A local independent has shut its three offices and moved to an out of town ‘hub’, while launching an associate model for other agents to join it there – both individuals and complete businesses.
David Lee closed its branches in Bishop’s Stortford, Stansted and Great Dunmore, and has taken large modern premises in Little Hadham to cover the Hertfordshire and Essex areas.
Directors David Kirby and Lee O’Brien employ a staff of ten, and plan to recruit associates – including entire other agencies – to work out of the same premises.
O’Brien said: “We felt we were able to give our clients a better service and still cover the areas we had covered with physical premises from just one location.
“Parking was a massive issue for our clients and staff, and we wanted to provide a nice environment to work in and make it a nice experience to come and visit.
“We see this move as the future of estate agency and how we want to take things forward.”
The pair, who previously worked together at William H Brown, opened their first office in 2004.
The relocated business has the ambition to go carbon neutral: the sales team has gone paperless, and the lettings team is 90% paperless. There is electric heating in the new office plus LED lighting, and the car park has electric vehicle charging points. An electric Mini is to be used for viewings.
The associate model is to be rolled out to other agents. O’Brien said: “We’re looking at senior agents from existing agencies in and around the area and entire businesses that may decide they don’t need their premises any more.
“They can come and use our property management, tools and software to continue to run their business with our back-end support and the economies of scale we’ve been able to achieve by being here.”
Comments (12)
Call me a pedant – but the company website clearly states
“David Lee is an independently owned award winning company with branches in Stansted Mountfitchet, Bishop’s Stortford and Great Dunmow.”
Some hasty attention to those words by the techie bods methinks…
Detective Chief Inspector PeeBee on the case 🙂
another way to save money is to open a coffee shop and use all the window space to advertise property for sale. Now make sure the shop is on the ground floor otherwise the punters might not know what your up to.
Alternatives are:
Sweet shop (sweeten the deal)
travel agency (cant think of anything silly to say here)
convenience store (A/A)
hairdressers (get a hair cut two ways)
A Pub (get cut two ways)
Antiques shop (ideal for your more mature clients)
Anyone got a better idea?
Bit old fashioned. Moving to out of town centres is very noughties. With car charges in the offing to discourage them because of climate change and to help high street regeneration, plus an increasing older population demographic (who have the best houses to sell) who walk or travel by bus to town, this doesn’t seem to have been well thought out. There’s some “mileage” in it in the short term.
Bit old fashioned. Moving to out of town centres is very noughties. With car charges in the offing to discourage them because of climate change and to help high street regeneration, plus an increasing older population demographic (who have the best houses to sell) who walk or travel by bus to town, this doesn’t seem to have been well thought out. It’s much cheaper of course in the short term.
……..or reading same story in The SunMirror etc
” ESTATE AGENCY FLEES TOWN CENTRE AFTER CORONA VIRUS FEARS “
If you think it will work for You, then you’re in charge of your business. Success or Fail, at least you are responsible for your strategic move.
I think there is some mileage in intelligently located Hubs staffed by real Estate Agents and not folk who were selling Creme Eggs the day before.
Why not change their name to ‘The Green Estate Agent’? It might catch on.
Yawn – if they were making money they wouldn’t change anything. If you have to have an office your better off on the high street just for the 24 hour “free” advertising/brand awareness.
They aren’t expecting many viewings then for all those agents and one Mini or are they just going 10% carbon on the vehicles?
It might be the future, but all the agents I’ve seen to have done this have largely vanished from public conciousness. I’ve seen one do it with reasonable success but they started as that model.
In my opinion these hub set ups are for those that can’t afford a proper shop present and use carbon neutral etc to justify the model.
The people who work in these hubs/serviced offices seem to get very defensive protecting their new way of working and try and prove this is the way forward. Who knows maybe in many many many years to come. Good luck to those that do.
PPITE
“In my opinion these hub set ups are for those that can’t afford a proper shop present and use carbon neutral etc to justify the model.”
Of course, talk is easy – but I’ve read elsewhere the company claim that the cost of this big shed is more than that of their previous premises.
Who knows?
What IS, however, telling, is that in the same source they claim a “bonus” – they are saving because they now only pay ONE Rightmove subscription instead of three.