Ben Ridgway and Jamie Cooke, co-founders of iamproperty Group brought together industry leaders in a recent roundtable to discuss the challenges facing the sector, and how collaboration and technology can be harnessed to modernise the industry.
The roundtable took place ahead of the announcement from Trading Standards and the Government, who last week announced that compulsory information, including council tax bands and tenure information must be included on all listings by the end of May. The development, which is a big milestone is set to support home movers in making informed buying decisions and help to speed up the process, but collaboration and technology must now support Estate Agents and not add to the growing list of challenges in the sector.
Estate Agents are bracing themselves for another year of unprecedented challenges and opportunities. Ongoing fee pressures, stock issues and delays in the process are set to be amplified by the upcoming regulatory changes, pressures around compliance and recruitment and retention issues. With rising consumer demands adding to the pressure on Estate Agents, the panel agreed that there’s a new wave of challenges on the horizon, and that the industry needs to find a path forward and end the ‘blame game’.
Speakers included Beth Rudolf, Director of Delivery at Conveyancing Association, Gareth Samples, CEO at The Property Franchise Group, David Beaumont, Managing Director at Compliance Matters and Joe Pepper, CEO at tmgroup.
Jamie Cooke kicked off the session: "Out of the many challenges facing the property sector, I struggle to pick just one. We work with thousands of agents across the UK and it’s clear to see the daily battle of taking on the opportunities of a very buoyant market and balancing that with the ongoing issues in the process.”
For Ben Ridgway, the ongoing challenge is a simple but significant one. He explained: “The biggest challenge for me is the industry continuing to fail to deliver what the client wants. When you look at the data we are collecting, via our iamproperty movebutler platform, over 40% of clients want to be completed within 90 days – they demand it in fact – and another 40% would quite like it, with only 20% indifferent about it. That’s 80% of the market that wants to be in their new home within 90 days – and the current average completion time frame is 125 days!”
Beth Rudolf, Director of Delivery at Conveyancing Association, added: “We need to understand each other and how those processes can actually work better, then keep doing something about that. We need to create efficiencies, and more information up front is just part of that. Creating one source of the truth for the home buying and selling process, is what’s needed to create a real step change. We’re all so fed up with hearing the blame game and that everybody is doing things wrong.”
Despite the challenges for the sector, incredible progress has already been made over the past year, with the rise in adoption of new technologies propelled by new necessity and a shift to a digital approach. 2021 saw a £1.6 billion of investment into the sector – up by 360% in 2020. But now that technology has been proven as the solution, leaders are looking to bring about a quicker adoption rate.
Gareth Samples, CEO at The Property Franchise Group, said: “Most PropTech businesses get to about 2,000 branches – 10-12% of the industry – and so it’s difficult to see that mass scale solution in play. For change to really happen industry-wide, there needs to be more collaboration to join the dots and all parts of the transaction to present something back to agents that’s simple, impactful for their business and which solves as many parts of the problem as possible. The answers aren’t easy, but we have to believe it is achievable.”
Another challenge identified as a barrier to meeting delivery demands for clients is speeding up the compliance process, and the panel agreed that PropTech can solve this too. David Beaumont, Managing Director at Compliance Matters said: “Compliance wasn’t historically an issue for agents, but it has moved further and further up the priority list, it’s now a significant issue and they need to consider how to tackle this.”
To understand and cater to the wide-ranging needs of each part of the property process, the roundtable agreed that collaboration holds the key to true progress.
Gareth Samples warned: “If people don’t work together, we’ll never get there. We need to give agents technology that makes things easy, that works for them, and which helps them to drive revenue and grow their business and impress their clients, as well as meeting compliance with ease.”
As well as working with other property professionals, reframing the relationship between agent and technology as a well-planned collaboration could be the answer. Joe Pepper, CEO at tmgroup, “Estate Agency has always been a ‘people’ industry by its very nature, to some extent I don’t think that has changed and I don’t think it should. It’s been shown that the value in Estate Agency is in its humanity. The most successful agents are those who can effectively harness technology to offer something exciting to the consumer.”
Ben concluded: “It’s about having the commitment to keep moving forward in the right direction and the mandated material information is going to really push things forward. Technology should make Estate Agents lives easier and give them back time to spend with their clients, winning instructions, and growing their business. We pioneered movebutler to join as many parts of the process together as possible and upfront material facts is just part of that. We include this functionality for free for agents using iamproperty movebutler as we’re passionate about seeing a real shift change and agents shouldn’t have to buy a different PropTech solution for every part of the transaction.”
Read the full article and more from iamproperty’s deep dive into the challenges and potential of the future of PropTech in its newly launched digital magazine, Tech of a Life, which can be accessed online here.
Visit the iamproperty landing page on Kerfuffle for more information and to see reviews
