Charlie Lamdin, founder of property platform BestAgent, is launching a membership scheme for estate agents, with subscriptions starting at £100 a month. BestAgent Club launches in November, initially offering 99 founder memberships.
Membership Criteria and Fees
The company will cap total membership at 1,000 agents. The scheme will assess applicants against criteria covering working practices, service standards and transaction performance. BestAgent may withdraw membership if agents fail to maintain the required standards.
Individual membership will cost £100 per month, while business membership starts at £250 per month. The scheme will offer training and coaching, with the aim of helping agents achieve transaction completion rates of at least 90% and charge fees of 2% or more. Business members will also qualify for discounted leads.
Revenue-Sharing Scheme
Qualifying business members could receive a share of BestAgent’s revenues if they meet performance benchmarks. Under the proposed arrangement, selected members would receive what the company calls an investment chip. Each chip would entitle its holder to 0.01% of BestAgent’s revenues over ten years.
BestAgent estimates that each chip could generate up to £100,000 during that period. However, the company does not guarantee returns and has not disclosed the revenue projections behind the estimate.
Performance Benchmarks
The club plans to introduce benchmarks based on transaction completion rates and the time agents take to complete sales. Lamdin said agents must meet the club’s criteria rather than simply pay a membership fee. “This isn’t a Club that agents can simply pay to join.”
However, BestAgent has yet to publish its detailed performance criteria or explain how it intends to assess compliance independently. The company’s advisory board includes Daniel Daggers, founder of DDRE Global; Verona Frankish, chief executive of Yopa; and Rory Sutherland, vice-chairman of Ogilvy UK. Sutherland questioned how the industry measures success. “One of the strangest things about the property market is that we reward people for starting transactions, rather than successfully finishing them.”
The club will launch next month.
