Agency owners who fail to write a plan for 2027 risk having January write it for them, according to Michael S Day, managing director of Integra Property Services. He urges principals to start now, not in January, and to begin with the numbers.
Every pound has to earn its keep
Day notes that the residential market is hard work right now. Stock is sticking, fee pressure hasn't eased, and the journey from valuation to instruction to completion takes longer and leaks more than it did. In lettings, the Renters' Rights Act is reshaping the model as it beds in. Turnover may flatter, but profit and cash decide who is still trading this time next year.
He advises taking the P&L line by line and asking one question of every cost: what does this return? The portal package, the software subscriptions nobody fully uses, the branch that hasn't washed its face in two years, the marketing that generates likes but not valuations. If you can't show a return, cut it, change it or give it a deadline to prove itself. That isn't penny-pinching; it frees up money to invest where it will work.
The six Ps
Day cites the military phrase: Proper Planning and Preparation Prevents Poor Performance. Six words, six Ps, and each one earns its place. Proper means written down, costed and owned, not good intentions in your head. Planning means deciding where you want to be by December 2027 and working back to what must happen each month and each quarter. Preparation is the unglamorous bit: the data, the systems, the cash forecast, the people. Prevents is the point. A plan won't stop the market moving, but it stops you being surprised by it. Poor Performance is what happens to everyone else.
Choose your position deliberately
Every plan has to decide how you compete, especially on technology and new services. Day outlines four broad positions, each of which can work if you choose it rather than drift into it:
- First to market: You take the risk, pay for the mistakes and, if it works, enjoy the headlines and the advantage. It might need deep pockets and a stomach for failure.
- Fast follower: You let others test the water, then move decisively on what works. For most independents this is the sweet spot: lower cost, lower risk, still ahead of the pack.
- In the mass: You adopt once something is proven and mainstream. Safe, but with no innovation edge you must win on execution and service.
- Laggard: You change only when you have to. Some survive on relationships and local knowledge, but in a tightening market the gap widens fast.
None of these is wrong. Not knowing which one you are is.
A plan is only as good as the people delivering it
Day says he has seen beautifully bound business plans sit in a drawer while the team carried on exactly as before. Staff need to know the plan (ideally having contributed to it), understand their part in it and have the skills to deliver it. That means budgeting for training, not treating it as the first cost to go when things get tight.
Valuers who win instructions at the right fee, negotiators who hold a sale together, property managers who know the new lettings rules inside out: that is your return on investment. Untrained staff are the most expensive line on any P&L. They just never appear as one.
Day advises blocking out time before the end of October. Review this year honestly, set three or four measurable goals for 2027, cost them, decide your market position and agree the training to get there. Then review it monthly (or even weekly), not annually. He adds that if you would value an independent pair of eyes to challenge the numbers and shape the plan, that is exactly what he does. The agents who plan now will set the pace in 2027. Everyone else will be reacting to them.
