TPO, the UK’s largest property redress scheme has almost 25,000 sales and lettings members registered with the scheme although some operate as ‘dual’ agents, sharing the same premises.
Rightmove data reveals there are an estimated 9,000 ‘dual’ agents. Taking this figure away from the 25,000 and adding the estimated 4,000 plus offices who are not currently members of TPO, leads to an estimated total of over 20,000 individual offices in the UK property industry.
To complete the property picture, figures from Rightmove shows there are 2,500 developments marketed by the larger house-builders.
Christopher Hamer, the Property Ombudsman, comments:
"Whilst it is a legal requirement for sales agents to register with an ombudsman scheme and we have more than 95% of sales agents in membership with TPO, new legislation is expected to come into force later this year which will make it mandatory for letting agents to register with an approved scheme. As the only scheme operating its own unique Code of Practice to raise standards in the industry, 11,500 lettings offices have voluntarily registered with TPO and this figure has steadily increased over the past year. We estimate there could be as many as 4,000 additional lettings operations on top of this, although this figure will only be confirmed after the new legislation comes into force.”
Miles Shipside Rightmove director and housing market analyst summarises:
“Rightmove noted a pick-up in new office openings last year and especially sales offices so far in 2014 as the recovery started to spread beyond London. Sales transactions, which include new build, are running at over 20% higher year-on-year. While new-build is about 10% of overall sales activity it is a very integrated market sector, as buyers behaviour is to mix resale and new build properties together when they search on the internet. Home hunters in the UK therefore have to search the property stock from at least 22,500 separate offices and large developments to get a full property picture.”
