Jon Byers is founder of leading prime London estate agents Anderson Rose
If you are thinking of buying or selling a home, like to take inspiration from home interiors or just have an interest or passion for property then your algorithm is likely full of estate agents or ‘propfluencers’ showing you around well-presented homes or showcasing a five-star lifestyle. Is this a recent phenomenon? Is it a blend of the social media influencer craze with the property market? Is it a trend soon to be replaced or is it here to stay and a tool to be utilised?
Ultimately, the numbers speak for themselves and following, engagement and interactions are on the rise, so how much importance should you place on this method of marketing when choosing an agent to sell your home?
Property marketing is in a different stratosphere compared to the start of my career in 1999. Back then, Primelocation.com was a new website that showcased the listings of some of the well-known national brands and was by no means all of market, there was no Rightmove or Zoopla and then, over a decade later, Onthemarket was launched to try and tame the monster that the property industry had created with the creation of the aforementioned portals.
Before the rise of the property portals, buyers and tenants would start their search by walking down their local High Street registering face-to-face with all of the estate agents and were typically inclined to choose the agent who had a strong local reputation and the promise of extensive marketing, which typically stretched to advertising in the local paper and at the right price point a luxury magazine such as Country Life or the Conde Nast titles.
Then in the Noughties the portals levelled the playing field by enabling all agents, large and small to list on the same medium but that made it harder for great agents to shine. By the Teens, self-service brands like Purple Bricks popped up to suggested to sellers and landlords that they didn’t really need an agent at all. That was transformative and served to cull the bad agents whilst challenging the good ones to prove their value.
Then in 2019, Netflix stumbled upon an instant hit – Selling Sunset – the show brought the glamour of high-end homes to the fore and put ‘Instagram Agents’ (those that operate almost entirely through social media) and propfluencers on the map.
Now that we are well into the 20s it’s getting rather interesting and I have to say that I am enjoying my job more now than I ever have! Why? Because “full-service estate agency” has prevailed and I feel that my role is more respected than at any time in my 26 years as an agent. Modern estate agency is more skilled, creative and complex than at any time since the invention of the property portals and that gives great agencies the ability to shine again and social media has provided the platform to showcase our true skills.
There was a time before social media where an estate agent’s value or work ethic in the house buying/selling process was questioned but now people see just how much we do.
That being said, as with anything there are two sides of the coin and whilst platforms such as Instagram and Tik Tok can showcase good agents, their listings and how they operate there are also some that can skew their size, role and influence to portray a very different picture to the reality, which in turn distorts the market. As a result, this can impact trust and belief.
So, the constant question for me as the Head of Anderson Rose is to decide what our model should be because since the start of the decade, estate agency has become divided into the following categories:
- Traditional full-service Estate Agents who do not do video and are not on social media or have a very minimal presence on social platforms.
- Social media influencers who sell/advertise property.
- Traditional full-service Estate Agents who do video and have a strong presence on social media.
- Self-service websites with a “local property expert” and a generic/corporate social media presence.
Anderson Rose was one of the first UK estate agencies to use video to enhance its marketing. I think I filmed my first in 2012 and back then most of my competitors thought I was crazy!
I did it to overcome the frustration I felt from buyers starting their search browsing listings on the portals rather than making themselves known to agents at the start. Video transported me onto the websites so that I had a better chance of “selling” to all these anonymous browsers. It worked and it gave Anderson Rose a USP over all my local competitors because none of them were doing it.
I had no doubt that at some stage it would change and that our USP would have to evolve from “we do video” to “we do the best video”.
The next step change was the COVID pandemic, which following a short freeze in operations across the industry and faced with dealing with a population that couldn’t leave their homes, social media, video and digital became the lifeblood of estate agency’s marketing and lead generation.
This accelerated the number of other agents who did videos (some of them back then were awful!) and, although that time was very stressful for me as I worked long hours to make my business survive, having videos for all my listings during lockdown enabled me to have enough content on line for sales to be agreed when other agents were playing catch up.
My real salvation came when I agreed a £3.6 million sale on the strength of my video! Post-Covid, many sellers and landlords now expect their agent to provide a video tour and provide a social media presence alongside photos and a floor plan but there is a broad range of quality and format.
Currently, our clients are more concerned about seeing the videos we produce uploaded to Rightmove and Zoopla and most need some enlightenment on the power of having their home promoted on social media, but the expectations for social media marketing are growing and a lot of this is down to propfluencers and how they merge luxury and glamour with a ‘standard’ property tour.
We have put most of our effort into filming in landscape for the portals, uploaded via our YouTube channel and I am proud of the quality that we now produce. Our focus from now is to grow our Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn by creating really good short form content in portrait format. We have over 4,000 followers on Instagram and TikTok and the goal is to add a nought to that number in the next year!
However, it remains a fine line to walk, as a traditional full-service estate agency that embraces social media we need to ensure that we showcase our strengths and expertise but also produce content that achieves the reach to make it productive (generate interest, leads, enquiries etc.) rather than superficial.
In my opinion, social media is a marketing tool that has simply replaced the old paper media and it is far more effective for us. The websites remain an important tool in our armoury where proactive buyers will find homes by searching in a specific location but the algorithms of the social media apps will send our content to people who have been interested in luxury homes. In short, to loosely quote that famous beer advert, it reaches the parts (people) other websites don’t reach and allows us to remain a legitimate ‘brand agency’ compared to an Instagram only agent that lives or dies by their algorithms.
So, should vendors use an Instagram agent or propfluencer and is Anderson Rose considered one?
Well, I believe that the best choice of agent is Number 3 – the Full-service Agent who does great video, is strong on Social Media and covers all the bases to reach as many potential buyers as possible.
I predict that Numbers 1 and 4 from the list above will not exist in the Prime Real Estate sector within the next few years if they don’t evolve.
Although I am putting my heart and soul into our social media content, marketing is only half of the job that we do for our clients. The other half requires us to be the trusted advisors, the problem solvers and the skilled brokers of complicated deals. Sales transactions can take forever if they are not managed well and the private rented sector has become incredibly complex. I am therefore just as focused on maintaining our 5-Star customer rating on Google.
Many “Instagram agents” are not on a customer review site, which is curious, don’t you think? Social Media has many benefits but sadly regulation is not one of them, so it opens the possibility of misconstruing results and services with little to no standards to abide by.
We relate to US Real Estate Agency, “Serhant”, led by Ryan Serhant and my mission is to become the UK’s equivalent by continuing to push the boundaries, be different and deliver the best results.
