Utterly Indispensable Podcast for Estate Agents

Stephen Moss believes independent estate agencies are undervalued. So much so that Sourced Group expects to invest close to £10 million acquiring them by the end of the year.

But this isn’t simply about buying lettings books and bolting them onto a larger operation.

Through Sourced Living, Stephen is combining acquisitions with a franchise model that can fund 100% of the purchase for its franchisees. It’s an ambitious approach that has helped the network grow to more than 50 estate agency and lettings franchisees in just 18 months.

In this episode, Stephen shares his journey from taking a £10,000 pay cut to become a junior negotiator, to building a six-office agency with his dad, experiencing the consequences of the 2008 crash and ultimately creating Sourced Group, which now has more than 250 franchisees across property investment, finance, lettings and estate agency.

We discuss:

Why Stephen believes estate agencies are currently undervalued

Why buying an existing agency can make more sense than opening another branch

How Sourced funds acquisitions for its franchisees

Why people without agency experience must learn the business before taking one over

What is motivating owners to sell, including retirement, compliance and the pace of technological change

How AI is influencing some owners’ decisions about their future

Why estate agency is entering a period of rapid consolidation

Stephen’s ambition to grow Sourced to between 500 and 750 franchisees

This is a conversation about building, buying and eventually selling businesses, and what the next wave of estate agency ownership could look like.

Connect with Stephen Moss on LinkedIn.

Buying another agency can rapidly accelerate growth. But agreeing the deal is only the beginning. What you do after completion can determine whether the acquisition delivers its potential or becomes an expensive mistake.

In this episode, I’m joined by Lucy Noonan, founder of Atomic Consultancy and an award-winning business broker specialising in the sale and acquisition of lettings and estate agency businesses.

Lucy brings extensive experience from across the acquisition process. She has worked as a corporate buyer, managed integrations and, through Atomic, helped complete more than 150 agency transactions.

I approach the subject from a different angle: as an independent agency owner who acquired and integrated several businesses, grew a substantial lettings portfolio and eventually sold the company.

Between us, we’ve seen acquisitions from very different perspectives, and we don’t agree on everything.

Lucy believes buyers should resist changing too much too quickly after completion. My own experience suggests there are times when decisive action is necessary, particularly while deferred consideration and attrition arrangements still provide some protection.

We also explore:

Why integration can be more difficult than agreeing the deal

How to protect landlords, staff and recurring income

The different ways an acquisition can be structured and funded

How owners can prepare their agency for a future sale

Whether an owner must extract themselves from the business before selling

Why lettings businesses attract higher valuations

Whether sales agencies are the acquisition bargain everyone is overlooking

Why consolidation doesn’t necessarily mean the end of the independent agent

This isn’t a conversation where every opinion neatly agrees, and it is more useful because of that. If you’re considering buying, growing or eventually selling an agency, you’ll hear two experienced but sometimes differing perspectives on what makes an acquisition work.

Sales progression is taking up an extraordinary amount of estate agents’ time. But is all that chasing actually moving transactions forward?

In this episode, I’m joined by Natasha Candeias, founder of Property Progressors, who has grown her outsourced sales progression business from a one-woman operation into a team of 26 experienced progressors in just four years.

Natasha explains why effective sales progression is about far more than repeatedly asking solicitors for updates. It requires empathy, tenacity, strong processes and, most importantly, the ability to solve problems before they derail a transaction.

We discuss:

Why sellers should be legally prepared before a buyer is found

How poor preparation can waste the first four weeks of a transaction

The difference between chasing activity and genuine progress

Why estate agency CRMs still treat sales progression as an afterthought

How outsourcing can give agents more time to win new business

Why AI may be making negotiations between buyers and sellers even harder

How Natasha built a team of 26 and is now turning Property Progressors into a franchise

If you or your team are spending more time managing existing sales than creating the next ones, this episode will give you plenty to think about.

Why does it now take around 20 weeks to exchange contracts when it used to take six to eight?

Estate agents blame conveyancers. Conveyancers blame agents. Everyone chases everyone else, the client is left wondering what on earth is happening, and when the sale collapses, nobody gets paid.

In this episode, I’m joined by Silas Lees, CEO of WiggyWam and founder of The Maverick Movement, for a frank conversation about why Britain’s home-moving process has become so painfully slow.

Silas argues that estate agents must accept their share of the responsibility. Too many properties reach the market without the material information needed to complete the transaction, while referral fees have helped turn conveyancing into an unprofitable, high-volume race to the bottom.

We discuss why agents may be sacrificing a £3,500 sales fee for a £300 referral payment, how better upfront information could dramatically reduce fall-throughs and transaction times, and why sales progression should not require endless phone calls simply to discover whether anything has happened.

We also explore whether AI will genuinely improve the home-moving experience or merely allow overstretched professionals to handle even more cases while delivering even less value.

Silas certainly doesn’t pull his punches. But if estate agents want faster transactions, fewer fall-throughs and better fees, perhaps it is time to stop pointing fingers and start changing the part of the process they can control.

Find out more about WiggyWam and The Maverick Movement.

This episode is sponsored by Alto, the all-in-one CRM helping estate agents manage their business, properties and customers more effectively. Find out more at altosoftware.co.uk.

After 35 years in estate agency, Angi Cooney has built a successful business, survived some of the toughest markets the industry has seen, sold both its lettings and sales divisions and supposedly retired.

So, naturally, she started another lettings business and launched a podcast.

In this episode, Angi shares how personal loss changed the direction of her life, why she started C Residential with little more than a name, a logo and an unshakeable belief that it would succeed, and how she built a business known for exceptional service and strong fees.

We also discuss the realities of running an estate agency, the value of lettings, knowing when it is time to sell and the disappointment that people can sometimes bring when you own a business.

Angi also gives her characteristically forthright view on self-employed estate agency, the importance of proper training and support, and why networking transformed her career in her fifties.

Today, through her “Now What?” podcast, Angi is creating space for honest conversations about the moments when life changes and we are forced to ask what comes next.

This is a wonderfully candid conversation about business, reinvention, failure and refusing to sit back later in life wondering what might have happened if you had simply given it a go.