The Independents Have the Numbers. What They Lack Is Unity.

I grew up reading Aesop's fables and virtually every fairy tale I could get my hands on. Looking back, I think those stories shaped me more than I realised at the time. I loved losing myself in them, but what stayed with me were the lessons underneath. However fantastical the story, there was usually something very real being said about people, choices, consequences, courage, greed, loyalty or trust. There was always a moral.

One of those stories feels particularly relevant to the property industry today. In Aesop's The Four Oxen and the Lion, four oxen could not be defeated while they stood together. Whenever the lion approached, they faced outwards and protected one another. It was only when they quarrelled, separated and stood alone that the lion was able to take them one by one.

Hundreds of years later, it is difficult to think of a better analogy for independent estate agents, conveyancers and mortgage brokers. Individually, they may look small beside the corporates. Collectively, they are anything but. Their weakness is not a lack of expertise, reach or numbers. It is fragmentation.

Independent estate agents frequently talk about the power of the corporates as though scale belongs exclusively to them. Individually, a local agency cannot match the financial resources, marketing budget or connected services of a national group. Collectively, however, the picture is very different.

There were 'apparently' more than 25,000 estate agency businesses in the UK in 2024. Residential conveyancing remains highly fragmented, with around 5,900 firms active in the market at the beginning of 2026, while the FCA recorded almost 33,000 mortgage adviser posts in 2025. These figures measure different things and should not simply be added together, but they demonstrate the extraordinary professional capacity that exists outside a handful of dominant corporate organisations. The independents are not small. They are fragmented. And that fragmentation is becoming increasingly dangerous.

The corporates have understood the power of the ecosystem

The competitive battle is no longer simply about which estate agent wins the instruction. Large corporate groups are increasingly connecting estate agency, mortgage services, conveyancing, surveying, data and transaction technology around the same customer journey. The consumer enters through one door and can potentially remain within the same commercial ecosystem throughout much of their move.

That creates enormous advantages. Marketing can be shared, systems can be centralised, referrals remain inside the network and the customer can be moved between connected services with relatively little friction.

Independent agents have something the corporates often struggle to reproduce: local knowledge, entrepreneurialism, personal reputation and genuine relationships within their communities. But those strengths become harder to defend when the independent professional is surrounded by fragmented technology and the competing corporate can offer a much more connected experience.

The answer is not for independents to become another corporate chain. It is for them to gain the power of a corporate without becoming one.

Agents have already seen what dependency can become

The portal market should provide a warning. Estate agents create the inventory on which property portals depend. They win the instructions, photograph the homes, prepare the particulars, conduct the viewings and negotiate the sales.

Yet the dominant portal now commands more than 80 per cent of the time consumers spend on UK property portals, while agents continue to face substantial and rising advertising costs. That is the extraordinary power of a network effect.

The lesson is not that agents should abandon established portals overnight. They currently deliver an audience that agents need. The lesson is what happens when an industry allows essential infrastructure to become so concentrated that operating without it becomes commercially difficult. Independent agents should be very careful about allowing the same thing to happen to the rest of the home-moving transaction.

The independent sector needs its own ecosystem

This is why WiggyWam has been built around a different model. A Property Maverick remains an independent estate agent. They retain their own company, brand, clients and local reputation. WiggyWam does not acquire the agency or dictate how it should operate. What sits behind that agent, however, is shared infrastructure.

Their residential and commercial property listings can sit within the WiggyWam Property Portal. Their professional identity, ratings and reviews sit within the Marketplace, where consumers can discover and contact them directly. Their sellers can prepare through connected Seller's Packs, while the agent manages those clients through the Moving Hub.

Material Information gathered through that process can support compliant property listings rather than being treated as another separate administrative exercise.

Once a buyer is found, the property does not suddenly disappear into a completely different world. The Seller's Pack, Property Workspace, tasks, milestones and appropriate transaction information continue within the Moving Hub. The infrastructure is centralised. The businesses are not. That is a fundamentally different model from corporate consolidation.

Better preparation should make the agent stronger

The estate agent is usually the first professional involved in the transaction, which means they are in a unique position to determine how well prepared that transaction becomes. The seller can begin completing property information before a buyer is waiting. Supporting documents can be gathered and potential gaps identified earlier.

The WiggyWam Smart Forms have deliberately been designed around the fact that sellers do not always know every answer. If a seller is unsure, they can select Not sure rather than guessing - simply to complete the form.

That uncertainty becomes visible to the appropriate agent or solicitor so it can be addressed quickly. It may sound like a small feature, but it addresses a significant weakness in the traditional process. Uncertainty is exposed while there is time to deal with it rather than being buried inside a completed form and discovered months later. For the agent, that means better-prepared properties, stronger Material Information, fewer surprises after an offer is accepted and a better opportunity to get the client moved.

One platform instead of another collection of integrations

Independent agents should not need to recreate a corporate technology department to compete. The industry has accumulated numerous specialist products that promise to solve individual parts of the transaction. Each may be useful, but combining multiple third-party systems, integrations, logins, subscriptions and data flows can create another form of fragmentation. WiggyWam takes a different approach.

Portal listings, Marketplace visibility, marketing, ratings and reviews, Seller's Pack management and the Moving Hub sit within the same wider ecosystem. There is no requirement for the agent to replace their existing CRM or fund a major integration project before they can participate. They can continue using the specialist systems that already work for their business while WiggyWam provides the shared layer connecting the wider move. The objective is to remove friction, not introduce another implementation problem.

The Marketplace changes the referral equation too

There is another area where independents have allowed value to leak out of the transaction. Consumers need agents, conveyancers, brokers and other property professionals, yet introductions between them are increasingly monetised by middlemen and referral businesses.

The WiggyWam Marketplace creates a different route.

Mavericks can build visible professional profiles supported by genuine ratings and reviews. Consumers can search for the professional they need and make contact directly. There does not need to be a business sitting between them charging simply because one party needed to find the other. That is the old way.

As the Maverick ecosystem grows, that becomes increasingly powerful. More professionals create greater consumer choice. More transactions create more reviews. More reviews strengthen trust. Greater trust attracts more consumers, which creates more opportunities for the independents participating within it. That is how network effects can begin working for independent businesses rather than against them.

Maverick can become bigger than any individual brand

This is where the Maverick Movement adds something technology alone cannot provide. Every independent agency understandably wants to build its own local brand. Nothing about the Maverick model changes that.

But now imagine another identity sitting alongside it.

Property Maverick.

When WiggyWam markets the Maverick Movement nationally, we do not need to explain thousands of separate independent businesses individually. We can market the standard.

A consumer seeing Property Maverick begins to understand what that identity represents. The same consumer encountering a Magic Circle Maverick understands that the principles continue into conveyancing.

Over time, the single word Maverick can carry meaning across the transaction. Independent thinking. High standards. Transparent recommendations. Early preparation. Collaboration. Professional independence. A commitment to getting people moved.

Every individual Maverick continues building their own business, while every piece of wider Maverick marketing potentially strengthens everyone carrying the identity. That is something independents have rarely possessed.

The corporates have national brands because they own large numbers of businesses. The independents can create national recognition without anybody having to own them.

Imagine the strength of the network

Now consider what happens if this begins to scale. Hundreds of Property Mavericks become thousands. Their properties create portal inventory. Their sellers create prepared transactions. Their clients discover Magic Circle Mavericks, mortgage professionals and other trusted independents through the same ecosystem.

The conveyancer remains their own independent law firm. The broker remains their own business. The estate agent retains their own brand.

Yet all of them can offer the consumer something that previously required corporate ownership to achieve: a connected journey. This is where the numbers matter.

The independent side of estate agency, conveyancing and mortgage advice represents an enormous professional community distributed throughout the country. It already has the local presence, expertise and client relationships. What it has never had is the infrastructure and common identity capable of turning that fragmented strength into collective power.

WiggyWam provides the infrastructure. The Maverick Movement provides the identity and standard. The independents provide the scale.

The Four Oxen

Aesop's oxen did not become one animal when they stood together. Each remained separate. Their strength came from recognising that independence and unity were not opposites. That is exactly the opportunity facing the property industry now.

Property Mavericks can retain their agencies. Magic Circle Mavericks can retain their law firms. Brokers can retain their businesses and professional independence. What they share is the infrastructure that allows them to market, collaborate and move clients through one connected ecosystem. In another article, we'll show how you can target local, build local relationships and more within WiggyWam's powerful social network.

The corporates have demonstrated how powerful connected ecosystems can become. Independents already have the people, expertise, reach and numbers to build something formidable (and far greater than any corporate) of their own.

They do not need to become another corporate giant to compete with one. They need the power of a corporate, without becoming one.

Aesop's lion could defeat the oxen one at a time. He could not defeat them when they stood together.