Mental Health Awareness Week is important.

But the reality is that mental health does not exist for one week in May. It exists on a wet Tuesday morning when a chain collapses. It exists when payroll is due. It exists when somebody is sitting in their car before work trying to gather themselves together before walking into the office pretending everything is fine.

Mental health is not an annual campaign. It is everyday life. And that is partly why I wrote Do This First: An Estate Agent’s Guide to Better Mental Health in support of The Propertymark Trust.

I find myself reflecting on a conversation that has stayed with me for years.

When we launched PropX, the property industry conference dedicated specifically to wellbeing and mental health in support of The Propertymark Trust, I remember receiving a little light trolling from a member of the public online.

“Why on earth do estate agents need a charity of their own?” they asked.

The implication was obvious enough. In the eyes of much of the public, estate agents are doing just fine. Driving nice cars. Posting their successes online. Winning awards. Riding high on commission and easy money.

The stereotype is familiar, but stereotypes are often emotionally convenient rather than accurate.

The reality is that much of the UK property industry is not made up of giant corporations with endless resources. It is an economy of small and medium-sized businesses. Independent agents. Family firms. Self-employed negotiators. Small lettings companies. Business owners carrying payroll responsibilities, compliance pressures and financial uncertainty in an economy that has become increasingly unforgiving.

And running SMEs in 2026 is hard. Really hard.

For a long time I have believed estate agency carries a very particular kind of psychological pressure. People assume agents sell houses. In reality, they spend much of their lives managing emotion.

They deal with bereavements, divorces, financial anxiety, unrealistic expectations, broken chains, relationship breakdowns, legislation changes, difficult conversations and constant uncertainty, often whilst trying to appear calm, professional and emotionally stable themselves.

Entire months of work can disappear overnight with one collapsed transaction. A negotiator can spend eight weeks holding together a chain only to watch it fall apart on a Thursday afternoon, then walk back into the office on Friday morning expected to sound enthusiastic all over again.

Meanwhile the wider industry continues to operate under enormous pressure. Compliance burdens grow. Margins tighten. Legislative uncertainty hangs over businesses for years before clarity ever arrives. Social media has created a culture where people increasingly feel pressure not only to perform professionally, but to publicly perform success as well.

And beneath all of that sits something many people in the industry still struggle to admit openly. Exhaustion.

That is why the organisations supporting agents working in the property sector matter so much. Over recent years, the industry has quietly built something rather remarkable. A growing network of charities, support groups and communities attempting to remind people that professionalism and vulnerability are not mutually exclusive.

The Propertymark Trust exists because life occasionally goes wrong in ways professionalism cannot protect against. Illness, bereavement, financial hardship and mental health struggles do not politely avoid people working in property. The Trust provides grants, funding and support for agents and their families during some of the most difficult periods of their lives.

Agents Giving has shown the extraordinary generosity that exists within the sector, raising huge sums for charitable causes whilst reconnecting the industry to something larger than transactions and targets.

Agents Together has created spaces for mentoring, wellbeing support and honest conversations in an industry that historically rewarded emotional armour more than emotional honesty.

Women in Estate Agency has provided guidance, support and community for women navigating the realities of the sector and pushing for genuine equality within it.

The Boys Club has helped open conversations around male mental health and wellbeing in a profession where many men still feel enormous pressure to silently “hold it together.”

None of these organisations exist because estate agents are weak. They exist because they are human.

One of the strongest lines in the book appears in the dedication: “Needing support does not make you weak, and asking for help does not make you a failure. It makes you human.”

I believe that deeply.

Mental health awareness within the property industry is not about turning estate agents into victims. Nor is it about pretending the industry is uniquely difficult compared to every other profession. It is simply about acknowledging reality honestly.

This is emotionally demanding work. And emotionally demanding work changes people psychologically over time.

The good news is that the property industry is also filled with extraordinary kindness beneath all the noise, ego and competitiveness. Spend enough time in this sector and you eventually realise that many people genuinely care about one another. That deserves recognition too.

So during Mental Health Awareness Week, my hope is simple.

Read the book. Support the charities. Check in on your colleagues properly. Speak more honestly than the industry sometimes encourages you to. And remember that behind every negotiator, valuer, property manager or business owner is still just a human being trying to carry pressure as best they can.

Sometimes successfully. Sometimes not. But never entirely alone.

You can read Do This First – An Estate Agent’s Guide to Better Mental Health here.

David Mintz is revenue and marketing director at Kerfuffle.

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