Will us Letting Agents go the same way as MONARCH?

by | Oct 10, 2017 | Community | 0 comments

Earlier this month, I was part of the 110,000 people that had to be “repatriated” to the UK, because of the Monarch demise, I was on the last Monarch flight out of Birmingham, before they announced at 4am, on Sunday morning, the company had gone BUST.

What a shock! The first major tumbling of a leading airline, the first major airline victim of the gig economy and the “no frills” competition…

Monarch tried to stick to their guns and continue to offer a quality service and not “join” the cheap airlines, and suffered as a result.

This is an eye opener, and we need to take note… Is this what’s going to happen to many letting agents too?

In the same way, us agents are being attacked by “cheap fees” competition, all the time, (offering a fraction of the service for a fraction of the price) we are also being attacked by the “gig” economy, with the call centre agents encroaching on our patch, at the same time, the government is about to remove somewhere between 10-25% of our turnover from us!

So I see we have 3 URGENT issues to deal with QUICKLY:

  • 1 The Tenant Fee Ban- Get this replaced FAST (experts reckon we have around 1 year left) so due to the length of our agency contracts, changes need to be made NOW.
  • 2 The HIGH levels of competition and CHEAP FEE agents – We need to make sure we know how to beat them and add value to our offering, so that we don’t end up like Monarch.
  • 3 The Call Centre Agents- the GIG economy, we need to modernise and systemise our businesses, and stop doing so much for FREE, and instead build high value offerings, and demonstrate our differences to the online.

That’s quite a tough task, so how can we do all of the above whilst still trying to run our businesses?

It’s a case of almost going back to the drawing board… The way we used to do things, will not see us into the next decade, we need to evolve, or disappear.

To replace the tenant fees, there are various things we can do, one of which is to educate our customers on what we actually do for our fee. Many still believe we just forward the rent on and do a bit of maintenance, or in some cases as is claimed “photocopy a bit of paper” for a move in… We need to reeducate our landlords, (and tenants) find ways to let them know exactly what we do every day to keep them safe, then when they understand what we do, restructure your charges to match the level of work they want you to do for them and get paid for what you do…

To stand out from the competition and beat the cheap agents, we need to ermmm… STAND OUT! Find ways to be different, be somebody and be the one that people want to deal with… be in front of your avatar, saying the right things permanently.

To beat the call centers, the problem is, we have taken on too much for very little fee. Over the years we have added more and more tasks onto our job, but not increased our fees, the call centers just do the basic management tasks, yet we do EVERYTHING! that’s how they can beat our fees (nothing to do with the high street location, that’s just a smokescreen)

To find out more about how to beat these challenges, find out here www.propertyagentscircle.co.uk/intensive