In the turbulent property market, we’re seeing at the moment, particularly in the wake of the tenant fees ban within the lettings sector, agents across the country are making moves to ensure the future of their businesses. As such, it’s a testing time to ensure you are delivering as an agent, as a vast number of landlords are considering their position in the market and their operating costs. From our place in this market, we’re seeing an unexpected (but fortunate) influx of instructions.

With the impending fees ban looming we, as all agents will have done, looked at the impact it would have on the business and ways we could mitigate this impact. The opinion in the industry media was that every agent would need to increase their fees to landlords to stay in business and that this would cause discontent amongst landlords. The question, therefore, became what the right balance was between “taking the hit” and mitigating the loss. Whilst I won’t bore you with the ins and outs of our considerations and decisions, this background is important to the current trends we are seeing.  

At Eightfold Property (and throughout our time as Brighton Accommodation Agency) we made sure to keep our costs to both landlords and tenants as reasonable as possible. This has meant that we have been afforded a great deal of manoeuvrability in the market following the fees ban coming into place. We had suspected that this would bring us additional landlord enquiries from the more expensive agents in the market when they increased their already high fees to intolerable levels.

However, what we are in fact seeing are instructions coming from both sides! We are seeing the expected enquiries from those that were already stretched at the more expensive end of the market, that have decided to look elsewhere when an increase has been pushed on them. But what we weren’t expecting was the landlords coming to us from the cheaper agents.

When considering the cost to them, landlords are seeing that looking for the cheapest option isn’t bringing them the value they had hoped for, particularly where some are fast increasing their fees as well. In looking at the cost versus the benefit, landlords are seeing that the cheap agents aren’t delivering on their promises. This is a trend we’d thought would appear but hadn’t been expecting.

When spending so much time assessing the market and looking to understand your position in it, sometimes it is great to see it pay off, knowing that the quality being delivered and the reasonable price consideration begins to pay off, when those that bank on undercutting the competition (and not delivering), or getting as much money from a client as possible start to feel the pressure within the market.

Although, we don’t want to blow our own trumpet too much, as the current property market is and continues to be challenging for all those involved in it and more regulation and cost looks to be on the horizon. So we’ll watch this space a little more to see how it develops. Particularly considering the likely move in the near future to licence and regulate all agents, which will be pushing the question as to how capable agents are, as well as how expensive.

If you’d like to discuss marketing your property or discussing our costs further, give us a call at the office on 01273 672 999, or email lettings@eightfold.agency.