LSL isn't waiting for the housing market to crash before closing branches and laying off staff. It's doing it now - after just a couple of months of small decreases in the house price index.
Of course it's volume rather than prices that makes estate agents money. And the volume of transactions does seem to have been drying up.
The last couple of years have seen estate agents investing in new branches and equally in setting up new divisions. I've just been researching the sector for one of the trade publications and it's interesting to see how many estate agents have set up a new homes business in the last couple of years, or moved into lettings agency - obviously driven by demand from buy to let landlords. New branches in property 'hot spots' will be the first to go - particularly those, I'd guess, with a lot of one bedroom city centre flats on the books.
But I wonder whether any of these branches will ever re-open? The other trend I noticed was for agents to move off the High Street. New breeds of agency are phone based or internet based,and even 'traditional' agencies like Keith Pattinson are advertising for home-based agents to telework besides the existing branch structure. I wouldn't mind betting that the more innovative agents are going to establish themselves very nicely with their low cost structures by the time we see a pick-up - and if they've done well out of fleeing the High Street, will they ever want to come back?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment