UK Estate Agents Market Report 2021

The UK Estate Agents report identifies consumer attitudes towards residential and commercial property markets, stamp duty and affordability in the UK. This market report covers the market size, market forecast, market segmentation and industry analysis trends for the Estate Agents market in the UK.

Current Market Landscape

The pandemic saw agencies adopt new working practices across the industry, such as the use of virtual tours through the integration with online property portals. Other adaptations favoured the use of property technology, enabling and improving the efficiency of processes that could now be carried out remotely.

• The estate agents market grew by 5% to £10.9 billion in 2021.
• There was a 30% increase in the number of transactions that have taken place in 2021, matching 2019 levels of activity.
• Commercial estate agent activities were estimated to be worth £3.5 billion, accounting for the remaining 32%.

The stamp duty holiday led to a boom in activity in the housing market, with HMRC reporting a peak of almost 200,000 residential property transactions in June 2021. This saw the sector grow despite the major headwind of COVID-19 impacting its ability to operate.

Future Market Trends in Estate Agents 

The boom in house transactions has depleted the stock of available housing, which alongside a decrease in the rate of residential construction caused by supply issues and consequently rising costs, threatens to create a bottleneck in the market as existing homeowners find their choices limited.

This puts an even stronger impetus on using digital practices, as it allows agencies to overcome geographical barriers through the use of virtual tools and digital conveyancing to facilitate the home-buying process between parties at ever greater distances – synergising with consumer demand for larger homes with outdoor spaces at affordable prices.

Read on to discover more details or take a look at all of our UK Industrial market research.

Quickly understand

• The impact of COVID-19 on the estate agents market;
• Trends and developments in the residential and commercial property markets;
• The impact of the stamp duty holiday on residential and commercial property market activity;
• How the pandemic COVID-19 is accelerating existing trends in house preferences;
• How affordability is shaping the property market activity;
• How changes to taxation for landlords is driving a professionalisation in the buy-to-let segment.

Covered in this report

Brands: Connells Group, Countrywide, Foxtons, Purplebricks, Rightmove, Zoopla.

Expert analysis from a specialist in the field

This report, written by Francesco Salau, a leading analyst in the B2B sector, delivers in-depth commentary and analysis to highlight current trends and add expert context to the numbers.

The estate agents market was supported by the stamp duty holiday, which drove a boom in market activity in 2020 and into 2021. This helped offset losses seen in 2020 due to the closure of the housing market, and later cautiousness due to uncertainty over the pandemic. Future growth may be limited by a lack of housing stock, making ‘proptech’ more essential than ever to link buyers with sellers in regions that traditionally may have been unattractive, but is made feasible through practices such as virtual tours.

Francesco Salau
B2B Analyst