BBC Series Boosts Business for Local Estate Agents Greene & Co.
26th January 2005
Business has boomed for north London estate agency Greene & Co. since the start of the BBC reality series, Property People, in which they were featured.
Staff at the Belsize Park office of Home were featured in Episodes 1 and 3 and have since conducted double the number of valuations over the past two weeks compared with the same period last year.
David Okin, Store Manager at Home, said: “The reaction from the public has been fantastic. Our business has improved 50% on last year. One couple emailed us the day after the first episode asking us to register them as hot prospect buyers and we have been inundated with emails praising our professionalism.”
Okin believes the show has not only improved the public image of the industry but has given Richard Blanks and other agents shown hard at work a chance to evaluate their performance. He stated: “Our main aim was to give the public a real-life view of estate agency life, because I think they have no real perception of what agents do and the stress that they are under. We also wanted to hold a mirror up to ourselves to see which areas we can improve on.”
Greene & Co.’s West Hampstead office saw an immediate impact after they were featured in episode 2 with 4 times as many applicants registering with them compared to this time last year. Due to the high demand they are quickly running out of properties to sell and are currently looking for more vendors.
David Pollock, Managing Director, Greene & Co., said of their involvement with the series: “We hope that the series shatters the stereotypical image of Estate Agents by showing that within the highly competitive and sometimes dishonest world of Estate Agency there are mostly genuine and honest professionals who want to help people. At Greene & Co. we are proud of our honest, professional and open company culture where we try to put customer service first……Feedback from viewers has been fantastic and we have been inundated with emails praising our professionalism.”
The series has been watched by an average of 2 million viewers per week and has generated a lot of media interest. Viewers have seen the stress and frustration that agents endure alongside their clients as they wait for deal-clinching phone calls, contend with lack of urgency from solicitors and navigate the minefields of red tape.