L-R: Jo Bourne, Simon Leadbetter, Danielle Nash, and Clare Yates
The Voice of the Agent has expanded beyond research with the release of two new industry reports and the launch of a training and development platform aimed at estate agency professionals.
The latest publications – The Voice of the Agent Part Four: People & Salary and The Voice of the Agent: The Prime Cut – focus on recruitment, pay, leadership and the prime property sector, while the newly launched initiative, The Faculty, is designed to turn industry data and insight into practical business training.
The move marks the next phase for The Voice of the Agent, which has grown from a research project into a wider platform focused on industry performance, operational challenges and agency development across the UK property sector.
Simon Leadbetter, founder of We Are Unchained and Curator of The Voice of the Agent, said: “Estate agency has never lacked opinion. What it has often lacked is structured evidence, joined-up thinking, and the capability to consistently act on what the industry already knows.
“These reports are part of a much bigger ambition. Not simply understanding the market, but helping the industry think more clearly about where it is heading and how it responds.”
Part Four: People & Salary
The fourth instalment of The Voice of the Agent focuses on the people behind the industry, examining salary structures, leadership, ambition, professional pressures, demographics and career progression across estate and lettings agency.
The report argues that while the industry remains energetic and commercially active, it also faces growing structural pressures around capability, leadership and long-term professional development.
Among the findings:
+ Leadership roles remain disproportionately male despite women forming a slight majority overall within the sector
+ Meaningful income progression is heavily tied to seniority, control and scale rather than simple effort alone
+ Self-employment increasingly creates both greater upside potential and greater financial volatility
+ Agents remain highly ambitious and engaged with their work, but many simultaneously express concern about their long-term professional direction
Alongside Part Four, The Voice of the Agent has also released The Prime Cut, a detailed examination of the UK’s upper quartile, prime and super-prime residential markets.
The report argues that the prime market is not a single market but “three completely different industries operating under the same job title.”
Key findings include:
+ More than 10,000 agencies operate in UK residential property, but only 175 hold a single super-prime instruction
+ Brand recognition becomes significantly less important as property values rise, with trust and network reputation increasingly determining who wins instructions
+ AI adoption is accelerating sharply within prime agency, with more than half of prime agents now using AI tools daily
+ Super-prime agency increasingly operates as a relationship-driven ecosystem built on long-term trust rather than scale or visibility
The report also includes an extensive interview with DDRE Global founder Daniel Daggers exploring influencer culture, trust equity, off-market transactions and the growing convergence between media, technology and high-end estate agency.
The reports also mark the official launch of The Faculty, a new industry initiative bringing together Jo Bourne (Impact CTMD), Simon Leadbetter (We Are Unchained), Danielle Nash (Diomed Consulting), and Clare Yates (CY Training Works).
The Faculty has been created to help agencies address leadership, operational, cultural and commercial capability gaps identified repeatedly throughout The Voice of the Agent research programme.
The initiative focuses on four core areas:
+ Leadership and behaviour
+ Brand promise and customer experience
+ Marketing and strategic positioning
+ Operational excellence and business systems
Leadbetter added: “Estate and letting agencies do not lack advice. It lacks consistent application of proven best practice.
“The Faculty is positioned as a practical, commercially grounded programme focused on implementation rather than theory, helping agencies build capability across leadership, culture, operations and growth.”
The first event will be in September 2026, and anyone interested in attending should sign up here.
