Statistics from the 500 Best and Worst Rated Estate and Letting Agents based on customer reviews on allAgents
posted on 17/2/2012 by Martin M
They say big is not necessarily best and it seems this is particularly true in the residential property marketplace when it comes to customer satisfaction. allAgents are publishing some interesting statistics on the 500 best rated and 500 worst rated property companies in the UK as voted for by the public on its popular Estate Agent and Letting Agent review site allAgents.co.uk. The data compares the levels of favourable and disapproving reviews achieved by Agents in four different branch size categories. The review portal has also released the similar ranking results for individual branches of all companies.
In the league of the 500 best agents, allAgents found that the small single branch companies faired the best for positive customer service reviews with 67% of the places. There is no good news here for the larger chains (companies with more than 30 offices), placing just one firm in the top rated 500. Medium sized businesses (10-30 branches) didn't fair much better with only 12.
Narrowing the list down to the best rated 100 firms, the ratio of branch size to places remains almost the same with the single large chain survivor bucking the trend and making the cut at an impressive number 4 in the list.
At the other end of the customer feedback performance league, of the 500 worst rated agents, there is better news for large firms polling only 1.5% here - however they wont be cracking open the bubbly just yet as all of the 7 companies in the 500 made the top 10 of the bottom ranked agents. The majority group again was the single office operators with 55% of the 'disapproving to shocking' ranking places and the medium chain agents (10-30 offices) coming a close second with 20%.
When allAgents broke the company data down to individual branches (ranking each office/site of every company as a single agent) it was clear that some of the big branch number players have some very highly rated branches and what stands out is that without the burden of being dragged down by the overall chain performance, these branches could be up their with the country's best rated providers .
The top 100 ranked individual branches are again dominated by the small companies and the single branch agents with 76% of the places coming from these categories. The best performing medium and large chain branches pulled these categories up to 24% of the good praise places and this is their most favourable showing in all of the statistics. In a wider poll of the best 500 rated branches they did even better, capturing 28% of the representation.
Ranked in the worst rated branches poll in the UK, the large chain sector lost the favourable ground they made up in the best branch sector by doubling their presence in table of worst rated 500 and increasing places in the worst 100 by 48%. This a statistic that was expected with the poorer performing big sector agents pushing the smaller firms out of this list into the - average bracket.
So the public have spoken when it comes to where to get good customer service and identifying the property heroes and villains. The feedback highlights that we are more likely to have a good property experience with a smaller company. However there are exceptions and so it is definitely well worth searching for customer reviews for every property agent before you short-list or buy.
These findings are based on all of the agents and reviews on the directory but do not form part of the data collated for the forthcoming 2012 allAgents Estate and Letting Agent Annual Awards.
Best Branches Top 100
Individual agent offices 25
Small Chain(agents with 2-9 offices) 51
Medium Chain (agents with 10-30) 16
National Chain (agents with 30+) 8
Best Branches Top 500
Individual agent offices 189
Small Chain(agents with 2-9 offices) 182
Medium Chain (agents with 10-30) 81
National Chain (agents with 30+) 49
Worst Branches Top 100
Individual agent offices 53
Small Chain(agents with 2-9 offices) 33
Medium Chain (agents with 10-30) 6
National Chain (agents with 30+) 8
Worst Branches Top 500
Individual agent offices 236
Small Chain(agents with 2-9 offices) 141
Medium Chain (agents with 10-30) 35
National Chain (agents with 30+) 88
Best Agent Top 100
Individual agent offices 32
Small Chain(agents with 2-9 offices) 50
Medium Chain (agents with 10-30) 17
National Chain (agents with 30+) 1
Best Agent Top 500
Individual agent offices 336
Small Chain(agents with 2-9 offices) 151
BMedium Chain (agents with 10-30) 12
National Chain (agents with 30+) 1
Worst Agent Top 100
Individual agent offices 45
Small Chain(agents with 2-9 offices) 41
Medium Chain (agents with 10-30) 9
National Chain (agents with 30+) 5
Worst Agent Top 500
Individual agent offices 275
Small Chain(agents with 2-9 offices) 201
Medium Chain (agents with 10-30) 13