Salaries rise again, but it pays to be prepared for the future
The headline on the pure remuneration side of this year’s survey is that salaries are up – by 5% compared with last year’s 2%. Corporate real estate bagged the biggest pay packet by area of work with an
average of £66,365 – a 6.5% rise on last year. Investment and fund management came top of the list by organisation activity.
But Cobalt’s Christopher Mackenzie warns: “While the investment market remains strong, salaries and bonuses will continue to rise. But when the investment market dries up, so too do future job opportunities, pay rises and bonuses.
“With this in mind, people would be foolish not to think about recession-proofing their future earnings. Tenant-focused work will create reliable income when fewer transactions are being agreed. Larger organisations with reliable income and more predictable results are going to provide more consistent earnings than private equity players and niche investors.”
London still top, but it’s grim up North
No great surprise that, once again, London salaries are streets ahead of the rest. At an average of £53,834, they are also up by 5% on last year.
More surprising, though, is the average salary figure reported for Yorkshire. At £44,686 it is only just behind the average salary for the South East and comes in as the third most lucrative in the UK. So why does this region outperform the rest of its Northern counterparts to such an extent?
Andrew Gent, director of Yorkshire agency Gent Visick, says: “I think that figure could be down to the fact that we have lost so many people out of the industry in this region during the downturn. As firms are trying to repopulate they are having to offer good money. There is a shortage of decent mid-tier people in the market and this is a small region.
“In the North West, for example, there are plenty of other cities outside of Manchester, but here it is really competitive, and so firms are having to offer decent packages to persuade the best people to move.”
Fee income recovers after 2014’s hiccup
More good news as fees were back on an upward trajectory this year after a dip in 2014.
Heather Macleod, research manager at Reed Business Insight and the compiler of the Salary Survey, says: “In 2015, the fees brought in per annum for companies went up by an average of £10,308 to £183,106.
“We had seen a slight dip in fees in 2014, which we can now see was anomalous because there is a clear line of progression from 2012 during which fees were £147,512, the lowest we have seen since before 2002, and sharply increasing over the following 12 months to £181,341. The dip in 2014 was likely the result of the fees increase balancing out as in the years from 2013 to 2015 they increased by just £1,765. Since 2012, they have increased overall by 19%.”
This trend and upward movement is slightly out of kilter with the Top Agents survey, where almost a quarter of the 43 firms that shared data on turnover per fee-earner recorded a decline this year. So it is worth reiterating here that for some companies this dip was caused by an increase the number of fee-earners rather than a decline in revenue.
