A Review of 2022 at The Property Centre
- Written by Carl Hewlett
We’re on track to raise over £20,000 for charity
In celebration of The Property Centre’s 25th year in business, the team decided to mark the milestone by donating £25 to charity for every property they instructed that goes on to complete before the end of 2022.
With just over a week to go before the end of the year, the total raised now stands at £19,855.
In support of the four main areas covered by our offices, a charitable cause in each locality was chosen and the total will be split equally between the four charities.
With five branches based in Gloucester, The Property Centre chose to donate to the Chamwell Centre, which enables pupils of The Milestone School and SAND Academy, along with children, young people and adults throughout Gloucestershire to overcome disability.
The Chamwell Centre enhances the well-being of those with a disability, how they feel, how they function on a personal and social level, and how they feel about their lives as a whole.
In Cheltenham, The Property Centre will donate to National Star. This provider enables young people with disabilities to realise their potential through education and personalised learning opportunities as well as providing other transition and accommodation services.
The college offers programmes tailored to meet individual aspirations and abilities, with a strong emphasis on creative and performing arts, sports, communication and life skills.
With two branches in Worcester, St Richard’s Hospice was chosen by The Property Centre for this area. This charity cares for people with severe progressive illnesses, whose complex needs cannot be met by other services. These include cancer and neurological, respiratory, cardiac and renal conditions.
The care given by St. Richard’s Hospice improves their quality of life, from diagnosis to treatment to their last days, while supporting their loved ones.
In Stroud, Longfield Community Hospice was selected, a charity for adults in Gloucestershire with a life-limiting illness.
Longfield provides free care and support for patients and their loved ones, helping families make the most of their time together.
The grand total will be announced in the new year.
Award Winning Agent
In 2022 The Property Centre won 10 prestigious industry awards in recognition of our commitment to exceptional customer service.
This year, The Property Centre was awarded four ESTAS. Based on their customer review platform the ESTAS rewards property professionals who are delivering great service to their clients.
Our St John’s branch won Best In County for Worcestershire and bronze in the West Midlands category, Cheltenham won silver for the Southern category, and the Property Centre as a whole won silver for Best Regional Group.
Winning an ESTA means so much as the results are based purely on customer reviews from clients that have experienced outstanding service from their agent.
Two Best Estate Agent Guide awards were also won this year with gold awarded for sales and silver for lettings.
The BEAG guide is produced annually by Property Academy which carries out the biggest performance assessment in the estate agency industry to identify the best agencies in the country.
There are 15,0000 estate agency brands in the UK and The Property Academy judges all agents in an industry-wide mystery shopping exercise based on fixed criteria in order to establish the best agents in the UK.
The top 20% of performers are then put through a practical assessment with mystery shoppers at every stage of the sales and lettings processes. Agencies are then scored and reviewed based on their response times, response quality and overall delivery of service.
In the spring we were awarded gold at The British Property Awards for both sales and lettings in Stroud.
The British Property Awards run mystery shops on every estate agent in the area, against a set of 25 criteria to obtain a balanced overview of their customer service levels. The judging criteria are both comprehensive and detailed exploring different mediums, scenarios and time periods to ensure that agents have been rigorously and fairly judged.
In November, The Property Centre was awarded three prizes at The Negotiator Awards.
The Property Centre was announced as the gold winner of the Regional: East and West Midlands Agency of the Year award in recognition of our successful branches located in Worcester.
In addition, we also picked up silver in both the Regional: South West Agency of the Year category for our seven branches across Gloucestershire and in the Lettings Agency of the Year category for agencies with 6-20 branches.
Agents are judged by a group of respected professionals with years of experience in the property industry, and winners are selected based on a number of criteria ranging from the growth and development of an agent’s brand to its innovation and the services it offers.
We’ve Invested in Our Older Branches
Since our last annual update in 2021 we’ve been committed to a programme of refreshing our entire branch network and two offices, Longlevens and Stroud, have been completely refurbished.
Also in Stroud, we announced the appointment of Jamie Dyer as the new Senior Branch Manager back in August.
Jamie boasts a raft of experience in estate agency and is a familiar face in the Stroud property market having worked in the industry since 2001.
Growing Support Roles & Focus on Lettings
Providing a 5* service is our ultimate aim so we’ve boosted our support teams and recruited an additional six people to join our Sales Progression and Property Management teams.
The Property Centre now manages just under 900 properties across the different areas, with a target of having over 1,000 units under management by the end of 2023.
All our Lettings growth to date has been organic and often as a result of word-of-mouth recommendations.
A Five Star Service
We’re rightly proud of our 5* service and our customers rate us highly. The Property Centre branches have collectively received over 1,800 ESTAS reviews and over 1,000 Google reviews.
Customer service is at the heart of our business and we’ve built our success on reputation.
Our dedicated Sales Progression, Mortgage Progression and Property Management teams continue the initial great service given by our branch staff, ensuring customers have the very best experience, and proof of this is the high number of 5* reviews we receive.
