Telephone answering firm Moneypenny has reported a 14% increase in calls to its property team in the second quarter of this year compared with the first.
Calls are also up by 21% compared with a year ago, with valuation requests up 7% and viewing requests up 10%.
A total of 42% of calls were to do with new business inquiries. The firm also says it has noticed “a huge increase” in offers on properties not even viewed.
The Moneypenny team handles calls that would otherwise go unanswered by estate and letting agents.
Although Monday is usually the busiest day of the week, particularly between 9-10am and 4-5pm, Moneypenny said the single busiest day was a Tuesday – May 27, which this year was the day after a bank holiday.
The four other busiest days were Monday June 2, Tuesday May 6 (also after a bank holiday), Monday June 30 and Friday May 30.
Moneypenny’s commercial manager Samantha Jones said: “Property is a large and ever growing sector for us.
“We are currently answering around 1.1m calls a year for more than 800 estate and letting agents as well as new home developers. The first half of 2014 has been very busy, reflecting trends across the industry.
“January this year, for example, saw a ‘like for like’ 26% increase in calls as compared to January 2013 and typically we have seen dramatic spikes in call activity around bank holidays when agents are particularly busy or short staffed.
“It has been an interesting exercise closely analysing the data we produce daily here at Moneypenny and formulating it into a broad trend analysis we can issue to the sector.
“While the information is of course vital for us internally, we also feel that it can provide a useful temperature check for the wider industry. It is something we now plan to issue at the end of every quarter.”
I wonder though if this is as a result of increased number of calls to the same number of agents, or if more and more agents are joining, hence the increase in calls….or both?
As more traditional high street offices close and enlightened estate agents move towards the hybrid model, and also outsource more and more of their traditionally fixed costs, whilst STILL offering full service agency at the local level, but who outsource ALL of their call handling (not just over-spill) and work from serviced offices (or back of the garden shed – just as good!) to reduce fixed staff costs, concentrating on vendor and applicant management and new business generation / prospecting, then there is no doubt that virtual PAs like Moneypenny and AllDayPA will continue to see their call handling numbers increase, with agents fixed costs coming down, and their profit margins increasing.
[Yes – I did just give a great estate agency business start-up model there!]
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Not this week they don't! all the posh schools are broken up, the partners have their shorts on and are headed for Cornwall #lotsofwhitelegsinsandals
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Thank you for your comments. While our estate agent client numbers do continue to rise, just to confirm this figure is indeed a like-for-like analysis of client activity in Q2 as compared to the same clients in Q1.
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