Small independent agents won out against corporates during 2020 sales boom

Independent estate agents reaped the greatest rewards from the Covid housing market boom while hybrid agencies and corporates have been the weakest, new market data reveals.

TwentyCI says one-branch independent agents experienced strong growth last year both for instructions and sales agreed volumes, increasing their share of the market by nearly two percent to 31.6% nationally.

These gains were made at the expense of larger, more corporate estate agencies with between six and 50 branches, who lost 1.7% of the market while the really big corporates lost 0.4%.

Larger independents of between two and five branches held steady at 24.4%, as did hybrids at 6.7%.

Ian Lancaster, CEO of TwentyCI, says he is surprised by hybrid agents’ lack of success taking market share during the pandemic.

“We have observed in retail trading during the pandemic that retailers with a large online presence have been amongst the biggest winners. Further, without access to our data to clarify the situation, you would reasonably expect the same when it comes to the online/hybrid estate agents,” he says.

“The biggest losers were the large agencies, and we suspect that many of these furloughed staff as they closed branches in Lockdown 1.0 and did not react soon enough to bring back their staff to take advantage of the subsequent increases in activity brought about by the pent-up demand and further fuelled by the stamp duty holiday.

“It will be interesting to see if these early 2021 trends continue throughout the rest of the year especially with the announced mergers and acquisitions activity in the corporate and franchise segments.”

Steve Wayne (pictured) of independent estate agency Benjamin Stephens, says he’s not surprised by the TwentyCI research. “As well as being quicker to furlough staff, big corporates incentivise their staff by metrics such as viewings and appraisals, which matter less when you’re getting your business up and running again,” he says.

“We were more focussed on getting our ‘war face’ on and finding the instructions we could turn into fees as fast as we could. Also, I believe larger estate agencies tend to have less engaged staff – at small independents it’s the owner sat in the corner with you, not the regional branch manager.”