You and I both know there is a clique within the property industry. And we both know know who they are.
The familiar faces. The same conference speakers. The podcast regulars. The commentators who seem to appear on every panel, every stage and every industry publication - often regardless of competence.
Some have built successful careers by being part of the 'in crowd'. Good for them.
But here'1787150186153-1s the uncomfortable question no-one dares to ask:
What has the clique actually achieved for the people it claims to represent?
Because after twenty years of technological advancement, investment and innovation, something rather strange has happened.
Buying and selling a home has become a lot harder than it used to be.
Transactions that once took six to eight weeks can now take more than twenty. Consumers are frustrated. Estate agents are under increasing financial pressure. Conveyancers are drowning in casework. And consumer trust in the entire process continues to slide.
So perhaps it's time we asked a difficult question:
What if the people at the top of the industry aren't actually the people we should be listening to?
That's not a personal attack - it's a challenge to the status quo, because the clique has an enormous amount of influence. They determine which businesses get airtime and who gets invited to speak on stages.
And, perhaps most importantly, which ideas are considered acceptable. "Groupthink" as George Orwell put it, appears to have found a very comfortable home within the property world. And that's when it becomes extremely dangerous.
If you challenge the accepted "wisdom", you risk being excluded. If you dare to question established practices, you risk being labelled difficult. If you suggest there might be a fundamentally better way of doing things, you quickly discover that the property industry isn't particularly interested in hearing it.
Playing by the groupthink rules of the clique means you don't rock the boat, you don't challenge the existing business models, you don't question nefarious incentives and you don't ask uncomfortable questions - such as who is benefitting from keeping things exactly as they are?
Whatever you do...don't suggest the entire system might be broken...because there's a lot of money flowing to the status quo, and they're doing just fine keeping things as they are.
But for you? That's a different story.
Consider the estate agency sector as one example. We estimate that the industry loses approximately £5.42 billion every year in fee revenue from work that has effectively already been done.
An agent has already won the instruction. They've marketed the property, arranged viewings, negotiated offers and in some cases, chased the transaction.
But then, the sale falls apart because of a problem discovered months into the transaction. Perhaps the legal title wasn't investigated properly. Or maybe the chain collapsed when the buyer walked away.
Whatever the reason, agents are doing months of work for free and then fail to receive the final fee because the clique has ensured the industry has become obsessed with chasing one metric: winning the listing.
But winning a listing isn't the same as winning a sale. And a portfolio full of instructions that aren't selling isn't necessarily a successful estate agency.
The same problem exists in conveyancing.
Conveyancers are being pushed towards increasingly commoditised pricing, whilst the clique doesn't address the broken business model of conveyancing, but instead turns their attention to using AI as the "solution". They want you to take on more files, whilst charging less because you can 'do more work' with AI by your side.
Work harder. Work longer. And somehow make the numbers stack up whilst carrying all the risk and liability of a transaction. If something goes wrong, your PI premium will jump up, but at least you'll have AI processing more work for you...
Where is the serious conversation from conveyancing leadership about building a better business model for great conveyancers? Where is the movement encouraging them to stop competing on price and start competing on value?
Think about this. Seriously.
A family of four will easily spend more on a fortnight in the sun than they spend on the professional service handling the legal transfer of what may be the most expensive asset they will ever own.
Yet we're still treating conveyancing (and estate agency to a large extent), as a commodity to be sold to the lowest bidder. Something is dangerously wrong with that equation and the clique is doing anything and everything but fixing it.
Here's the truth - the people who benefit most from keeping the status quo in place aren't the same people why carry all the financial risk.
There are people at the top of the property ecosystem who continue to get paid regardless of whether an estate agent sells the house. They get paid regardless of whether a conveyancer completes on the file or whether the consumer actually moves home.
Let me be abundantly clear - I have no problem whatsoever with people making vast quantities of money and I'd have no problem with a group of extremely wealthy people at the top of the industry making even more money - if the industry was getting better.
If estate agents were selling more houses, conveyancers were completing more files, consumers were moving home faster, and transaction risk was falling, whilst consumer trust in the sector was increasing.
But that's not what we're seeing. In fact, we're seeing the exact opposite. And that's why the clique needs to be challenged. Not because everyone within it is bad or incompetent, (although anyone who has followed me for a while will know my views on the "useful idiots").
But because consensus without scrutiny becomes complacency. And complacency becomes dangerous when billions of pounds and millions of consumers are involved.
As a Maverick, we don't ask: "What does everyone else do?"
The Maverick asks: "Why do we do it this way?"
And then asks the more dangerous question (to the clique at least): "Is there a better way?"
I've seen what happens when professionals start asking those questions. Recently, Matt Giggs interviewed Ben Roberts of Keyston Estate Agents - an estate agent who has achieved outstanding results by doing precisely this.
He questioned assumptions that everyone else simply accepted as true. He changed the way he approached his market and he increased his average fee. Substantially.
(Here's the link if you want to listen to this excellent podcast: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/estate-agent-showdown/id1822749630?i=1000775077693 )
He secured upfront marketing commitments from clients and changed his business model to focus on completions, not just winning listings. His business has skyrocketed. Not because he discovered some secret, hidden formula. But because he stopped following the crowd. That's the bit I find most exciting.
In this day and age, opportunity isn't just reserved for a handful of people at the top. It's available to every good estate agent and conveyancer who is willing to - as Steve Jobs used to say - "think different".
But there is a price. You have to stop following the clique. You have to stop seeking approval from others who, frankly, do not care about you. You have to stop asking what everyone else outside of your business, your life, your family, and your circumstances, thinks.
Crucially, you have to start asking what you think.
Scratch beneath the surface of your business. Question every single one of the assumptions you've made. Question the metrics you're chasing. Question the advice you're being given from people within the industry. And, most importantly, ask: Who benefits from the advice I'm being given?
Because that question changes everything. If you're dissatisfied with the results you're getting, continuing to do exactly what everyone else does is not going to produce a different result. That's not pessimism - it's simply mathematics.
Notice what the people in our industry are not doing more than what they are. That's where the gap is. People will subscribe to a newsletter because they're seeking better results - and then not read it. They'll take out a gym membership - and not go. And when they're faced with asking themselves questions - most will quickly get back to doomscrolling before they'll ever sit in silence for five minutes to ask themselves if there's a better way.
This is why one person, like Ben, can achieve stellar results quickly within a commoditised industry - because everyone else is simply not prepared to endure the short-term discomfort of doing the work.
Perhaps the greatest cost of the clique isn't what it costs the people inside it. It's what it costs everyone else outside of it - the estate agents who could be earning more; the conveyancers who could be building better businesses; the consumers who could be moving home faster.
The property industry doesn't need more people standing on stages telling everyone to keep doing what they've always done. It needs people prepared to stand up and say: "There has to be a better way." That's what a Maverick does.
So here's your Maverick challenge this week - take one assumption in your business that you've never questioned. Then ask:
Why have we always done it this way? And - Is there a better way?
You might be surprised by what you discover, because the moment you stop following the crowd...you stop being a commodity. And that's where the Maverick journey really begins.