Estate Agency Franchise Questions

Compliance is really important to our regulated industry because you can get into hot water if you aren’t compliant.

Franchising helps protect you against that. We provide you with the compliance methods to use & audit you every year to make sure you’re using them.

Each brand has their own brand standards. Ours are clearly set out in our manual. One of the considerations of acquiring an independent business is to refurbish up to the necessary brand standards that we have.

We allow time for transition as it helps with cashflow & to ensure that the reputation of the existing business is preserved. You can imagine that J S Smith has been the only estate agent that’s in town for 50 years, shutting it overnight and putting the brand outside the door is not the best marketing move you’ll ever make.

Our managed marketing team will help you do that and there is a very transition brand process to help you do that.

But you will have to transition over an agreed period of time to whatever the brand standards are and that cost is accounted into the business plan we put forward.

No. There are many very successful franchisees who had never been estate agents or letting agents before.

We provide intensive training to prepare you for the estate & lettings industry. You do need to have an aptitude for training and the willingness to undergo & take onboard the training.

We usually say it’ll take three months. The reason for that is we have four induction training courses a year.

Every single person who joins our franchise must attend the induction training course. It would be irresponsible for us to set people off running a business in our sector unless we train them.

That includes people who’ve been in our sector for years. We often get told “I’ve been an estate agent and I’ve been a letting agent for 20 years, do you you want me to be trained to buy this business?” The answer is yes.

We’ve met many of them at the end of our four-week intensive training course and they are always glad they attended and come away learning things they never knew.

Well, for the induction training, you need to learn all the methodology we use to go to market.

There’s also the franchise agreement you’re signing up to. We need to know that you’ve read it, understood it and so on.

We don’t just offer induction training, you’ll be provided with ongoing training to ensure you can meet the challenges of a dynamic market.

In order to provide the best information & consistency across all offices, we we have a dedicated, bespoke software a known as SME, which is the requirement for all franchisees to use.

It does cost to install and operate but it’s heavily subsidized by the Belvoir Group and is also supported and managed by us as well.

It’s also a tried and trusted means to help you to operate your business satisfactorily so that you can report back on progress to us and we can report back to you.

Utilising their own website is the key, because that way you’re getting a captive audience into your brand rather than using the bigger portals, which will have everybody on there.

We have a very intricate and close communication with the the Central Office and the franchise network, and also regionally, the franchise have a good communication with each other.

My office is at Grantham Central Office, where all day long, we receive inquiries from people who want to join franchising. We also interact with experienced individuals, as well as those who are less experienced or have no experience at all.

Yes. What you can’t do is sell it outside of the franchise within the brand auspices and the brand parameters in terms of contracts and so on.

I would be prepared to say that people who join our franchise and follow our model and the advice and use the advice and support we have, are more likely to be profitable than those that don’t.

No is the short answer. You know, there’s no specific degree entry level that you would get in a lot of jobs. I think anybody who wants to come into the industry really should have some key skills, though. I think certainly being a good communicator is massive, wanting to work with people, both with your staff, your client base, and everybody that you deal with day-to-day.

The first thing to do would be to give us a call because we can help. Any business owners out there who want to inquire about what their business is worth, then we’re happy to have those discussions and give them a real guide as to what the market is doing and how we can help them.