The Personal Estate Agent

RAT 68 (Rawlings Agency Tip)

I note with interest the rise of the personal agent. This is the self-employed estate agent, sometimes annexed to a regular agency office, but generally working from home. Some have described this approach as somewhat amateur as there is the suggestion that it simply attracts wannabe estate agents who are perhaps not fully committed to the job.

I would suggest that you ignore these agents at your peril - my observation is that these are highly motivated, often experienced, agents who know their area and its residents well. They realise that with a decent brand behind them coupled with some back office support and ongoing training, they can make more money as a 'business within a business' that they ever did working as a regular negotiator.

These agents are good at networking so they take advantage of the fact that estate agency is an intensely local business. They encourage personal recommendations, drop interesting mailers regularly to a 'warm' target audience (let me know if you need some of these yourself), and are good at personal promotion, both in the press and online. They are happy to offer high quality free advice locally because they know that this always plays an important role in developing a reputation based on personal accountability, which in turn directly or indirectly drives business their way. It is in effect the antidote to the corporate approach!

Of course, most agents already know that they should be doing the above anyway, but many are not motivated to do so, possibly because they are accountable only to their boss - not themselves, or are restrained by existing ingrained culture.

Whilst the personal agent model has worked well for Remax in Scotland (traditionally a solicitors' stronghold) powerful new forces such as Homexperts and Hunters and The Personal Agent are now making an impact in the rest of the UK.

I am going to be watching the rise of the personal agent with interest and may I suggest you do the same as there may be a lot to learn from their approach!