Newcastle upon Tyne

Estate agents busiest battling the market backlog in these cities

Katie Court
Authored by Katie Court
Posted: Friday, March 12, 2021 - 10:34

The UK’s busiest agents can currently be found in Aberdeen, a city where each individual estate agency branch currently has an average of 29 sales listings on its books.

Second on the list is Newcastle-Upon-Tyne, where each branch currently has an average of 28 for-sale properties listed.

Next is Newport with 27 properties per branch, and then Liverpool and London round off the Top five, joint at 26 properties per branch.

Following the Chancellor’s confirmation that the SDLT holiday will be extended through to the end of June, it’s likely that an influx of buyers and sellers are going to enter the market in the period of time between national lockdown easing, vaccination rates increasing, and the SDLT holiday window closing.

If so, those cities with the busiest agents are likely to be the same ones where completing transactions is going to take the longest.

This observation can also be reversed to indicate in which UK cities transactions are likely to be completed in the shortest timescale.

Glasgow, with a total of 122 estate agency branches (7th most in the UK), is the place to be for fast transactions because there are currently a total of 989 properties listed in the city, which means each branch is only handling an average of 8.

Second is Leeds with just 11 properties per branch, followed by Bradford with 12, Bristol with 13, and Oxford with 14.

WiggyWam CEO, Silas J. Lees MRICS, says:

“The extension to the SDLT holiday will undoubtedly lead to more pressure on agents to make hay while the sun shines. Not least in those cities where agents are already juggling a lot of work.

“However, it could well be the additional burden on lawyers, not agents, which turns out to be the straw that breaks the camel's back, ultimately leading to too many deals not being completed in time.

“Now more than ever, agents need to box clever by streamlining the conveyancing bottleneck as much as possible. Agents plugging into our conveyancing concierge service can get deals exchanged in half the time, guaranteed.”

Top 5 Cities: Most Properties For-Sale Per Estate Agency Branch

City

Number of for-sale properties per estate agency branch

Aberdeen

29

Newcastle-upon-tyne

28

Newport

27

Liverpool

26

London

26

Top 5 Cities: Fewest Properties For-Sale Per Estate Agency Branch

City

Number of for-sale properties per estate agency branch

Glasgow

8

Leeds

11

Bradford

12

Bristol

13

Oxford

14

Full data table for UK cities, ordered by number of estate agency branches

City

Number of estate agent branches (sales)

Number of listed properties

Average number of properties per branch

London

2,034

46,361

23

Manchester

200

3,803

19

Birmingham

191

3,649

19

Bristol

171

2,278

13

Nottingham

151

2,358

16

Liverpool

123

3,137

26

Glasgow

122

989

8

Leeds

120

1,277

11

Cardiff

99

1,541

16

Leicester

98

1,831

19

Sheffield

83

1,336

16

Bradford

82

1,012

12

Edinburgh

81

1,269

16

Bournemouth

75

1,420

19

Newcastle

67

1,879

28

Southampton

66

1,402

21

Plymouth

60

950

16

Oxford

59

848

14

Portsmouth

50

949

19

Cambridge

39

608

16

Sunderland

34

774

23

Swansea

22

504

23

Newport

21

573

27

Aberdeen

19

558

29

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