Partner Article

Behind the business with I Am The Agent

I Am The Agent is an online estate agency with a no commission fee structure. It helps property owners to sell or rent their properties for a fixed fee in accordance with their chosen service level and offers 24/7 online management suites. Managing director Rebecca Peach takes Bdaily behind the business.

What key challenges has your company recently faced?

Our biggest challenge has been to educate landlords and property owners about the opportunities and effectiveness of advertising a property online. We have started from a blank page and challenged the traditional beliefs that you have to go to a high street agent and pay big commissions to get a decent service. As a result, we’ve invested a lot of time and resources in developing the website to show the easy steps we have devised to make the entire process of selling or renting a property online easy, backed up by lots of supporting material and free guides for landlords and homeowners.

What is your biggest achievement over the last 12 months?

I can pick out several milestones from the 12 months, all of which have been big achievements and landmarks on our journey to this point. One of our proudest moments was being picked as an innovative business by HSBC to secure financial investment as this made lots of our plans more achievable. Thanks to that, we’ve been able to launch other initiatives which have made other achievements possible.

A second really big milestone was achieving 15,000 hits on our website within two weeks of launch. This reaffirmed that all of the effort we’d put into devising the service, determining service levels and making the site user friendly had paid off. It also confirmed that there was a real demand for the services we offer and that our efforts to change the mindset surrounding traditional agencies was paying off.

Hearing our ads on the radio for the first time was also a nice moment as it showed just how far we’d come and what we’d achieved in what has been quite a short time frame.

What is your biggest focus for the coming year?

Our focus is to develop even more brand recognition by raising awareness of the uniqueness of the service and support we offer. We’ve already got a few activities in the pipeline to make this a reality such as an upcoming London bus advertising campaign as well as a few other top secret plans!

Coupled with this, we’re also determined to continue to make landlords and homeowners aware that there are affordable, effective alternatives to traditional agencies charging big chunks of commission – using online advertising channels. The online platform creates an opportunity to be much more creative and to engage directly with prospective tenants and buyers, meaning there’s no need to buy into the doom and gloom that can sometimes surround the real estate market. We really want to raise awareness of the tools we put at our clients disposal to make the whole buying or selling process much less off putting and a lot more enjoyable and profitable.

If you had to choose one top piece of advice for someone just starting out in business, or is currently operating within your industry sector, what would it be?

The top one every time is know your market. There’s no substitute thoroughly researching your industry, your target market and even your competitors. Yes, this preparation takes time but, it is crucial to aligning your service offerings with actual consumer needs and will pay off when it comes to things like setting price points.

The second piece of advice is always ensure client services and attention to detail is at the forefront of your business. This will set you apart from your competitors and will ensure longevity in your market place.

Can you share with us your view of the current landscape of business, in this region or generally and where your organisation sits within it?

The property market seems to make headlines every day for one reason or another. A lot of the time there is an air of negativity, whether that be the amount house prices are falling by or the lack of affordable mortgages but that really doesn’t tell the whole story – the private rental sector for example is absolutely thriving, which means there are more buy-to-let investors who are buying property, and more landlords setting up in business.

As we offer a range of services from do-it-yourself fixed price rental and sales packages to an in-house full service sale or let, we’re diverse without straying from our areas of expertise. With the flexibility and value for money packages we offer as well as the nationwide nature of the on-line site, we’re ideally placed to serve lots of different needs and we can only see this continuing.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Tom Keighley .