing and bewildering, and I’ve been struck by how my perspective has altered in such a short time.
It’s sometimes easy to forget that the entire panoply of property services – portals, printed media and outdoor advertising, boards, EPCs, company cars, offices, websites etc etc – are completely paid for by the fees solicited from two groups, sellers and landlords.
At some point in the near future these two groups will be taken over by a new generation, one brought up using technology and with significantly different expectations from those dishing out the cash now.
My experience of the next generation is that they are allergic to speaking on the telephone and prefer to engage in services where, ideally, they can do everything via a screen – with no human interaction. Well, humans are still intrinsic to the property buying process, but everything around it is up for change.
Given that this new group have c. £3.5bn to put into our businesses, they’re going to expect us to do it how they want, not how we want.
Telling them how it works isn’t good enough, and as we’ve seen in other industries, even those where we feel humans are important – like getting a cab (Uber) and renting out our properties (Airbnb) – have come under pressure from the way new age consumers want to live.
One of the strengths, and a weakness too, of our industry is the fact that it really is the last bastion of the entrepreneur.
No qualifications, mostly small competing independents, big money – think chains and portals, have led to a fiercely competitive industry that is resistant to change unless there’s a commercial advantage. Technology seems unable to stem the increasing cost of headcount, portals and transaction cost which, along with inertia in the area of conveyancing, place the industry in an ever-tightening vice.
As grey hair starts to creep in with the owners of these small businesses, unless they have offspring happy to take over, consolidation is the only way forward – but these local entrepreneurs have provided the lifeblood, and most of the knowledge, over the years.
So will this resource be lost? Let’s hope not.
Blithe dismissal of the new breed of digital agent is ostrich-like in its naivety. Having now met most of the protagonists, they are determined, resourced and adaptive to change.
It may be that a race to the bottom on fees (not that they are the only ones responsible for this) will hamper some, but the will to find a model that “generation me” can use is undimmed and some will find a way.
Just because a model they produce results in fees that are not dissimilar to the high street, does not mean a new generation of buyers and sellers wouldn’t rather use it.
Quite how an idea formed whilst wandering in the fields with my wife can help all of this is another matter … but there’s little doubt that having a fresh and totally objective view has given me a clearer perspective.
Over the next few weeks I’ll try and explain what it is … along with what it sometimes takes to zone out.
* Ed Mead is now a director of outsourced viewing service Viewber and an independent property consultant / commentator
Ed, the game is changing and there is a lot a value that can be extracted in old fashioned traditional methods.
The race to the bottom is financed by deep pocket VCs, fund raising ready for exit.
The biggest thing any agent needs is supply, and this can best come from other agents willing to collaborate who can sell on concierge type service to justify higher fees for DOING more.
There are other untapped resources that could be tapped in to beyond real time listings.
So key is supply and demand on fair platforms.
Unfortunately the main portals let anyone in.
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Ed
I too have been in the industry as long as you have and am still as fascinated by the changes and opportunities it presents. However to say it is the last bastion of entrepreneurship is, I suggest, rubbish. You only have to look around at the numerous new business formats for this digital age. It is perhaps the last bastion of the middleman/agent viz travel agent (largely gone)….insurance agent (largely gone) etc. We can’t last, Canute like, ignoring he inevitable but we can adapt.
We are in a mature industry with low barriers to entry ie anyone can be an estate agent at relatively little cost, hence the numerous small independents (like me). The real problem is the process of transferring property is cumbersome, old fashioned and seemingly incapable of modernisation for the 21st century and until this aspect is tackled doing everything at the click of a mouse/phone seems a distant prospect. Here I will avoid slagging off some of the legal profession.
The good news is there are aspects of estate agency that lend themselves to improvement but an Airbnb moment is unlikely I suggest; there are simply too many players involved in the process. So let’s nibble away at the bits we can change, improve for our customers, streamline and digitise. Let’s embrace the opportunity for change and as you quite rightly say not be ostriches. We should stop looking for the flash of insight that is the Uber of estate agency and look instead for the smaller doable things, as you are, that will appeal to the new generation of buyers and sellers, tenants and landlords.
I wish you well with the new venture and actually all the other pioneers in this area, online agents and the rest. You won’t all succeed but it is going to be a really interesting ride.
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A fair few agents, mainly the FHM readers will associate Agent Provocateur with Kylie, not so much the perfume but the advert for the perfume. Caution-not safe for work!
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Plus ca change !
Hold your horses, whilst our beloved landlords, sellers, buyers and tenants all tell us almost in unity “it must be digital” the fact of the matter is: absolutely nothing and I do mean nothing has changed.
Agents advertise for clients and applicants. The general public respond accordingly.
What WE the estate agent actually do with the clients and applicants hasn’t changed one iota.
Our industry will only change if the agent himself is changed. I see nothing changing there.
We will always have landlords and vendors with a bit of spare time on their hands who want to save money and do it for themselves. But surely that is the point, isn’t it? Agents run around for their clients doing their bidding, buyers and tenants looking for the right home.
Digital, Newspaper, for sale boards, radio, TV, social media, mobile phone apps.
C’est la meme chose!
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