Estate agency has always been about more than just bricks and mortar. It’s about people and relationships, winning business, and seeing the deal through to that moment when the keys are handed over. It’s a truly unique profession.
Yet, in 2025, being an estate agent is harder than ever. Against a backdrop of the ever-varying market, estate agents deal with increasing regulation, consumers who expect more, and a longer more complex transaction process than ever before.
Technology seems to have changed everything else we do, from hotel booking to banking, ordering a taxi to ordering a pizza, but not home buying. Why has the property market remained so stubborn to change, and what will it take to make the process easier for estate agents? Here’s a clue, another piece of software isn’t the solution.
A broken process in need of change
Ask any estate agent what slows down a transaction, and you’ll hear familiar frustrations. The sheer volume of compliance checks, the disjointed communication between multiple stakeholders, and the lag in critical processes like conveyancing all create roadblocks.
Despite an influx of many good technology solutions over the last decade, transaction times have not significantly improved. In fact, the UK’s average home purchase still takes many months to complete, with a third of transactions failing before exchange. This isn’t just a frustration for agents, it has a ripple effect on buyers, sellers, and conveyancers.
Why hasn’t tech solved it?
Put simply, the property market is complicated, really complicated. I used to work in payments and had the privilege of leading the transition to contactless cards that has completely transformed how we pay. But a payment transaction is trivial compared to a property transaction, as it involves only two parties, and a tiny amount of information – who and how much.
Compare that to property transactions where you have many parties – estate agent, seller, buyer, conveyancers on both sides, brokers, lenders, surveyors, and so on – and the information being exchanged runs to hundreds of elements. Furthermore, a property transaction isn’t a simple linear process but one that can take many different twists and turns involving all those parties en route to that moment with the keys.
With a process this complicated and fragmented no single party has full control. Take the example of AML: for this process alone, every party involved does it separately, one at a time. It’s a microcosm of the overlaps and inefficiencies present throughout the property process.
And this is a key limitation with traditional software: it is designed to digitise the existing process. But the existing process is the problem, so how do we solve it?
Empowering estate agents to drive change
We believe estate agents are the key to solving the problem of the property transaction. That’s because they are not just intermediaries; they are the deal drivers. They are the ones engaging with buyers and sellers, coordinating with conveyancers, and ensuring that transactions progress smoothly. The starting point for any meaningful transformation in the property market is that it must empower estate agents.
What do you need to truly empower an estate agent to change the market? First, a solution that can reach across all the parties involved. No amount of software will speed a property transaction if it only works within the walls of the estate agency itself. Any transformational solution worth its salt must work with the seller and the buyer, and, of course, those key professionals – the conveyancers.
Second, they need a service, not just a tool. Estate agents are just too busy to be given lots of tools to use themselves. They need the power to ask for a job to be done, and know it will be.
The power to change
We believe that given services that reach across the property market and get the job done, estate agents will transform the market.
With powerful compliance solutions, they can not only achieve higher levels of compliance for themselves but can relieve every other party of the burden of repeating the process. With new forms of property data services, they can easily have at their fingertips all the information required not just for new regulations for themselves, but for the other parties too. And with the power to get everything ready for conveyancing, they can avoid delays and make life easier for the conveyancers too.
This kind of holistic approach, where estate agents are not just given better software but are actively supported in navigating the transaction process, requires powerful capabilities that have not existed before. Digital backbones that permit the free and secure movement of data. Systems that guide transactions dynamically, rather than simply providing static workflows. Linked experiences across all parties that enable everyone to work together effortlessly.
A vision for the future? No, it’s here today
If this all sounds futuristic, it isn’t. These capabilities, once the subject of discussion papers and pilots, are now availble and being used every day by estate agents up and down the country. As a result, the property market is about to change.
For too long, estate agents have been working with their hands tied behind their back. The next few years will see them given unprecedented power, enabling them to offer their sellers an exciting new proposition, to change how their property deals are conducted, and to transform the efficiency and profitability of their business.
For the estate agents that embrace the change it’s an exciting time and a unique opportunity. For the first time in decades, they can now lead the charge and shape a property market that finally works as efficiently as it should.
Dan Salmons is co-founder and CEO at Coadjute
OK – so everyone’s thinking it, I may as well say it.
1. I thought you had to put a disclaimer on advertorials.
2. If the “process is broken” how on EARTH did all those deals go through in March?
3. Given that they DID all go through and there has been no fundamental changes ( driven by agents or otherwise ) what DID change? Other than a focussed deadline that is.
Dan – I do appreciate that news of your Damascean conversion needs oxygen but surely we can do better than this.
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Peter,
You’ve got a gift for cutting through the fluff with a raised eyebrow and a single line — that first comment had me grinning.
But the question you ask is a fair one:
If the process is broken, how did all those March deals go through?
The answer, of course, is they didn’t go through because of the process — they went through in spite of it.
What changed wasn’t the system, it was the people: agents, conveyancers, brokers, all pushing uphill to get things done. A deadline simply sharpened the will. It didn’t fix the inefficiencies.
Dan’s absolutely right to say the process is fragmented and slow — but the solution he’s definitely not (
) promoting in this opinion piece doesn’t change that dynamic. It just shifts who gets paid for the effort.
The real solutions — the ones already working — are being driven by agents who’ve stepped up, embraced material information properly, and worked with conveyancers early. That’s what’s reducing fall-throughs, not another network map or digital rail.
But those efforts don’t get investor decks excited — and they don’t lead back to a payday at completion.
Until agents are empowered to lead the process, not just feed it, we’ll keep confusing heroic last-minute effort with a healthy system.
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1 a property transaction is a legal transaction. Too much emphasis is placed upon the needs and the role of the estate agent
2 if properties were purchase ready when listed then the efficiency of the SDLT deadline could be the norm
3 sending clients to inefficient firms because they pay a fee creates issues for everyone
4 creating lengthy chains is problematic
5 software isn’t the answer. A change in attitude is.
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as per Peter Above
“Your comment must not defame an individual or entity nor bring them into disrepute. It must not promote a business or contain hyperlinks to other websites. Comments breaching these terms may be removed.”
So how come this article is a blatant add ?
There are some really really good tech business out there who have been in the legal space and the agency space but prescious few that straddle them both.
Having had the pleasure for the last 20 years of sitting on this particuar fence, I can say with a degree of certainty, that is because two more diverse sets of individuals you could not hope to find. Agents are fundementally sales people and use tech to assist that process. Lawyers are technocrats who shy away from sales in favour of following a set of rules and regulations that allow an orderly transfer of housing ownership. It may not be perfect but it helps and protects millions of people who move home every year.
The countries wealth and well being is inextricably linked to home ownership. Thinking that an agent led approach to change will work is quite simply wrong.
Is Mr Salmons just another emporer ? – the question is where are his clothes ?
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You can sell all the tech you want. This is a people problem, not one to do with technology. A government that shies away from its duty to do right by its citizens which includes preventing people from being scammed.
How many of these people will have “buyer’s regret” in that they may end up having to pay more than stamp duty in the future to get rid of their properties? Estate agents don’t really know the law, and should I say, try to persuade people that “everything will be ok” by sending to their ridiculously slow “recommended” pet conveyancers? And what are these conveyancers (who are probably not even legally qualified) doing to protect the public? Nada.
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I’m a firm believer in an enquiries ready contract pack being ready before a property is launched to market, maybe an exchange ready HIP. Searches done and a mini survey done. The gov would have to mandate it and force lenders to accept it.
I’m sure if this was done average exchanges would be done in 30 days.
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Totally agree Shaun.
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