We’ve been running an Estate Agency Salary Survey, to help the bosses in the many businesses we deal with assess their own salary rates. With over 16,000 bosses, negotiators and administrators using Expert Agent in 2,289 branches across the country, we’ve got extraordinary reach into the depths of the industry.
The Questions
We asked the following really simple questions:
- What’s your job role?
- Full Time or Part Time?
- Sales, Lettings or Both?
- Age?
- Location?
- How much did you Earn?
- How much was Commission/Dividend/Profit Share?
- Company Car? If so, what type?
The Results
Thank you to everyone that took part. We had over 700 respondents from negotiators, administrators, managers and bosses from all over the country.
Overall Stats
The average salary is £26-30,000. However, this figure is skewed by the 8% of recipients that earn over £70,000. Removing those brings the average down to the range £21-£25,000.
Average salaries are highest in the South – the South East and South Central regions had higher average salaries than Central London and Greater London. Salaries were lowest in the North East.
Generally, sales managers and negotiators earn 15% more than lettings managers and negotiators.
Administrators
Administrators are, on average, fairly mature. Only 20% are under 26. 28% are over 51. 72% work full time so we’ve based the following on full time work. 30% earn under £14,000.
40% earn £15-17,000 only 10% earned more than £21,000 Almost all are paid a flat salary and none have a company car.
Click here for the full administrator results
Sales Negotiators:
These guys are generally quite young. 44% are under 25, and nearly 30% are 26 to 39. 35% of them classify themselves as Lettings Negotiators too. Over 95% work full time. A surprising 25% earned less that £12,000. 31% earned between £15 and £21,000. 11% earned more than £25,000.
Over 55% of respondents earn less than 10% of their earnings in commission. However, 20% of respondents get over a third of their earnings in commission. 90% have to use their own cars. 7% have a small trendy company car (a Mini, Fiat 500, Citroen DS3 etc). One respondent has a big executive company car!
Click here for the full Sales Negotiator results
Lettings Negotiators:
Nearly 60% of these guys classify themselves as Sales Negotiators, too. They are even younger. 53% are under 25 and a further 28% are under 39.
23% earn less than £12,000. 37% earned between £15,000 and £21,000. 8% earned more than £25,000. Half earned basic salary only. 10% got 31-40% of their salary in commission. A few more had company cars – 14%. Again, most had a small trendy one
Click here for full Lettings Negotiator results
Senior Sales Negotiators:
As to be expected, these guys are older. 45% are over 40. Almost 100% work full time. Just 35% do lettings as well as sales. They nearly all earned less than £50,000. Over 50% earned over £21,000. 23% earned £18-£20,000. Two respondents claimed to earn over £71,000.
Again, a high percentage (33%) get all of their income as basic salary. Over a quarter got over 20% of their income in commission. 10% earned half their income in commission. 80% use their own car. 10% have a sensible family company car – presumably reflecting their greater age.
Click here to see the full Senior Negotiator results.
Senior Lettings Negotiators:
These guys are mostly full time. Over 60% get involved in sales as well. Just under 50% are in the age range 26-39. 25% are under 25 and 20% are 51 or over. 50% earn between £18,000 and £25,000. 17% earn under £17,000. 14% earn £31-£40,000.
27% earned less than 10% of this as commission, 30% earned between 11% and 20% of their salary as commission and 20% earned more than 21% of their salary as commission. 70% use their own cars and those with company cars were split equally between a trendy one and a family one. So, on the face of it, there’s more opportunity to earn money as a senior sales negotiator than as an equivalent doing lettings.
Click here for the full Senior Lettings Negotiator Stats
Sales Manager
45% get involved in sales too. 7% do surveys or other professional work. 45% are 26-39 years old. 13% are over 51, 10% are under 25. There’s a lot of variance in the salaries. 14% earn under £20,000. 23% earn £31-£40,000. 20% earn £40-60,000
45% earned 10% or less of their salary in commission. 35% earned more than 40% of their salary in commission. Again, over 60% use their own car for work and of those with a company car, over half had a “junior executive” 3-series, C-Class etc.
Click here to see the full Sales Manager results.
Lettings Manager
Over 60% of the lettings manager polled do Residential Sales as well. a third are 26-39 years old, another third are 40-50 years old. Just 10% are under 25. again, an interesting spread of salaries.
Over 40% earn less than £25,000 and 36% earn over £30,000. The biggest category was the 23% earning £31-40,000. 56% earned less than 10% of this as basic salary. 35% have a company car – of those two thirds are supporting the Audi, Mercedes and BMW dealers.
Click hereto see the full Lettings Manager results
Accounts Clerk
Surprisingly few of these mission-critical team members completed the survey, despite there being nearly 1000 Expert Agent users who describe themselves as Accounts Clerks. Beyond the Expert Agent users, our database used for the survey will by definition be more “boss biased” – they’re the ones that tend to contact us for information, demos etc. 66% work part time. None are under 25 years old and 1/3 are over 51. None earn more than £25,000 and 20% earned less than £12,000 (presumably because they work part time).
The full time respondents were all paid in the £15-£17,000 range. Our theory on this is that full time accounts clerks are relatively junior (though not necessarily young) and some businesses use better qualified, more experienced part-time accounts staff to perform specific higher level tasks.
Business Owners / Directors / Partners
65% do lettings, 85% do sales. So, on that basis, most are involved in both disciplines and hence we’ve chosen to report one set of “boss” statistics. They are generally older than their staff as one would expect. 35% are 41-50 years old and 35% are over 51 years old. 17% earned less than £25,000 despite the stress and hassle involved in running a business. 40% earned £30-£60,000 with £41-£50,000 being the most chosen option.
37% earned over £60,000. However, as expected, a high percentage of business owner income is profit share or commission. 42% earned more than 50% of their earnings as profit share or commission. A surprising 22% earned 10% or less in commission or profit share. This could be that we phrased the question wrongly. These results are based on the respondents confirmation that they are “partners/directors/business owners”. If we had asked a much explicit “do you own more than 10% of your business” we might have seen a significantly smaller percentage earning just a basic salary.
Click Here for the full “boss” details
Conclusions
The main conclusion is that for the majority of workers in the estate agency industry, salaries sit in line with the national average. A very small number of people earn some very large salaries and a lot hover around minimum wage.
Sales pays better than lettings.
Company Cars seem to have less prominence (probably due to less favourable taxation as a benefit in kind plus the legacy of recession.
We have already thought of extra questions that would improve the data next time.
Thank you, once again, for taking part.