The busiest agents in the UK can currently be found in Aberdeen, a city where each individual estate agency branch currently has an average of 29 sales listings on its books, based on data sourced from Rightmove.
Second on the list is Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, where each branch currently has an average of 28 for-sale properties listed.
Next is Newport with 27 properties per branch, and then Liverpool and London round off the top five, joint at 26 properties per branch.
WiggyWam, which conducted the research, estimates that those cities with the busiest agents are likely to be the same ones where completing transactions is going to take the longest.
This observation can also be reversed to indicate in which UK cities transactions are likely to be completed in the shortest timescale.
Glasgow, with a total of 122 estate agency branches (7th most in the UK), is the place to be for fast transactions because there are currently a total of 989 properties listed in the city, which means each branch is only handling an average of eight.
Second is Leeds with just 11 properties per branch, followed by Bradford with 12, Bristol with 13, and Oxford with 14.
WiggyWam CEO, Silas J. Lees, said: “The extension to the SDLT holiday will undoubtedly lead to more pressure on agents to make hay while the sun shines. Not least in those cities where agents are already juggling a lot of work.
“However, it could well be the additional burden on lawyers, not agents, which turns out to be the straw that breaks the camel’s back, ultimately leading to too many deals not being completed in time.
“Now more than ever, agents need to box clever by streamlining the conveyancing bottleneck as much as possible. Agents plugging into our conveyancing concierge service can get deals exchanged in half the time, guaranteed.”
Top 5 Cities: Most Properties For-Sale Per Estate Agency Branch
| City | Number of for-sale properties per estate agency branch |
| Aberdeen | 29 |
| Newcastle-upon-tyne | 28 |
| Newport | 27 |
| Liverpool | 26 |
| London | 26 |
Top 5 Cities: Fewest Properties For-Sale Per Estate Agency Branch
| City | Number of for-sale properties per estate agency branch |
| Glasgow | 8 |
| Leeds | 11 |
| Bradford | 12 |
| Bristol | 13 |
| Oxford | 14 |
Full data table for UK cities, ordered by number of estate agency branches
| City | Number of estate agent branches (sales) | Number of listed properties | Average number of properties per branch |
| London | 2,034 | 46,361 | 23 |
| Manchester | 200 | 3,803 | 19 |
| Birmingham | 191 | 3,649 | 19 |
| Bristol | 171 | 2,278 | 13 |
| Nottingham | 151 | 2,358 | 16 |
| Liverpool | 123 | 3,137 | 26 |
| Glasgow | 122 | 989 | 8 |
| Leeds | 120 | 1,277 | 11 |
| Cardiff | 99 | 1,541 | 16 |
| Leicester | 98 | 1,831 | 19 |
| Sheffield | 83 | 1,336 | 16 |
| Bradford | 82 | 1,012 | 12 |
| Edinburgh | 81 | 1,269 | 16 |
| Bournemouth | 75 | 1,420 | 19 |
| Newcastle | 67 | 1,879 | 28 |
| Southampton | 66 | 1,402 | 21 |
| Plymouth | 60 | 950 | 16 |
| Oxford | 59 | 848 | 14 |
| Portsmouth | 50 | 949 | 19 |
| Cambridge | 39 | 608 | 16 |
| Sunderland | 34 | 774 | 23 |
| Swansea | 22 | 504 | 23 |
| Newport | 21 | 573 | 27 |
| Aberdeen | 19 | 558 | 29 |
Comments (4)
The dangers of carrying out research without actually digging deep into the research!!
Aberdeen has its own property portal ASPC which limits exposure of properties for sale to just its 50 solicitor firm members and there are currently 5352 properties for sale on there meaning an average of 107 properties per firm or if you add in the above figures and estate agent numbers means that the numbers are 85 properties per firm in Aberdeen!!!
These property numbers have accumulated over the last 2-3 years due to the oil downturn from a normal figure of just under 2000 at any one time – selling agents wont really see themselves as busy given these historic unshifting properties, as they sit waiting for buyers to return to the market in large enough numbers to outstrip supply.
“WiggyWam, which conducted the research, estimates that those cities with the busiest agents are likely to be the same ones where completing transactions is going to take the longest.”
This also doesn’t apply to Aberdeen,Edinburgh and Glasgow, which and it may come as a surprise to Wiggy Wam, are all in Scotland and subject to a different completions and legal system.
If you want insights into Scotland Wiggywam, just get in touch with me next time.
A portal using another portal’s data, doing some dodgy analysis and claiming it to be news. What a weird one.
Don’t Wiggy Wam have something useful to do with their time? What value is this report to anyone I ask?
Not the best way to do the stats….