Agencies & People
News covering the businesses, activities, people and personalities in estate agency and letting agency and wider residential property industry.
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Gender pay gap narrows among estate agency employees
The gender pay gap between men and women’s pay within the property industry has narrowed significantly to 14.3%, down from 18.1% a year ago and 27.5% in 1997 when the government first started collecting figures. Out of the main 20 employment sectors property now possesses the 13th lowest gender pay gap. The three worst sectors are financial and insurance services (37.4%), energy workers (28.1%) and teachers (26.7%). Overall the UK gender pay gap is now 18.1%, the lowest on record and down from an average of 27.5% in 1997. “No woman should be held back just because of her gender,” says Justine Greening, Minister for Women and Equalities (pictured, left). “The changes we’ve made so that men and women can share their parental leave, the support we’re giving to get more women into the top jobs at our biggest companies and our drive to get more girls taking STEM [science, technology, engineering and maths] subjects at school are all helping to reduce this gap.” But the figures for the property industry mask one uncomfortable truth – the gender gap is worse among part-time workers, who are a significant part of the workforce for many agents. The government figures show that…
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FOREST MARBLE JOINS 80 OFFICE NETWORK
Forest Marble, an independent sales and lettings agency based in Frome, Somerset, has joined 80 other estate agency offices in Property Sharing Experts (PSE)...
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CENTURY 21 BIGWOOD OPENS IN BIRMINGHAM
Birmingham’s newest estate agency and letting agent Century 21 Bigwood has launched in the heart of the city...
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How do you recover from a flood?
How long does it take to get your business back on its feet after a flood? In the case of an agent in York the answer has been nearly ten months. The ordeal started for Letters Property Management when during Christmas Day and Boxing Day last year water started pouring in through its branch front door after up to 100mm of rainfall fell on the city over a 48-hour period (see picture, below). Letters, which was one of 650 homes and businesses deluged during the floods, has been owned by Anya Matthewson (pictured, left) for the past decade since she bought company after a stint as its finance manager. Her office is on the city’s famous Walmgate thoroughfare which, at one point during the floods, was under two feet of water and many of its premises were damaged including Letters and three others agents. Ten months later and Anya is only just ready to re-open her office, although luckily for her she had upstairs premises from which the business has been operating while the office downstairs has been drying out. This has now been reclaimed and refurbished and the business’s ten-strong team have moved back in. But despite it being a…
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Hunters launches ‘first of its kind’ qualifications
Franchise estate agency chain Hunters has revealed details of its new national qualifications, which it claims are the first to be created by an estate agency for its staff. Called the Hunters National Qualifications (HNQs) each of the six different courses are delivered through both classroom training and e-learning via the company’s Training Academy platform. The qualifications will be recognised by both the NAEA and ARLA, and those achieving the HNQs will then be able to join the organisations. “There are still far too many stories in the media about rogue estate agents; we aim to set industry standards by ensuring all our staff are trained to their best ability, which we hope our peers will follow,” says Glynis Frew, Managing Director of Hunters Property Group (pictured, left). New and existing Hunters employees are now able to attain three different levels of qualification in either sales or letting. The highest is an HNQ Award, the middle rung an HNQ Certificate and base qualification an HNQ Diploma. Staff progress through each qualification in three steps or levels and, unusually, the training is linked to their work practices and uses Hunters’ software to ensure they are applying their training correctly at a branch level. The…
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Ain’t no mountain high enough
A dozen people from the Bidwells Project Management Team took part in a hazardous event to raise money for the Royal National Institute of Blind People (RNIB).
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BELVOIR MORAY CELEBRATES 20 YEARS
Belvoir is celebrating the 20th anniversary of the company’s very first franchise owner, Andy Campbell of Belvoir Moray.
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Purplebricks shareholders exercise options worth £1.5m
Purplebricks’ three-year rise from promising hybrid start-up to today’s AIM-listed City star with a turnover of £7.2m has emboldened several of its key shareholders to exercise their options. Ten days ago five people between them made the move including founder Michael Bruce’s wife Isabel, finance director Matthew Farrow, chief information officer David Kavanagh and chief marketing officer Joby Russell. Between them they exercised options totalling 1.36 million shares although it is not known how many of these were transferred to their ownership, or instead sold immediately. But assuming they were all disposed of then it would net the individuals an estimated £1.5 million between them at the current share price of £1.28p. Prior to this move, several people on the list have exercised and then sold previously-acquired share options including David Kavanagh (pictured) who joined the company in January 2013 and in September this year sold 69,500 shares. Aim-listed companies like Purplebricks are notoriously difficult to read because although they report like PLCs, they remain relatively small companies run by a coterie of founding directors and senior staff. Nevertheless, the share option activity currently under way can viewed through several lenses. One is that the standard three-year share option ‘lock in’ has expired and…
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148-year-old W.A.Ellis disappears into JLL fold
One of the oldest names in the property industry is to disappear from the high street next year when W.A.Ellis, which has been around since 1868, rebrands as JLL, it has been announced. The company has for many years had a large office on London’s Brompton Road but was acquired by commercial and residential giant JLL in October 2014. At the time, the writing was on already on the wall and despite a statement talking of ‘expanding the success of the W.A.Ellis business’, it was clear JLL intended to dispense with the brand after a ‘period of time’. JLL is currently undergoing an aggressive push into London’s prime residential market, and a spokesperson said of the rebrand: “It’s just a rename to bring it in line with the rest of JLL’s residential estate agency business”. This is despite W.A.Ellis being a high-profile name within London’s prime market. It’s headed up by senior industry figure Lucy Morton, who set up the W.A.Ellis lettings department in 1990. She has also been a president of ARLA and won numerous honours including Estate Agency Leader of the Year at 2011’s Negotiator Awards. She is to remain at the newly unified JLL operation as its…
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Tayler and Fletcher’s 100 mile ride
Jessica Bates BSc and Edward Bagnall FRICS, colleagues at Tayler and Fletcher in Stow-on-the-Wold took part in the Ride London 100 mile sportive in July raising £5,000 for their nominated charities.
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