Estate agents fail the Family Fortunes popularity TV test
Latest IPSOS survey also has estate agents among the five least-trusted professions amongst politicians, advertising executives, government ministers and journalists.
They say that fortune favours the brave but not so much when it comes to estate agency and ITV’s Family Fortunes.
Hilarious host Gino D’Acampo welcomed the Lloyd family of Wales going up against the Cheek family of Suffolk for a chance to win a £30,000 jackpot prize in an episode this week.
After the first advert break, Gino was joined by Margaret Lloyd and Lea Cheek to take on the famous ‘Our Survey Says” question were the two families try to guess the most popular responses to survey-based questions posed to 100 people.
TRUST
And then came the question: “Name a profession people trust the least.”
After wrong suggestions of banker and financial adviser it was down to Paul from the Cheek family who offered up estate agent, scoring a correct answer and second on the board with 29.
By the end of the round the correct answers were Politician (40), Estate Agent (29), Lawyer (13), Care Salesperson (8) and Traffic Warden (6).
VERACITY INDEX
While the answers gained plenty of laughs on the TV show in real life the latest IPSOS Veracity Index published last week – the longest running poll on trust in professions in Britain – was damning when it came to public trust in estate agents, with the sector seeing a decrease in their level of public trust since 2021.
The five least-trusted professions in order were journalists, estate agents, government ministers, advertising executives and politicians generally.
And landlords of private residential properties don’t fare much better either, finishing seventh from bottom.
How do you change the public perception on Agents?
Paul Shamplina, founder of Landlord Action and chief commercial officer of Hamilton Fraser, posted the Family Fortunes results on LinkedIn and received a range of replies.
He told The Neg: “The fact that bailiffs and traffic wardens are more trusted than estate agents should be worrying.
“How do you change the public perception on agents? Some estate agents do magnificent work. It’s about changing public perception, what they do and how they do it.
“It’s the same with landlords. They can be perceived as greedy but what the public don’t realise is how much time landlords spend on each property when it comes to admin and now extra costs which will unfortunately be added to rents.”
Watch Family Fortunes, series two, episode 13, HERE.
