Prime residential agency Beauchamp Estates retained its position as the biggest income producer per person, with seven fee-earners pulling in revenue of £604,285 each, in this year’s Top Agents survey. This was a dip on last year’s £724,000 per fee-earner but still more than £100,000 ahead of its nearest rival.
Second place went to The Lorenz Consultancy, with the Mayfair agency’s four partners bringing in £500,000 each.
Specialist and niche firms dominated the top five, with CVS, Davis Coffer Lyons and Robert Pinkus & Co in third, fourth and fifth. DCL was among 17 firms that reported double-digit increases in turnover per fee-earner, with figures up by 52.5% to £334,000.
Most of the big agents filled the remainder of the top 10, led by Knight Frank in sixth with an average revenue per fee-earner of £300,000 and JLL in 10th with £275,000.
Almost a quarter of the 43 firms that shared data on turnover per fee-earner recorded a decline this year, although for some this was caused by an increase in the number of fee-earners rather than a decline in revenue.
Top agents – 18 years on
The agency community was a very different place when Estates Gazette began its Top Agents survey in 1997. Back then, the league comprised 100 firms and the total turnover generated by those 100 firms was £770.5m – some £120.5m less than the UK turnover of CBRE alone.
Of the top 10 back in 1997, only two firms remain in the same guise – Savills and Knight Frank. The others have all undergone mergers and name changes. The leader of EG’s first Top Agents table, Chesterton International, was one of the major victims of the last recession, collapsing into administration during MIPIM in 2007.
Other names in the top 10 that no longer exist include Hillier Parker, which took sixth place with a UK turnover of £34m, Grimley and Richard Ellis, which held joint seventh with £33m, and Weatherall Green & Smith in 10th with UK revenue of £24.5m.
Combined, the top 10 in 1997 turned over just less than £407m, which would just about rank them fourth in today’s top 10.
Looking at 2015’s top 10 agents (including revenue from major acquisitions) and how they have performed since EG started collecting income data, the UK agency community has turned over almost £26bn.
JLL has collected the most revenue during the period, with a combined UK turnover of £4.9bn. Savills is hot on its heels with £4.8bn of UK revenue, and CBRE is in third with £3.7bn (see table).
Although JLL may be top of the league for total turnover, excluding this year’s figures, Savills has shown the most healthy increase in UK revenue (see graph), rising from £40m for the 1996 financial year to £462.3m in 2014 – a more than tenfold increase.
BNP Paribas Real Estate has shown the lowest level of growth, despite turnover doubling from £38m in 2002 to £75.6m in 2014.
