Estate agents spent £188.4m conducting physical viewings

Research by the next-generation, virtual property viewings platform, U-See Homes, has found that the property viewings process costs UK estate agents an estimated £188.4m a year. 

U-See Homes found that based on the average earnings of £34,583, the average estate agent takes home an hourly rate of £16.63.

With the average viewing taking approximately one hour and with an average journey time of 20 mins per viewing, it costs £22.17 per viewing where an agent's time is concerned.

When you also consider the cost in fuel for the average company car at £1.08 per viewing, this brings the total cost to £23.25.

This might not sound like much, but with the average home requiring 10 viewings in order to sell, this cost climbs to £233 per property on average. 

With 810,401 homes sold in the last 12 months across the UK, that’s a total cost incurred of £188.4m to UK estate agents as a result of physical viewings. 

However, by opting to replace just the first initial viewing in the property viewing process, UK estate agents could save a considerable sum in time and fuel. If each home required just nine physical viewings, it would cut the cost incurred by the industry by £18.8m per year to £169.6m.

Of course, this wouldn’t be money saved in the outright sense as there is always something that needs to be done, but it would allow them to focus on these additional tasks while spending less time wasted out of the office. 

Simon Dempsey heads up marketing for U-See Homes and says

“There’s no future version of the property market that will see the physical viewing process be completely replaced and homebuyers are always going to want to take a fine tooth combe to any home they’re thinking of buying in person. 

However, estate agents spend a considerable amount of time and money conducting initial physical viewings that could easily be replaced by a guided virtual tour. In fact, utilising virtual guided tours could help them showcase three or four homes in the time it would take to conduct one physical viewing.

The industry has never been busier and the old adage that time is money has never been more relevant. With huge backlogs of transactions waiting to complete and a relentless tide of buyer demand, estate agents are up against it at the moment and utilising technology to help streamline their day to day tasks is one way of helping to turn the tide in their favour.”

Note: full figures used in calculations and so there may be some slight differences due to rounding