The biggest day in the property awards calendar finally arrives tomorrow when The ESTAS are held at the Hilton Park Lane in London.
It's the 12th year of the awards and they will once again be hosted by TV property expert Phil Spencer. A record 800 guests will see first hand which agents, brokers and suppliers will walk away with a coveted gold ESTA.
The ESTAS hold a special place in the industry says Simon Brown, managing director of The ESTAS Group.
Winners are selected purely on the feedback we receive from customers so it really is a true reflection of firms efforts to provide the best service they can over the last year. For the shortlisted and winning firms it's quite an emotional day. Not only is it an honour to be judged the best based on client feedback but it also provides an incredibly powerful marketing tool for the winners he says.
As well as sponsoring the Supplier of the Year category, Angels Media - publisher of Estate Agent Today, Letting Agent Today, Landlord Today and several other titles - is the Official Media Partner so don't miss next week's features on the winners.
Official ESTA Partners for 2015 are Zoopla Property Group, Absolutely Magazine, Agency Express, Angels Media, Easymatch, Expert Agent; Guild of Lettings Management; Mortgage Brain; Onboard Pro; and Veyo.
Comments
RD- I would have to agree with you on this one. In the counties P properties covers, things do move slowly. Time, patience and an ability to still proactively advertise and push a property even after it has been on the market for some time is what makes a good agent.
Keeping an eye out for good opportunities and always doing what is best for the client are not, in theory, a difficult thing to achieve. Amazing how many agents do fail to achieve it.
@rob davies.....So, to clarify, you think that an agent who sells 10 properties in ANY location and gets 10 good feedbacks (100% score) is a better agent in their location than one who sells 100 houses but only gets 90 positive votes/returns from clients and so scores only 90%. In spite of having 80 MORE pleased clients than the other agent the other agent would be declared as the best agent in that area
Why should success merely be judged on how many properties are sold/let Surely customer satisfaction is just as important By your logic, the estate agent who sells/lets the most properties in the year should win the top prize, regardless of customer satisfaction.
You also fail to take into account location. In a rural part of North Yorkshire or Somerset, for example, which would have quite a sparse population, it's not beyond the realms of possibility that only a handful of sales would be carried out each year. Does that make these estate agents bad, even if they're doing a fantastic job on all the sales they carry out
Not everywhere is as fast-paced and helter-skelter as London or other major cities. Rural agents tend to do things at a slower pace but with higher levels of customer care and satisfaction. If a company has sold 10 houses and done a fantastic job on all those 10 houses, I can't see why they're not deserving of the award. If they were winning most properties sold or most money made, that would be a different matter. Not everything is about profit, though. Not even in our industry.
I don't know how you can say that this is the biggest day in the property awards calendar
Because the awards are "voted for" by customers it doesn't take into account anything else the agency does. In previous years the "estate agent of the year in the entire uk" has been won by agents that only sold a handful of properties in that year. As each "vote" isn't verified it lacks transparency in my view. Surely customer response is only relevant if you have sold/let a large % of the properties in your area......eg you could sell just 10 houses in an entire year, get 10 positive responses from your buyers and sellers and achieve "100%" which could win you an Esta for your region or nationally. This can't be right.
Yes customers do the voting, that's better than a normal panel but its pretty easy to find 'customers'. ;)
It's a great event - very well organised by Simon & Sarah and always the highlight of our year. The really nice thing is the awards genuinely recognise the best agents in the industry - why because its the customers who do the voting!