In this current climate is a high street location a necessity or a luxury?
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The days of the high street estate agent are numbered; in their place you will find letting agents whose business will continue to benefit from a professional environment to conduct meetings with landlords and tenants. For example, whilst we know that tenants are likely to use the internet to source a property to view, our research suggests the familiarity of our high street presence is one of the main reasons why they are prompted to trust us to provide a decent property management service. After all, you can buy a car on the internet but people still look to the dealer network to provide the after sales care.A local branch is clearly dedicated to the local market, which is just the target audience we seek to attract. People only go to a letting agent’s website when they are actually looking to rent. Most people are not currently looking to rent, nor are they thinking of doing so in the near future. So the only way, apart from a ‘To Let board,’ of creating awareness of your brand is for them to walk or drive past your offices on a regular basis - day in, day out.
More important still is the role a high street presence plays in attracting landlords. Landlords naturally want to work with a letting agency that is active locally – and ideally round the corner from his/her property, remember that landlords are often elsewhere and the local touch is powerful. ln these times, knowing that your agency is still there – active, open and successful is crucial. We all know that the internet can be a deceptive place - whether it’s a lie about your age on a dating website or a phishing scam. But a successfully trading shop cannot be mimicked and for a landlord (as opposed to a seller) it's the trusting and enduring long term relationship with their letting agent that they crave. Shops convey this permanence, and project the ethos of their owners in a way that is hard to duplicate on-line.
So let the estate agents reduce their proposition to an on-line transaction, they need to reduce overheads and unlike the car market, no-one ever purchased a warranty when they bought a second hand house. But letting agents should grab the vacant shops and build their profile to secure a lucrative future.
Richard Martin
Chairman – Martin & Co (UK) Ltd
