Steph Vass challenges the way the real estate industry works.
When Steph Vass finished her GCSEs, she started teasing her mother, who ran the family’s 10-branch estate agency business in Liverpool. She was given a six-week summer job and more than 20 years later, Vass is changing the way homes are bought and sold in the UK.
The conversation with Vass is full of real estate market statistics and a lot of passion about how she is currently challenging her industry. It does this as part of The Agency UK (TAUK), a platform for self-employed estate agencies that it launched in 2020. and which empowers experienced local agents to run their own businesses, co-founded.
The aim is to provide an attractive service to sellers across the UK, and Vass believes the model is long overdue. “I am extremely passionate and proud to be a real estate agent,” she says. “For too long, it hasn’t necessarily been a career that people can feel that way about, and we’re consistently in the top five most hated professions.
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“I believe we will change the way the British public view estate agents and that this can be done in a trusted and personal way.”
But music was her original intention before she left for a short stint at university. At 18, she started working full-time in a real estate agency with the help of a friend and started using phones and watching. “The girls I worked with at the time are now business owners, which is great,” says Vass.
TAUK has grown to approximately 250 self-employed agents since its inception.
She took on the role of branch manager at the age of 19, and the music still plays today, with a karaoke stage set up in her home. Vass admits that with “no real room to grow” as estate agent owners acted as “branch manager, appraiser and manager”, she adjusted her CV to indicate that she had previous experience as an office manager.
in 2015 she joined Purplebricks where she learned about the growth of the brand and how technology was starting to play an important role in the seller’s journey. Four years later, she became head of US recruiting.
Having spoken to thousands of agents over the years in the UK and US, Vass now decided to create a model where TAUK agents would ‘support’ the buyer throughout the process. “They want personal service from start to finish, and you’re the person to help them do that,” says Vass.
Its self-employed agents, established companies under the TAUK umbrella, come in a variety of formats with the primary function of reducing costs and overheads of traditional agency operations.
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She says the platform is different from a high street agency; a transaction process where buyers move through the chain from sales to contracts, resulting in a lack of communication. “Traditional real estate is full of empty promises and broken promises, and we’re bucking that trend,” says Vass.
TAUK agents earn the lion’s share of commissions ranging from 60 to 70%. As it stands, the average time from offer to completion to move-in date is 19 weeks. The vast majority will also charge “no sale, no fee”.
“It’s six to nine months before you earn a paycheck,” says Vass, whose company rolled out the expanded commission in two phases to allay potential fears.
Co-founder Steph Vass says TAUK provides personal, one-on-one service to sellers.
“As a business, we know that life changes for agents and clients. It’s really the only style of real estate agency where every stakeholder wins, but if people can’t afford it? Do we accept any old person who can sell a house or figure out a way to make it easier to be independent?”
By the end of the year, TAUK will grow to around 250 agents in England, Scotland and Wales since launch, with annual revenues in excess of £10m.
Vass is also part of a leadership team that includes Kenny Bruce and Harry Hill, founders of Purplebricks and Rightmove ( RMV.L ) respectively. A series of rival acquisitions has now bolstered TAUK’s stock as one of the UK’s largest self-employed platforms and part of its buy-to-build strategy.
Steph Vass still sells real estate in her hometown and wants her agents to be “champions of the community.” ·Ian Morton
Vass says around 15% of owners of any given home would consider moving house at any given time across the UK. “Rightmove ( RMV.L ) or Zoopla only have 2% of real estate in the UK. We need to open up the market and expand the audience and show people that the market is not just moving on.” [those] portals.
“I would really like every homeowner in every town and village in the UK to have the opportunity to represent a TAUK landlord.
Vass is also still selling houses on a platform in his home village of Aughton in Lancashire. She is also quick to make a unique selling point – five Michelin stars in three restaurants on her doorstep.
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“I view each of our agents as a business partner,” she says of her colleagues. “You have to be a great marketer, have a creative flair and get your home in front of the right people.
“About 50% of properties are unfinished. You have to have nerves of steel and sometimes be a psychologist or therapist.”
“It can be a very emotional time and I’ve probably put people off becoming an estate agent. But there’s nothing better than handing over the keys to a new family.”
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