There’s a stat thrown around estate agency that keeps coming back like a bad penny:
“Around 50% of homes sell with the second agent.”
It’s used far too often in sales pitches to convince vendors to switch agents, and yet, it’s a myth!
Our analysts have rerun the numbers and can confirm the claim still doesn’t hold. In fact, 85.7% of property sales are completed by the first agent instructed.
This reality may completely undermine your on-market targeting strategies. Many agents spend significant time and budget pursuing on-market properties in an attempt to entice vendors to switch, when in reality, this approach really isn’t worth the effort.
The full breakdown of our analysis from the period between 1st April 2025 to 31st March 2026 is as follows:
The stats are clear; only a small proportion of properties (14.3%) are actually successfully selling with switched-to or multi-agents.
The stats do differ by region, but the overwhelming consensus is that the first agent wins. Scotland has the highest number of first agent sales at 95.2%, with Inner London the lowest (yet still at a significant 77.8% of sales).
When it comes to switched-to agent sales, the South East has the highest percentage at 10.8%, closely followed by the East of England at 10.6%. Just 1.9% of Scottish sales are from switched to agents, showing the power of securing the listing first hand.
Inner London has the most multi-agent sales at 12%. Just 3% of sales in Scotland, and Yorkshire and The Humber are from sales listed by multiple agents, showing that vendors in these regions tend to stick with just one agent to get sales over the line.
Not only are the majority of properties selling with the first agent that instructs them, but the property is also more likely to sell with the first agent it lists with. Our analysts found that UK-wide, if a property is listed for sale, it is 57.9% likely to sell. However, with a first-agent instruction, this figure rises to 61.1%. Whereas switched to agent instructions are only 49.3% likely to sell, and for multi-agent instructions, this figure drops to just 37.7%.
Again, this differs by region, but in general, first-agent properties are more likely to sell in the North and Midlands (above 60%), followed by the South (c50-55%), and then London (40%).
The results speak for themselves; agents need a robust off-market strategy. Trying to entice vendors away from other agents isn’t worth your effort if it’s only resulting in 14.3% of sales.
Many agents spend a significant proportion of their marketing budget prospecting to competitors’ properties, but now that we have proven that the size of this market is relatively small, what else should you be doing?
Blanket dropping your entire patch to find potential vendors is not sustainable or cost-effective, as the majority of people you are mailing have no intention of moving.
It’s clear that off-market targeting is the most lucrative approach. Stop wasting time on targeting on-market properties. Our model, Forecast, is highly valuable for agents, predicting which properties are most likely to come to market so you can target vendors BEFORE they instruct with another agent. It regularly generates 60% of all valuation leads for two of our largest estate agency clients. Check it out here.
*To clarify: agent switched instructions are those with a withdrawn date older than the new instruction date by up to 3 months, or the new instruction date is older than the withdrawn date by up to 1 month. Multi-Agent Instructions are where the new instruction date is earlier than 1 month before the withdrawn (or last on‑market) date of the first listing, AND its new instruction date is on or after its own new instruction date (i.e., correct temporal order). For off-market Instructions, these are instructions that are not included in the other two categories.