The summer period has been fairly subdued with the usual issues of communication understandably hampered by holidays with clients and staff. This has, however, allowed a period of time planning and organising for the autumn and beyond.
I deliberately chose not to run any open training courses in August for this reason but will be back with a full programme of sales and compliance sessions from September – details in the Communique newsletter and here on the website.
One area where my diary is shaping up nicely is on business planning activity for 2026. I have days scheduled with a number of clients where we will, with the involvement of their teams, take a line by line look at their businesses and put together a business plan for the year ahead.
With a number of legislative changes about to happen, leaving things to chance is not an option and still far too many businesses do not invest the time in reviewing what they are doing, getting deep under the skin and coming up with strategies to take themselves forward.
A day away from the office with total focus on the business, pays for itself many times over, and the resulting objectives and action plan will, if properly implemented and reviewed regularly, become a blueprint for everyone in the business to stay on track.
Whilst fee earning activities have, as expected, been slightly limited during the summer, I have not been idle and have been particularly active on the charity and other fronts.
As a member of the Propertymark REACH advisory panel, I attended a “dragons den” style meeting in July where we had presentations from six proptech “start-ups” looking for support and investment as part of the REACH incubator programme.
I thoroughly enjoyed questioning the entrepreneurs presenting, over their products and plans.
As always, a mixed group of businesses, two of which though were particularly exciting and will, I am sure, go on to great success. For the others, they perhaps need a rethink including possibly pivoting their positioning slightly in order to move forward.
On the charitable front, The Propertymark Trust (where I am a Director and chair the education group) are relaunching our Class of 25 initiative. This scheme provides bursaries to enable people to pursue Level 3 qualifications.
We have also built a new website which will go live in early September and where you can find details of the Class of 25 scheme (including an application form) there.
Back in 2020 I was one of the Founder Members of a new charitable foundation called Agents Together. This foundation has provided many hundreds of mentees with access to mentors to help with their personal development, confidence, resilience and well-being.
The tragic passing of CEO Sarah Edmundson a year ago from cancer and the withdrawal of funding from the original benefactor resulted in a loss of direction but a new group of well-known industry figures have, with financial support from Rightmove, relaunched and are, once again, providing the support that the original foundation set out to provide.
A new website has been created and I attended the inaugural meeting of Ambassadors in mid-August to, once again, raise the profile and engagement across the industry.
In July I was interviewed by leading marketing expert Simon Leadbetter for his Voice of the Agent research. A wide ranging discussion on the home buying and selling process, regulation and compliance ensued.
You can see the resulting video here.
Whilst we all get on with our lives, the Renter’s Rights Bill has been working its way through Parliament and is likely to move to Royal Assent this Autumn with introduction possible by the end of the year.
This legislation will create the biggest shake up of the private rental sector since its real inception when the Assured Shorthold Tenancy came into existence following the Housing Act 1988.
Agents are seemingly falling into three camps:
- Those that are all over the changes like a rash, communicating with their landlords and tenants (via events, newsletters and social media videos and posts) and who are using the proposed changes as an opportunity to train their staff and deliver new services and create exciting new income streams.
- Those that are aware of what is happening but haven’t, as yet, undertaken any planning or implemented any actions of how they are going to pivot and change. I would say the majority of agents fall into this category and they are likely to suddenly find themselves playing catch up. Their existing clients are possibly taking decisions to leave the market or go elsewhere and the first they will know about it is when the dis-instruction notice start arriving.
- The last category are, as always, the agents that, if asked, would simply say – what?
A year ago, Julie Ford and I launched our Letting Event in a Box product to enable agents to run events aimed at gaining and retaining landlords and tenants. We have undertaken the “heavy lifting” and provide all of the material need to run a successful event as well as a detailed plan of how to do so.
Many agents have been running successful events over recent months both by way of physical events at local venues and via webinars and online platforms.
With the Renters’ Rights Bill about to turn into actual legislation, we have created a Renters Rights Bill event package at half the price of the normal full Lettings Event product. Focused entirely on one subject, the product contains everything you need to run a successful event focused on the new legislation.
You can find out more and book yours here:
Major changes to Money Laundering Regulations and Supervision are about to be introduced – you can see what is proposed here:
I have also been using the summer period to plan my business going forward for 2026 and I will be announcing details during the remaining months of 2025.
I am going to be moving towards a three tier approach to providing access to me and my services.
- Training will continue as now with open courses being scheduled and delivered where you can book delegates individually or as a group. I will also continue to deliver training sessions for individual businesses.
- A subscription model that provides access to myself and my knowledge and skills for a small monthly fee. Included within this fee will be regular compliance updates and discounts on training courses.
- A Fractional Operations Director service where I provide experienced C-Level input and support (this will be bespoke according to your needs) without the full costs of employing someone of my experience. This will be at a fee level based on the amount of time to be spent – half a day, a day, two days a month etc.
Finally the latter months of the year see a plethora of industry awards and events.
I have, once again, been asked to be a judge for The Negotiator Awards and I look forward to working with my fellow judges in assessing the entries made by businesses across the industry. The awards night will be in London on 28th November.
I have submitted my entry in the Professional Services category and shall keep my fingers crossed as usual! (For clarity, I will not be judging the category that I am entering!)
