Winkworth has had a huge rise in applications from existing independent agents wanting to rebrand to the Winkworth name.
The firm’s CEO, Dominic Agace, said: “In the first two months of the year, the Winkworth website franchising page has seen a 49% increase in unique views compared with 2010.
“In an ongoing flat market, we are experiencing a significant increase in interest from existing agencies looking to grow their market share and average selling price, and who see joining the Winkworth brand as a means of achieving this.
“As a result we have seen a 165% increase this year on the same period of 2010 of existing independent businesses applying to rebrand to Winkworth.”
Last year, Haines in Newbury, Berkshire, converted to the Winkworth name.
Agace said that ten new franchises are expected to join the Winkworth network this year, and that a potential opening in the Far East is under consideration.
Winkworth launched a country house department at the end of 2010 which has so far resulted in £14m of instructions, 16 referrals and three sales. Agace expects this new activity to grow as it becomes established within the company’s network.
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Comments
Ive had a think about this and I might have been a bit rude about them earlier.
If you are about to open up your own new estate agency (particularly in London) then you can do a lot worse than brand it as Winkworth, all the normal nice bits about a franchise blah, blah…………….
However, if you have already done all the setting up, all the risk of going it alone, all the graft, all the aggro, all the brand development, reputation building and the rest of it and then bin all that to take another brand what is that saying about you?
Its like these Brits that emigrate and bang on about how brilliant Oz / Canada / New Zealand is and how crappy Britain is with its government, food, laws, economy, jobs………………..they didn’t make any thing here worth staying for so they are, by definition failures, you never get someone say, right, I have a great job, lovely house amazing family, im emigrating.
So, ( in a bit of a long winded way) do you see / hear agents saying they’ve built a great brand, good reputation and market share so they are going to rip the facia off, shut the web site down and call it something else?
Jonnie
I used to work for a franchise of Winkworth's YEARS ago - so no doubt it's all changed, but it is just that, a franchise.
If you can't make it as an independent (spelling?) in your area - why would rebranding as a franchise with all the extra cost save you?
So independent EAs struggling at the moment are keen to join a brand that has fingers in the only UK city where house prices are still rising.
This is news because...?
Nice to see everyone has a sense of humour today!! How long before they get taken down? I would say it will take atleast two hours as there never seems to be much feedback from EAT.
Nice, press release fever at Winkies, sound like they’ve just had a sales meeting that ended with ‘right, ill sort some press releases, that’ll do it’.
Good pal of mine does quite well on the dating web sites but ive never heard him say that he’s definitely going to get more sex just on the basis of more viewers of his profile so im not convinced on the unique visitor thing.
The rising number of applications though is happy news for Winkies though, depends on the actual number last year but if they went from 3 applications to 5 then some might accuse them of talking cobblers
Jonnie
Good morning to Winkworth, Northampton.......have a fabulous Friday !
Make new friends, locally and nationally !
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