Readers of a certain age may remember 1983. The Space Shuttle Challenger made its first flight, Neil Kinnock was elected Labour leader,...
Archive
New year, old worries: what’s happening in the housing market? We’ve asked experts and collated forecasts, 15 in total. On the one...
07 January 2023
From: Features
Is it really just a year ago that we were nervously wondering whether yet another Christmas would be Covid-affected? Little did we...
10 December 2022
From: Features
I’ve just read an article saying that this is the time of the online estate agency. The time in question is, of...
26 November 2022
From: Features
I’ve been on Twitter for a decade and have 23,500 followers - a gratifying number and of those a couple of...
12 November 2022
From: Features
And…breathe. For a while back there, the only certainty for the housing market was uncertainty. That isn’t to say the election of Rishi...
29 October 2022
From: Features
How did the housing market transform from incredibly strong - almost too strong - early in the year, to a situation...
15 October 2022
From: Features
Who would be in the shoes of Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng? I don’t mean who would like their power, pay and...
01 October 2022
From: Features
The current period of national solidarity over the death of Queen Elizabeth II has embraced the world of property as it...
17 September 2022
From: Features
Some people will say: What problem? But they are getting fewer as the detrimental effect of increasing numbers of short lets on...
03 September 2022
From: Features
We are only a fortnight away from having a new Prime Minister, following a contest in which housing has played a...
20 August 2022
From: Features
Double-think, for those who have not read George Orwell, is when people are expected to accept two conflicting beliefs as truth,...
06 August 2022
From: Features
When it comes to housing policy, the Conservative MPs have given their party a choice between Tweedle Dum and Tweedle DumDum. Rishi...
23 July 2022
From: Features
It’s often fashionable to criticise trade bodies and official groups, but right now I think that’s absolutely inappropriate. In well over 20...
25 June 2022
From: Features
This question is not as flippant as it sounds because over recent years the status of the private landlord has taken...
11 June 2022
From: Features
In retrospect, it was perhaps inevitable that the infamous dead cat would come into the debate over government housing targets and...
21 May 2022
From: Features
What a difference two months and some local elections make. Cast your minds back to March 9 and the annual report of...
07 May 2022
From: Features
It’s easy to overestimate the importance of something in one’s own industry or work, but there seems good reason for believing...
23 April 2022
From: Features
For the record, this isn’t my last Industry Views for Estate Agent Today, although by the time you read this I'll be...
02 April 2022
From: Features
If you want to sex-up the Chancellor’s financial statement scheduled for lunchtime on Wednesday, you’d call it a Budget or a...
19 March 2022
From: Features
This week, you will have all seen the sad news that Graham Norwood is stepping down as editor of Estate Agent...
19 March 2022
From: Features
Almost exactly a decade ago I wrote a blog on the back of a spate on mainstream news stories about prime...
05 March 2022
From: Features
If the UK and its allies have been played by Russia over the Ukraine ‘invasion’, and it’s beginning to look that...
19 February 2022
From: Features
Here’s the odd thing about interest rates - we all care about them, but they don’t directly affect that many people...
05 February 2022
From: Features
22 January 2022
From: Features
At the risk of mixing my metaphors, any mention of energy has become something of a blue touch paper in the...
08 January 2022
From: Features
The team at Estate Agent Today and our publisher, Angels Media, wish all agents a very prosperous New Year. Thank you for your...
31 December 2021
From: Breaking News
We’ve had a terrific display of agency and supplier videos running every weekday since late November - a wonderful lead-in to...
24 December 2021
From: Breaking News
We all know what did happen in 2021 - Covid and more Covid, the stamp duty holiday frenzy, a soaring rental...
11 December 2021
From: Features
Let’s begin with total transparency from this author: I believe there’s a place for Build To Rent in the wider portfolio...
27 November 2021
From: Features
I’ve never written the three letters ‘EPC’ more often than I have in the past week. Law changes for the private rental...
13 November 2021
From: Features
We’ve probably all learned to be a little less cynical about politicians in recent weeks, given the tragic events. We perhaps...
30 October 2021
From: Features
Within weeks the focus of the industry will be on the White Paper to be issued on rental reform before Christmas. Let’s...
16 October 2021
From: Features
By the time I next write this column, we’ll be just days before the next Budget and Autumn Statement. So I’ll...
02 October 2021
From: Features
Few political policies have such a ring of the past as rent controls - they were last seen in this country...
04 September 2021
From: Features
21 August 2021
From: Features
There’s already plenty of talk about autumn - depressing huh? - with agents pondering how the housing market will respond to...
07 August 2021
From: Features
There’s gathering momentum to do ‘something’ about the unfairness of council tax and stamp duty. This isn’t new in principle. Agents have...
24 July 2021
From: Features
At first sight it’s a tough ask to defend holiday homes when there’s evidence that many who want to buy can’t,...
10 July 2021
From: Features
I recently saw a fly-through video for a home on sale for well over £2m. The imagery was good (made better by...
26 June 2021
From: Features
Right now it seems that another day means another house price record, an all-time high for transactions, and a conveyancing log-jam...
12 June 2021
From: Features
Books about property are, relatively speaking, commonplace - books by estate agents are far less so, hence the interest in The...
29 May 2021
From: Features
It’s been quite a week for the rental sector. Lettings agents and landlords have had such a torrid time in recent years...
15 May 2021
From: Features
Local elections rarely set the pulse racing and this year’s poll on Thursday faces a similar problem. But this time, it’s a...
01 May 2021
From: Features
For many, the funeral of HRH Prince Philip will be a solemn affair, while for some it will also be a...
17 April 2021
From: Features
The launch of Boomin has been and gone with, perhaps, something less than its expected fanfare of publicity. Of course there are...
03 April 2021
From: Features
Purplebricks is now part of the mainstream landscape of British estate agency. There - I said it. An agency whose whispered name...
20 March 2021
From: Features
One of the biggest TV hits of lockdown has been the Netflix show Call My Agent! It’s a surprise success, perhaps, because...
06 March 2021
From: Features
When it comes to communications, Propertymark could do with a lot fewer confidentiality agreements and a lot more transparency. And I...
20 February 2021
From: Features
There is no scientific formula, no list of must-have elements in a successful campaign. That’s especially the case for a campaign involving...
06 February 2021
From: Features
There’s been a flurry of recent activity involving agencies quoted on the London Stock Exchange: Hunters, The Property Franchise Group and...
23 January 2021
From: Features
Just a week ago, I thought it was all over. Christmas and New Year had gone, as had the passionate calls...
09 January 2021
From: Features
Here’s hoping you managed to have as good a Christmas and New Year as Covid rules allowed. Journalism in early January is...
02 January 2021
From: Features
The industry seems almost back to normal. Not the ‘new normal’ we spoke so much of a few weeks and months ago,...
12 December 2020
From: Features
The agency industry may look back on this year and say: “Well...to be honest we didn’t really see it coming.” No, no,...
28 November 2020
From: Features
With a new President elected and the old one reluctant to move out, this is a good time to see how...
14 November 2020
From: Features
“I’ve got 47 years of experience as an agent. Do I still have to get a qualification?” asked one attendee at...
31 October 2020
From: Features
Book review by Graham Norwood, editor of Estate Agent Today, Letting Agent Today and Landlord Today. If a letting agent wants to...
17 October 2020
From: Features
We all know what the problem is, but what’s the solution? The problem is that landlords, thinking they offer a valuable service...
03 October 2020
From: Features
It’s no surprise the mainstream news remains dominated by coronavirus - not so much the actual effect of it right now,...
05 September 2020
From: Features
Hindsight is 20-20 vision, of course, and we can all see things we did ‘then’ that we would not do ‘now’....
22 August 2020
From: Features
It must have been a close thing on Friday as to whose faces were looking the most glum - those at...
08 August 2020
From: Features
If a week is a long time in politics (an old phrase, for younger readers), then a year is a very long...
25 July 2020
From: Features
You have to feel for Rishi Sunak - well, at least a little. Leave to one side that he carries more presentational...
11 July 2020
From: Features
It may be that by the time you read this it’s all over for Robert Jenrick, the Secretary of State for...
27 June 2020
From: Features
Back in the day, party politics and the private rental sector used to be straightforward. Conservatives were pro-landlord, Labour were pro-tenant, while...
13 June 2020
From: Features
Dominic Cummings has been at worst a cause of huge anger to a nation that’s already extremely anxious. At best, he’s been...
30 May 2020
From: Features
Rightmove has taken the unusual step this weekend of issuing its usual monthly asking price index on a Saturday instead of...
16 May 2020
From: Features
The coming week’s stories in the mainstream media - inevitably focused on Coronavirus - will be dominated by two things. Firstly there...
02 May 2020
From: Features
If it’s really the case that estate agents’ offices could be in the category of High Street premises first allowed to...
18 April 2020
From: Features
There’s a sense that we really are on the verge of a huge change in the industry. It’s too early to be...
04 April 2020
From: Features
The extraordinary past week of anger over portals’ fees plus early-warning statements like that from Foxtons indicate the anxiety in the...
21 March 2020
From: Features
It may be that we’re facing another year - make that yet another year - of disruption in the housing market. Coronavirus...
07 March 2020
From: Features
More than 18 months on from the acquisition of ZPG for £2.2 billion by Silver Lake Partners, a US private equity...
29 February 2020
From: Features
There’s something of a conspiracy of silence over the problem of short lets. That is a stark claim but many siren voices...
22 February 2020
From: Features
Not for the first time, a government policy on housing ends up begging more questions than it provides answers - but...
08 February 2020
From: Features
Suddenly Brexit Day is nearly here. It may have taken three and a half years from the Referendum but the UK will,...
25 January 2020
From: Features
In six years of editing Estate Agent Today, some of my most dramatic moments have been covering the troubles - some...
11 January 2020
From: Features
After a year dogged by Brexit deadlock, political turmoil, and slow growth, estate agents’ confidence in the property market hit a...
04 January 2020
From: Features
A new year dawns - but will 2020 bring new change for the agency industry now that the market appears to...
28 December 2019
From: Features
This is our last edition of Estate Agent Today until Friday December 27 and everyone at Angels Media, EAT and the...
24 December 2019
From: Breaking News
There are reasons to be optimistic that a majority government will improve the housing market, simply by ending political and economic...
21 December 2019
From: Features
With Brexit still unresolved, the domestic agenda has been pushed from the headlines by the seemingly overwhelming public and political discord...
07 December 2019
From: Features
There used to be a consolation for some estate agents at this time of year - while it was wintry and...
07 December 2019
From: Features
Reservation Agreements are the subject of the moment in the agency industry. The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government is to...
09 November 2019
From: Features
There are many adjectives that can be applied to Boris Johnson, probably very few of them complimentary, but there’s one that...
26 October 2019
From: Features
When renting a property out, letting agents and landlords recognise that it is important to take a deposit from the tenant...
12 October 2019
From: Features
There’s a clear change of mood music in the country now regarding environmental issues. You don’t need to be old to remember...
28 September 2019
From: Features
If you thought - perhaps hoped - that five weeks of prorogued Parliament meant a break from politics, think again: the...
14 September 2019
From: Features
It’s been quite a week for news so you might have missed this story - there is yet another boost for...
31 August 2019
From: Features
It’s that time again. Each year I take a look at newspaper readership - not from the angle of journalists, but...
17 August 2019
From: Features
Have you asked yourself why technology is so important in letting agency today? Just look around and you will know why. Almost...
03 August 2019
From: Features
I missed the biggest property story of the week and it’s only scant consolation that almost everyone else seemed to miss it...
03 August 2019
From: Features
The industry press has given substantial space to recommendations from the Regulation of Property Agents, the government’s working party which has...
20 July 2019
From: Features
Theresa May arrived in Downing Street some three years ago - but her premiership has not been a smooth ride. As she...
06 July 2019
From: Features
Britain lives in fundamentalist black-and-white times - all the more surprising when the country's most divisive point of contention sits on...
22 June 2019
From: Features
Emoov and Countrywide: what a pair, observers might say. They present a tale of two failures - although, in the case of...
08 June 2019
From: Features
While media attention has been on Theresa May, Brexit and the Tories, chatter in the agency industry has been about what...
25 May 2019
From: Features
It’s clear that some agents are not fans of Trading Standards officers, described in the comments sections of the trade press...