It's official: agents are hardworking!

It’s official. Estate agents regularly work far longer than the 9–5 norm. Not only that, but a substantial proportion of them are sometimes still hard at it when most ordinary people are tucked up in bed!

These are some of the intriguing findings in an analysis of our customers' working patterns.

According to the figures, agents with more than 4 offices routinely do 21% of their work outside normal office hours. But smaller agents do even better (or worse, depending on your point of view!). Firms with fewer than 4 offices do a truly Herculean 28% of their work before 9am or after 5pm.

However, perhaps the most remarkable finding concerns those agents who work very antisocial hours indeed. According to the survey, one in six are still busy putting homes on the market between 11pm and 6 in the morning.

“Remarkably, we discovered that no fewer than 16% of agents using our technology, either to draw plans online or to order 3D walkthroughs, were logging on literally in the middle of the night!” says Metropix Director Brian Farrell.

The survey also threw up some interesting regional variations. So, while agents in Bristol, Gloucester, Oxfordshire and Cheshire apparently manage to squeeze in all but 15-18% of their work between 9 and 5, their opposite numbers in West Yorkshire, London, West Sussex and Middlesex still have between 29 and 35% of their work to do outside those hours.

However the prize for the country’s hardest-working property professionals, according to our data, goes to Essex. Perhaps not surprisingly, agents in the county held up during the 1980s as the epitome of the new Thatcherite work ethic do an incredible 40% of their work outside normal hours – 5% more than their nearest rivals.

Although the figures only relate to this year, it is probable that agents are working longer hours than in the past, says Brian Farrell. “Society as a whole is more hard working these days. The trend towards Sunday opening and longer opening hours generally is partly a reflection of this. At the same time, the combination of more difficult market conditions and increased competition obviously means that agents need to work harder to gain an edge and secure both listings and sales. That’s in turn is one of the reasons why tools like our floorplans and 3D walkthroughs are becoming so popular.”

Sadly, we are unable to provide comparable figures for solicitors...