By Mark Meyer, CEO, Meyers Estate Agents

I’ve worked in the property industry for more than 25 years. I’ve helped thousands of people move on with their lives by selling and buying property. Sometimes that’s for good reasons like the need to buy a bigger home to accommodate a growing family. Sometimes it’s for less happy reasons like the need to downsize through loss of work etc. However, on every occasion, I’ve got to know those people and helped them to move through what can often be a stressful time in their lives, by making the transaction process as smooth and as painless as possible.

The past two years have resulted in upheaval in the property market. We have seen prices rocket and the demand for houses with gardens or the potential for a home office become literally ‘hot property’. It is likely this will settle down as we move through 2022 but regardless of what’s around the corner, the property market will remain strong as everyone needs to live somewhere people will always need to move house.

Therefore, in uncertain times, could making a move into property be the best career move you make in 2022? Very possibly! But I’m not talking about becoming a traditional high street estate agent here, I mean considering becoming a home-based estate agent. There are so many advantages!

Home based estate agents don’t attract the high overheads of a high street office. This means start-up franchise fees and ongoing costs are low. We have run our team of home-based franchised agents very successfully for around ten years now but in the past two years homeworking has suddenly become the norm.

Previously, customers accepted the fact that we didn’t have high street shops quite happily, and were pleased that savings could be spent on better marketing to sell their homes faster. Now, following the Pandemic, they don’t expect a high street location for their estate agent at all. It’s been a shift in thinking, but we are now able to capitalise on this and are expanding fast. Unlike other agencies which have had to adapt, we already had robust and detailed systems and processes in place which meant our home-based estate agents actually thrived during COVID.

For us it is normal to be arranging remote, video viewings, using drone footage and marketing nationwide through the leading internet portals. It means Meyers’ agents have been ahead of the curve.

I’ll let you into another little secret about the property industry. It’s not rocket science! We have trained an ex-hairdresser and an ex-fire fighter to become successful estate agents. The property market is not difficult to understand, and we provide comprehensive training and support which includes access to our 21-step sales process, which is less about selling and more about attention to the right details to remove obstacles for buyers and vendors.

However, what is most important, is that prospective home-based franchisee estate agents have excellent communication skills and a strong focus on customer service. If these skills are not your bag, then forget it.

Our agents are based in their communities, so community connections are essential too because excellent customer service and developing personal relationships result in recommendations. That’s how our agents grow their businesses. In short, they are ordinary people, but people who care.

Over the years, ‘traditional’ estate agents have often acquired a pretty poor reputation. But Meyers is on a mission to turn the industry around. It’s also an award-winning mission. Approaching the business by putting customers first, means becoming a home-based estate agent can become a potentially rewarding (and also lucrative) career which puts our agents at the heart of their communities. We encourage our agents to ‘give back’ through our extensive community charity projects too. For us it’s more than just a job, we help people move on with their lives and contribute positively to the communities which support us too.

For our agents, the home-based estate agency model is also completely flexible. We have ambitious individuals who have started small and chosen to grow, expanding teams of their own self-employed associates. We have couples working together to manage a territory, and also those that prefer to manage their own area.

I know I’m biased but for me, the property market is a great place to work. I started Meyers because I wanted to create a better service for customers. I’m now excited to extend the opportunity to invite prospective franchisees to join our mission to improve standards of customer care in the industry as home-based estate agents. We are now looking fulfil our ambitious growth plans by recruiting more like-minded franchisees to help us in our mission to disrupt the landscape and raise the bar further by improving standards across the industry. As a result, we offer a low franchise start-up fee which includes full training and comprehensive support for new franchisees. Our New Year, New Start ‘early bird’ offer, reduces the initial franchisee fee to just £7,500 plus vat if signed up by end of March – a saving of £5,000 which franchisees can use to turbo charge their launch marketing! The package will be available for suitable candidates across the UK (terms apply), but we are particularly welcoming applications to fill ten key locations across Somerset, Dorset and Hampshire. It might be the incentive you need to make property the best career move you make in 2022!

To find out more about Meyers’ franchise opportunities across the UK please click below: