Interview with Katy Billany
Last week for TwentyEA was a big one!
Estate Agency Events (EAE), producers of the EA Masters, the property industry’s biggest leadership conference and awards, announced its partnership with leading UK data agency TwentyEA (part of the TwentyCi Group) to assess the performance of every sales and lettings agent across the UK.In its sixth year, the Best Estate Agent Guide (BEAG) is the annual assessment of estate and letting agents, providing home movers and landlords with details of the top 20% based on property marketing, customer service and results.
Agents were rated using a combination of property listings analysis, mystery shopping and a website audit.
What is quite clear from some of the results, is that the performance gap between the best and worst performers is vast.
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I caught up with Katy Billany, Executive Director at TwentyEA to find out more about their work on the Best Estate Agent Guide 2023, who else was involved and what plans she and her team have for the EA Masters live event in September.
Interview with Katy
Question: Tell us more about the partnership with EAE, what does this mean for TwentyEA?
Answer: At TwentyEA we track the property market at a granular level on a daily basis and work with estate agents to help them to better understand their marketplace, their performance and that of their competitors.
Our partnership with EAE allows us to take this to another level – using that data to highlight the best performing agents in the country and therefore helping home movers and landlords to find the right agent to sell or let their property.
Question: Who else was involved in creating the shortlist?
Answer: The judging process for the BEAG is a massive undertaking! It involves months of work from not just us and EAE, but also Sleeping Giant Media, Dataloft and professional mystery shoppers.
The panel discussion we recorded for the launch event last week gives a great insight into the whole process and whilst it was fantastic to spend some time with Sarah Kemp, Sandra Jones and Luke Quilter, we definitely can’t take all the credit - there were many many others involved behind the scenes!
When you think about the sheer amount of work that goes into judging every agent in the country, it was very time-consuming, but it’s so valuable to be able to provide consumers with a definitive view of who is best placed to sell or let their property.
Question: How are TwentyEA able to accurately analyse every agent in the country?
Answer: We have over 4,500 different sources of data, such as the Land Registry, Ordnance Survey, and many more well-known contributors.
TwentyEA use this data to track and analyse millions of property transactions in the UK on a daily basis.
When it comes to the accuracy and reliability of our data to provide the foundation for such a huge project, I am proud to say our data is extremely accurate.
We have a thorough quality scoring process for all our different data sources which is constantly monitored.
Because we have so many sources, everything is tracked and cross-referenced across multiple data providers to ensure that the data we provide externally is as accurate as can be.
If we weren’t so confident in our data, we simply wouldn’t be able to provide our clients with the tools they need to be successful. It’s significant that our data is trusted by the likes of the UK Government, key industry publications, and top-tier media outlets such as The Times, The Financial Times and the BBC.
Question: How many agents did TwentyEA assess and what kind of data was collected?
Answer: So, for the Best Estate Agent Guide, we conducted analysis on every sales and lettings agent in the UK and measured the performance of each one over a specific six-month period to identify which had the best performance in that time.
The data TwentyEA assessed focused on market share, conversions, timescales, and price.
The selection of which attributes to include in the analysis comes from Property Academy’s Home Moving Trends Survey, which is carried out each year in conjunction with Dataloft - we focused on the key metrics that are most important to the consumer.
Question: In your opinion, why is the Best Estate Agent Guide so important for both agents and consumers?
Answer: In terms of the consumer, the Dataloft analysis shows just how important it is for sellers and landlords to feel that they can trust the agent they choose, but many don’t know where to start when it comes to looking for someone to sell or let their property.
The fact that the Best Estate Agent Guide thoroughly assesses every agent on those measures that are most important to the consumer – property marketing, customer service and results – means that it’s an invaluable resource for sellers and landlords.
For agents, being able to say that they are in the top 20% of their kind in the country (and for many, that they have been consistently, year on year), is clearly compelling. For those that are included in the BEAG, they want to maintain their excellent work to ensure that they continue to hit those benchmarks; and for those who didn’t make it, it gives them a set of targets to achieve - all of which can only serve to raise industry standards overall.
Question: Katy, I just want to finish with this… what is in the plan for TwentyEA at the EA Masters in September?
Answer: We’re really excited about the live event in September. It’s always a fantastic opportunity to connect with agents and no other event seems to come close in terms of the quality of content on the day.
With our role this year as official Data Partner, we’re looking forward to being able to provide agents with insight into how our data can help them to generate leads, convert more appraisals and better understand their performance metrics. We’ve got some fantastic plans for the day itself!
And of course, like everyone else we can’t wait to see who the overall winners are when they’re announced – and then celebrate with them afterwards!
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You can find out how the most comprehensive industry-wide assessment of estate and lettings agents is put together by watching the expert panel discussion from the EA Masters Opening Ceremony here.
Winning agents that attend the EA Masters on September 21st at Evolution, London, will be presented with their award on stage by a celebrity presenter and perhaps even take home the most highly prized trophy in estate agency – The Best Estate Agent Guide Estate Agent of the Year Award.
Will it be you?
Make sure you get your tickets! You can get them here - this is one event as an estate agent you do not want to miss.
And we will see you in September!
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