Broking London: the changing landscape of residential property agents in the UK

Earlier this year Bloomberg’s headline read: London gets a taste of New York’s cut-throat real estate culture and described the changes in the world of London’s agency as a "revolution". 

In London in 2025 the residential property agency scene is a completely different picture to how it was 10 years ago. Good, ambitious agents exiting some of the large corporate agencies (usually after bonus time), seeking a different working environment and a greater share of the pie is nothing particularly unusual: it has been happening for years. However, the key difference now is that many of those departing agents are often joining one of the many new brokerage model agencies which have set up in the capital over the course of the last few years. This shift is fundamentally reshaping the industry.

The most famous of these new brokerage agencies is DDRE; established by Daniel Daggers in 2020 and the agency at the centre of last year’s Netflix entertainment documentary, Buying London. But there is a long list of others to choose from, such as early innovators, The London Broker and Moveli to London House, or AZ Alliance, eXp Realty, or alternative models such as Tedworth and Harding Green. The terms under which agents of these establishments operate vary widely, but what they generally have in common is freedom for their brokers to act as both buying and selling agents, engaged as a client’s trusted property advisor at all stages of the buying and selling journey. The agents are also much less likely to be constrained by commission levels being kept at a certain point and can negotiate freely and enter into deals on their own terms including commission shares with other agents and introducers or fixers. The big splash made by Sotheby’s over the last couple of years supports this trend as even as a corporate, they are ripping up the rule book in terms of how their agents are paid and how they do business. 

There remain a handful of agents these days who operate strictly as buying agents and do not cross to the other side of the table. The logic from those buying agents is that they would consider it a potential conflict to be retained by a buyer for a property search in a specific postcode and price point while also being asked by a seller to market a property for sale in the same area and price bracket.

The market operating in this way means that there is a great deal of choice available to clients.  And that has to be a good thing. But as confirmed by a YouGov survey commissioned by First In The Door last year, clients do not always understand who is acting for them (and how they are getting paid), with 49% of respondents believing that estate agents represent both parties. 

It has become increasingly common for a selling agent to take a buyer on a wider search if they are unable to persuade them to purchase something that they have on their books. That agent would then look to the retained selling agent for a commission fee for introducing the buyer – usually around 0.5% plus VAT. This practice, once much criticised, has become normalised, but it can lead to confusion if agents and brokers are not clear with their clients (or where the buyer is not retained, their prospects) on the basis of their role and their expectations for payment.

There have been multiple calls in recent years for the agency world to be regulated. Most quality agents (and we are lucky to work with some of the best) would welcome this change against the backdrop of the ever-increasing number of new brokers in the game, and if it gives clients clarity around fees as part of that, then this can only be a positive.

I think it is likely we will see a proposal on agency regulation during this term of government. Matthew Pennycook, the Minister of State at the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, confirmed in November 2024 the Government’s intention to revisit Lord Best’s report from 2019 on regulating the property agent sector, and Baroness Taylor of Stevenage, Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Housing, Communities and Local Government), confirmed last month, during the House of Lords Renters’ Rights Bill committee stage, that the Government will set out its full position on the regulation of property agents in due course.  Perhaps if the Renters’ Rights Bill is added to the statute books later this year as the Government intends, parliamentary attention will then turn to regulation of the agencies that underpin the UK property industry.

Either way, the broker model is here to stay and we should embrace it and ensure that we are ready to educate clients as to how it all works.

This publication is a general summary of the law. It should not replace legal advice tailored to your specific circumstances.

© Farrer & Co LLP, June 2025