The Predictable Summer Test for Estate Agencies
Co Founder and COO ·
Is this summer period, history repeating itself that you could actually be ready for? We're in the middle of a proper heatwave and the property world is doing exactly what it does every single year when summer arrives like this.
Sales approach a period where sellers go away, decisions slow down and viewings get pushed because a pint in the beer garden or an ice cream in the park beats a trip to a house viewing in 35 degrees. The phone rings less and it's tempting to take the foot off the gas because the pressure's off and there are excuses you can point to.
Walk across to the lettings desks though and it's the opposite world entirely. Things are a bit chaotic over there, tenancies are stacking up, the team's down a couple of people to annual leave and everyone left is covering more ground than usual. It doesn't feel like a crisis day to day, it just feels like another hard week as all those peak season deals start moving in and there's just a lot of back and forth across landlord, tenants and the PM team.
The thing that gets me every year is that none of this is a surprise. We know it's coming. We know roughly when and we know which side of the business it hits and how. It's about as predictable as anything gets in this industry but I don't get a sense that we do enough to get ready for it, we do enough to deal with it but I can guarantee there are opportunities falling through the cracks. That's the bit worth changing, not the weather.
On the sales side, this is exactly the moment to tighten response times, not relax them. The buyer who does enquire in a heatwave is usually serious, not browsing. A slow reply now costs more than it would in a busy March because there isn't a queue of other buyers behind them to fall back on.
On the lettings side, this is the moment to actually ramp up coverage rather than just absorb the extra load and hope it holds. More cover on maintenance triage, tighter follow up on access requests and certificates, earlier flags on anything time sensitive, better gathering of feedback from viewings and chasing offers.
None of that needs a bigger team for this time of the year. It needs deciding, ahead of time, that this is coming the same way it came last year and the summer period before that and doing something about it before the gap shows up, rather than explaining it afterwards.
Speak to us at instep.ai about how we can help you do just that and still make time for a pint in the sun.