Are industry awards worth winning?

TV presenter Phil Spencer announced the winners at the 20th ESTAS Awards in October

As most of you will know The ESTAS Awards, which celebrated their 20^th edition this year, are unique as winners are selected purely on verified customer reviews completed at the end of the property transaction via ESTAS customer review platform. This methodology provides a highly accurate overview of the standard of service that’s been delivered to the end client and we believe this fact provides a highly valuable benefit to the winning firms. 

However winning isn’t easy, it requires a concerted effort of collating outstanding customer reviews which means delivering exceptional service on a week by week, month by month basis. It's also not a cheap day out to attend the awards luncheon so is it worth investing the time and money? Well we thought it was best to ask the people that really know, some of our 2023 ESTAS winners…

Infinity Property Solutions based in Harrow, Middlesex walked away with the Grand Prix Gold Award for Lettings (Landlords) category to add to their haul of ESTAS Awards since they joined the community in 2019.  Satish Patel, Director said “The gold as voted by landlords across the whole of  the UK is particularly special for us, not just to know that we’re doing a great job but also for pitching to new landlords as proof that we do what we say we’re going to do for them”

Kamlesh Padhra, also a Director at Affinity added “We’ve been working with the ESTAS since 2018 and the benefits to us as a boutique agency are significant, from having the credibility of the ESTAS brand across our boards to the boost it provides in terms of Google reviews; quite literally, our partnership with the ESTAS helps us to ‘punch above our weight’ in terms of reinforcing and endorsing our brand and what we stand for in our local area.”

Kam & Satish and the Affinity team collect their trophy on stage

“The best estate agency awards scheme has evolved over time to also become the number one review site for this industry”

Another big winner was the Merseyside based agent Hewitt Adams who picked up gold for the North West region. Commenting about ESTAS, Director Ben

Adams said “The original and the best estate agency awards scheme has evolved over time to also become the number one review site for this industry. This is still one of our primary resources when winning new customers. But as much as anything, the chance to attend the awards each year provides us as a business an opportunity to reward our hardworking teams with an unforgettable day out each year.

ESTAS isn’t just for the estate and letting agents of the UK, we also recognise the conveyancing and mortgage broker sectors. 

AV Rillo Conveyancing won the Best National Conveyancer Award. Tony Piccirillo, Co-Founder and Partner explained what winning this year meant, “This year, our ESTAS awards were even more important than ever because of the prestige they add to our brand when compared with our competitors, due to the fact that the ESTAS is widely respected and recognised by consumers.”  

‘The ESTAS awards are special because they are entirely based on consumer feedback’

Tony continued, “Winning this award means that our staff feel ‘seen’ for all their hard work over the past year, which then encourages them to continue with their efforts. Winning awards at The ESTAS is great to retain and recruit good people, because they illustrate to any potential new recruits that when they join us, their work is valued both internally and externally.” 

Thomas Legal, the Gloucester based property lawyers walked away with the Grand Prix Best Conveyancer Office in the UK.  Chris Barry, Business Development Director, told us, “The ESTAS is the only review platform we use for two main reasons; firstly, it’s consumer friendly, easy to use and provides us with the opportunity to garner honest feedback from our clients.  Secondly, the fact that the client can easily convert their feedback into a Google review is a huge advantage for us, as it really helps our SEO which in turn, increases online awareness and generates new enquiries.” 

Thomas Legal Gloucester receive their Grand Prix ESTAS award in front of 1,000 of the UK’s top property professionals

‘ESTAS is now such a recognised brand, it’s a mark of excellence when other property professionals are conducting their due diligence on us’

Chris continued, “We also find that, with approximately half of our business referred to us by our agent and mortgage broker partners, as the ESTAS is now such a recognised brand, it’s a mark of excellence when other property professionals are conducting their due diligence on us.  So to say that we’re over the moon with our win this year would be an understatement.”

From the financial services sector, Affinity Mortgages scooped the 2023 Grand Prix Best Mortgage Broker Office in the UK.  Having been runners up in 2022, Jamie Lewis, Managing Director, Affinity Mortgages was delighted with his teams’ achievement. “We’ve been working with the ESTAS to collect customer reviews since 2016 and they are now so important to our business that we target our team to collect them. Our award this year really has blown us away, as we’ve never won Gold at the ESTAS previously,” said Jamie.

“Coming away with Silver last year, which was of course amazing, meant that our focus after the 2022 event was very much ‘we want to win gold in 2023’, so for our team to work consistently towards that goal over the last twelve months and achieve it has been a massive boost for us, as it’s a direct result of the collective efforts and hard work of everyone who works with us.”

The Affinity team receive their trophies from Phil Spencer

We’d like to say a huge congratulations again to every one of our 2023 winners.

To find out how your firm can get involved in The ESTAS for next year contact us here