Winning Instructions in the Living Room with TwentyEA

As everyone knows, the competition to win new instructions has been tougher than ever this year.

In this blog we've taken a look at market activity across the country, dissecting by price band and agent type to see what is happening. Then we offer a solution to help win new instructions over your competitors. In a tight market such as this, we all need all the help we can get right?

In February 2022 we informed you that across the Estate Agency industry 86% of all new instructions came from people whose properties were not already on the market. We refer to these as off market instructions.

Well since this time, the supply of new properties coming to the market has got even worse! In the last year alone, the volume of available stock for sale has fallen by over 4%. Comparing like for like to pre-pandemic, available properties for sale have fallen by a massive 32%.

We explore this in a little more detail below and give some guidance on what you need to do to get into the living room; and what you need to do to win once you get there.

Stock by Prices

First though, let’s have a closer look at that stock situation, the following chart shows you this by price band;

Pre-pandemic and pre-Boris, in June 2019, there were a very healthy 225k properties for sale in the lowest price bracket, costing less than £200k. Today, there are only 114k properties for sale in this price bracket nationwide. Stock volumes in this price range have halved when compared to pre-pandemic levels.

The next price bracket - £200k to £350k – has seen a similar fate, where the stock of properties that are available for sale has reduced by 36%.

In contrast, the stock of high-price properties (£350k to £1m) has risen in the last year but still remains down by 16% on pre-pandemic levels.

And finally, the availability of super-premium properties (in excess of £1m in value) has risen by 7% when compared to pre-pandemic levels.

So what?

Well, if you’re an agent who instructs properties that are less than £350k in value, there are fewer of them coming to the market now, and the ones that are there are in short supply. You will sell them, but it means that you must try extra hard to get into the living room in the first place.

The Off Market Effect

A new look at the volume of new instructions that are coming from off market properties shows that these have increased further compared to instructions that have switched agent or those that are multi-agency.

If we look at the last year to June 2022, the following table shows the percentage of all new instructions that came in via each of the three methods above…

This shows that 88% of all traditional agents' instructions now come from off market properties.

Looking at hybrid agents, and by this, as always, we mean agents who do not have high street branches per se, this percentage increases to 90%.

So, it is clear that to get into the living room in the first place, you need to be talking to those vendors or landlords who are likely to instruct their property for sale. TwentyEA is practically the only company in the UK that can identify these people for you through our unique Forecast audience which predicts properties most likely to come to the market in the next two months.

The Payment on Completion Effect

Most traditional agents get paid on completion (when the person who has instructed them actually moves house).

So, for the first time, we have looked at the conversion ratios of the three different kinds of properties, breaking them down by traditional versus hybrid. This is shown in the following table:

Whilst traditional agents sell 67% of properties that they instruct that are off market, they only sell 50% of properties that have switched to them and 41% of multi-agent listings.

Hybrid agents on the other hand sell 72% of off market properties versus 58% switched and only 39% multi-agency.

Where we are ending up here is, if you are an agent that is struggling for new instructions, you should be focusing at least 88% of your time and money on winning off market instructions.

Winning in the Living Room

Okay – well if a focus on off market targeting is primary, there is perhaps one more thing that is equally important if not even more important. That is winning in the living room!

If on average for every 100 valuations, you achieve 50 instructions, it makes twice as much sense to focus on winning in the living room before you focus on gaining off market valuations.

Increasing your conversion rate from 50% to just 51% is millions of pounds for a medium-sized agent, let alone a big one. And yet, it's surprising how few agents, during the market appraisal, provide the vendor with compelling and relevant information as to why they should instruct with them.

This is where Spotlight comes in! Spotlight is a tool that allows you to demonstrate that you are the best agent to sell a vendor’s property.

• • Bespoke, white-labelled reports showcasing your strengths
  • Independent verification of key performance metrics
  • An invaluable resource in the hands of high to medium-performing branches
  • Directly compare your performance to that of your competitors
  • An essential addition to all valuation packs

Spotlight has been built following months of consultation with our clients to provide agents with fully customisable reports which can be created in just a few clicks and enable you to showcase your strengths to potential vendors.

Whilst things are clearly tough, simply ensuring that vendors know how good you are can help to ensure that you're their agent of choice. 

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For more information on Forecast or Spotlight, or to learn more about our property market insights, then please contact Paul Jamieson (our Head of Sales) at paul.jamieson@twentyea.co.uk