Richard James Estate Agents Blog

As we celebrate 25 years in business this month, we reflect on the changes that we have encountered since 1991.

This was the year the world wide web was created, the year that Bryan Adams achieved the longest running Number One with Everything I Do, I Do It For You and the year Freddie Mercury died. John Major was Prime Minister and and the UK went into recession. You could buy a terraced house in Wellingborough for less than £30,000!

On 13th September of that year Richard James Estate Agents opened, at this time computers were rarely used in an estate agency environment and our mailing list consisted of a box of cards with potential buyers name, address, home telephone and requirements hand written on.

Mobile phones were extremely rare, only used by Guppies! There were no websites and no digital photography.These were the days when we took a photo and sent the film away to be developed and then wait to see how good the pictures were the next day. We would sparingly and painstakingly then stick the photographs onto our Sales Particulars, it was rare to have more than three photographs of a property. These would then be stuffed into envelopes and sent to potential buyers from our “mailing list”.

The introduction of digital photography and the Internet changed the way we would market a property. By the late 1990’s computers and basic estate agency software were introduced into our offices, our mailing list became electronic and the software matched people to houses and printed out digital photographs onto a letter to post out. Eventually this progressed to the software matching the properties to buyers and emailing them out to thousands of buyers within seconds. Marketing today has moved on again, with higher quality digital cameras, top quality printing, LED screens in our offices and LED light pocket window displays.

Today the basics principles of customer service is still the cornerstone of good estate agency. However, “online” agents are still trying to steal a share of the market offering a no frills service without personal interaction, mainly offering an Internet advert only.

We wonder what changes we will experience over the next 25 years and what the future holds for estate agency and the property market in general? How will our country change? How will our towns change? How will Richard James change?