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 and we 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]
Market share

We looked at performance over a 6-month period, involving analysis of:

Over 25,000 branches
1 million properties listed at any point in time
1.5 million transactions
25 million leads
1.5 billion property views
50,000 mystery shops

The Ratings

Based on the points scored during the data analysis and mystery shopping exercise, those that reached the scores required to be listed in the best estate agent guide were identified and categorised in to three ratings:

Exceptional

In the top 5% of estate agency branches in the country. These branches showed an outstanding level of service and care towards prospective clients and we are delighted to award these superb branches 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 branch near you.

To illustrate how demanding the assessment is, only 89 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 best estate agency branches in the country. Only branches that achieved a sufficiently high score to meet our standard are featured in the Best Estate Agent Guide. Out of over 25,000 estate agents across the UK only 7,360 branches have been featured.

The Awards

In addition to rating each branch, we also identified the best companies, based on the combined performance of all their branches.

There are c. 15,000 estate agency brands/companies in the UK. We drew up a shortlist comprising the top 5% and from among them, we identified the best single branch, small (2-5 branch) and medium size (6-20 branch) agencies based on their performance across all of their branches.

These companies were then awarded Gold, Silver, Bronze, Finalist and Shortlist status – depending on how they compared to similar size companies in their region.

Gold

Gold award winners are in the top 0.5% in the country. This award recognises exceptional performance at a company level and reflects a consistently strong performance across all branches.

Silver

Silver award winners are in the top 1% nationally. Within their region, there are only 3 silver-award winners for sales and/or lettings and companies displaying this mark of achievement achieved excellent scores.

Bronze

At a national level, Bronze award winners can be counted in the top 2% of all companies. Again, only 3 companies are recognised with this award in each region.

Finalist

Companies achieving a finalist status are in the top 4% in the country. There are a maximum of 22 finalists recognised in each region.

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.