Wright Marshall, which has been trading in Cheshire for more than 180 years, has closed its high street office in Northwich, after manager, Jack Braithwaite, deemed physical branches ‘pretty irrelevant’.
The estate agency has adopted a ‘hybrid’ model following the closure of the company’s Bull Ring office, with most staff transferring to the Knutsford office.
According to Braithwaite, who has been heading up Wright Marshall’s Northwich branch for more than two years, clients will still be offered the same high-quality marketing service, but with more flexibility, and he can now be much more competitive with fees.
He told the press: “This is very much a trend in our business.
“We pride ourselves on being one of the longest-standing agents in the town, but we’re also progressive.
“If I’m honest, physical branches have become pretty irrelevant.
“Gone are the days when people walk into an estate agent’s branch to find a property.
“Nine times out of ten, you’d get in touch with an agent on the phone after looking at their website, and you’d meet them at a property.
“Even key collections are done at the property these days, more often than not.
“It was mainly just me in the building as a full-timer, with a few part-time staff.
“Most of those have moved over to our office down the road in Knutsford.”
He added: “I’ve had lots of really positive feedback so far as I can now be much more competitive with fees.
“I’ve always wanted to be that personal estate agent in Northwich, and now I have the flexibility, it can happen. I’m pretty much available six days a week.
“This won’t affect the marketing services our clients receive. It’s second to none, including full video tours, which are so important to clients nowadays.”
Sorry PIE but shouldn’t the headline of this article be “Long established high street agency closes a struggling high street office and moves all their team to another of their nearby high street offices”
I totally understand the need to consolidate struggling offices into other nearby centres (we have done the same thing) but I don’t understand how an agency which appears to still have really prominent high street offices in Buxton, Knutsford and Nantwich can put out a release saying they are switching to a “hybrid model”.
They closed an office where they only had 12 units for sale where they were getting outlisted and outsold by agents like Coulby Conduct, Hinchcliffe Homes, Vincent Hames and competing against a plethora of other reputable firms like Butters John Bee and Edward Mellor to name a few.
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A company in my local area who, at the time, had three branches, closed one and put a notice on the door of the closed branch stating:
“Due to company expansion, this branch is now closed”
Not sure how you spin three branches to two as expansion but it was a brave attempt!
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Wrong, wrong, wrong.
In an increasingly digital world, one about to be increasingly populated by seemingly sentient bots, terra firma will have a legitamacy that digital ” brands ” cannot replicate, unless your name happens to be amazon or pick your poison.com
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Having a presence on the High Street is never a bad thing. The only people who suffer are the ones who cannot afford to be on the High Street because they are not selling enough houses. That’s like saying billboards don’t work. Rubbish.
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To be more competitive on fees!
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I would suggest that fee levels are related to the service provided, do away with office premises, cull headcount, automate as much as possible and you might make a living by undercutting a ” traditional ” setup by 40%.
Its been tried with conveyancing and agency, many £M of speculative money by people who have been successful in other disciplines, blue chip trad agency owners and funds both UK based and Global. Nothing has worked, or if it has it has only worked for individuals, not the consumer and not the industry writ large.
People used to worry that Rightmove would go straight to owner, bring it on, they would disappear under the weight of their own Mr Hanky inside 6 months regardless of how many chatGPT or Grok dialogue boxes they deployed.
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