Our Rating System
Armed with the knowledge and insights that we gain from our estate agent reviews, annual surveys with buyers, sellers, landlords and tenants, combined with our experience of estate agency, we teamed up with Rightmove to map out the perfect customer experience.
Estate Agent Review Criteria
Together with Rightmove, we identified the criteria that define exceptional service and conducted an in-depth analysis of performance data to create a long list of the top 40% of branches in the country. We then conducted the biggest mystery shopping review process ever undertaken of the property industry.
The areas we looked at were:
- How well properties are marketed on Rightmove and perform on Rightmove. [As measured by Rightmove].
- Actual delivery of the sale or let. Time taken for the listing to go to SSTC and does it actually complete. [As measured by Rightmove].
- How good is the customer experience on contacting the agent via email and telephone? [As measured by Property Academy mystery shop]
We looked at performance over a 12-month period, involving analysis of:
- Over 25,000 branches
- 1 million properties listed at any point in time
- 3 million transactions
- 50 million leads
- 3 billion property views
- 30,000 mystery shops
The Ratings
Based on the points scored during the data analysis and mystery shopping exercise, the top 20% of branches in the country were identified and categorised into three ratings:
Exceptional
In the top 5% of estate agency branches in the country. These agents showed an outstanding level of service and care towards prospective clients and we are delighted to award these superb agencies with a score of “Exceptional”.
From these, the top 100 sales branches, the top 100 lettings branches and those branches that achieved an exceptional rating for both sales & lettings were identified. Check to see if there’s an exceptional agency near you.
To illustrate how demanding the assessment is, only 87 branches achieved an exceptional rating in both sales and lettings.
Excellent
Among the top 10% of estate agency branches in the country. Not quite within the top 5% but still market-leading in their approach to client satisfaction. They show a commendable dedication to client satisfaction.
Highly Rated
Among the top 20% of estate agency branches in the country. Only agents who achieved this high standard are featured in our guide. Out of over 25,000 estate agents across the UK only 5,153 branches have been featured.
We hope that this system will be used in the future to inspire estate agents to provide only the very best service to their prospective clients and we encourage you to look out for agents that display the ratings marks as a sign that they have performed highly in the biggest independent assessment of estate agents and letting agents in the country.