Four Surprising Facts About the Premium Market...

Simon Leadbetter, Marie Fritz, and I went into these in a special one-off podcast we called ‘Prime Cut’, which you can check out here if you prefer to watch or listen: https://youtu.be/EhZ7BbkW-fE?si=JSAyL7boerzSKL3O

Properties priced over £600,000 contribute a 55% of total industry fees despite only accounting for 17% of instructions. 

Every time I mention this I have to go back and check myself but it’s correct… 

This is because of higher average house prices, multiplied by higher average fees (which I’ll get on to in a sec), and still (relatively) high numbers of sales means that this is the most lucrative part of the property market to target.

For an average house price across the country (£267,000), agents earn £2,976. (1.1% fee). 

For the starting price of premium sales, so a property worth £600,000, agents earn £7,200 (1.2% average fee) 

But that even that doesn’t tell the full story… for agents operating above £600,000, the average house price is actually £1,140,000, and the average fee is 1.6%. So these agents earn £18,240 per transaction. 

That’s SIX times the income per transaction…

The short answer is investment. 

The survey results showed premium agents invest 13% more than their volume counterparts in: 

More Marketing – both online and offline marketing investment (offline being direct mail, public relations, magazines and tailored letters). 

Socials – premium agents are on more channels, much more likely to have prominent Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and TikTok accounts than volume agents who are more likely to focus on one channel (Facebook). 

Branding – high investment in their personal brand, as well as a business brand delivering scale, marketing exposure, trust and confidence to sellers. 

Outsourcing – high value videography, photography, staging & styling, and collaborations.

 

Personal Service – the most successful premium agents are the vendors sole point of contact from MA to completion, high contact and high feedback levels, and more of an ‘always on’ tailored approach to communication.

(Obviously this is a huge subject summarised for the sake of this article!) 

Something we didn’t expect to find is that agents in the premium market ‘suffer’ less:

Less discrimination: premium agents were 25% less likely to encounter discrimination from colleagues, and 20% less from clients. 

Better mental health: to be fair here, its actually that volume agents encounter MORE mental health issues than the national average! 40% of them report mental health issues, whereas only 25% of premium agents reported similarly (the national average is around 24%). 

Less burnout: probably linked to mental health above, but volume agents report more ‘burnout’, likely due to high volume targets set. Whereas premium agents, due to the nature of their work, can be both more selective with their clients, are rewarded better for their work, and have less volume to contend with so they can give the service levels they want to. 

I would urge you to participate in the Voice of the Agent 2025, its free, doesn’t take long to complete, and you can compare your agency with the rest of the country, not to mention participating in the largest survey of its kind… 

Thank you!!! We can’t wait to deliver 2025’s ‘Prime Cut’ for you next year. 

David Lindley.