In today’s rapidly evolving property market, estate agents face unprecedented challenges. Interest rates have yet to drop back to anticipated levels in 2024, sales pipeline returns are the result of the most skilled multi-channel marketing campaigns – followed by extraordinary levels of customer service, operational costs are climbing, and buyer interest is lukewarm and has to be properly nurtured; all whilst low-fee competitors put your estate agency under constant pressure to remain competitive. Yet, amid all this uncertainty, the solution to your troubles is not far away.
The solution lies in saving time and money – and paying close attention to creating consistent cashflow, which is at the heart of business success. Here are three ways in which to become more time efficient and cost-effective with cashflow in mind.
1. Streamlining the sales progression progress
All estate agents understand that managing a chain is a complex and time-consuming process. One of the primary reasons for sluggish sales progression is how few properties are part of a single property sale. Other reasons include:
- Many agencies fall short in their investment in technology and people when it comes to focused attention on streamlining and hands-on management of sales progression. A great solution is to take on a Virtual Assistant who can focus on overseeing sales progression, using PropTech to streamline processes.
- Agents do not leverage the required supply of material information. This is defined as “any information that can impact the decision that a consumer makes in relation to a property, such as arranging a viewing, putting in an offer to purchase and proceeding with any other aspects of the process.”1 Providing comprehensive material information is something that is central to helping conveyancers speed up transactions.
2. Billing upfront property marketing costs
In terms of carefully managing consistent cashflow, every pound helps. Charging sellers upfront for marketing spend does not only provide some cash inflow. It means the cost of marketing a property is not coming out of the estate agent’s pocket, upfront. It also serves to “anchor” the client to their estate agent. Providing comprehensive material information supports securing an up-front marketing budget from clients in that charging for upfront marketing outlay makes sense when estate agents are going to provide comprehensive material information as part of the transaction.
3. Strengthening the professionalism and authority of the property industry
One of the biggest barriers to arise in the UK property market over the past fourteen years is complacency; in the main due to an incredibly buoyant property market. Estate agents know that there’s more to selling property than just listing a house on a property portal, but the problem is that public perception prevails that all agents need to do is upload a property on a major property portal and it sells, for the asking price and quickly. Industry-wide adherence to relying on the property portals as the key marketing tool has allowed them to become fat cats, enabled to put up their prices however they like.
Now, in a much more exacting market, estate agents are beholden to this cost-hungry beast that they have helped build – at a time when their pipeline is failing. What is the antidote? A more complex sales pipeline to suit the time and incredible professionalism within the industry are an absolute must for estate agents to develop a level of authority and autonomy within their profession that allows them to charge higher fees and that will build the industries clout to effectively lobby for more moderate property portal price increases.
So important is it for estate agents to get clear on the path to success that VA Central, in partnership with WiggyWam, will be introducing “The Seven-Figure Roadmap,” in a transformative webinar on 21 March, designed to guide estate agents through the complexities of today’s market towards achieving seven-figure success.
Estate agents who embrace “The Seven-Figure Roadmap” will not only be better equipped to successfully navigate current property market challenges but to thrive at a time when others are floundering. After which, an essential next step will be their continuous education of sellers and buyers on the value and expertise of estate agents.
