Property website reports loss of three hundred estate agents a month
December 1, 2008
The property website Right Move has recently reported that each month around three hundred struggling estate agents are quitting the service, as the housing market continued to decline and the housing slump affects the estate agency business dramatically. With many estate agents struggling to weather the effects of the housing slump, many are unable to afford services such as these.
Due to the drop in business the property firm has recently announced that it will have to cut around 20% of its workforce, having lost around two thousand members compared to just a year ago. Officials from Right Move also said that at least 75 percent of estate agents that are no longer members have either gone bust of have been removed because they were not able to keep up with membership fees.
Right Move stated: ‘The UK housing market continues to be challenging, with very low housing transaction volumes resulting in a significant number of estate agents leaving the market. At least three out of every four estate agents who have left Rightmove over the last year have either gone out of business or were removed for non-payment, which in practice is frequently a precursor to going out of business.’
With regards to the job cuts the company said that it was facing a very challenging market, and the job cuts had become necessary due to this.
One official said: ‘These are the first redundancies that the company has made as a result of the downturn in the UK housing market. The scale reflects the company’s view that the current challenges will continue through 2009.’
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