96. The property market has changed. Here’s where the opportunity is now | David Powell

0:00Welcome to All About Business with me, James Reed, the podcast that covers everything about business, management, and leadership. Every episode, I sit down with different guests who bootstrap companies, masterminded investment models, or built a business empire. They're leaders in their field, and they're here to give you top insights and actionable advice so that you can apply their ideas to your own career or business venture. What does it take to build a successful career in one of Britain's most competitive and cyclical industries? Today on All About Business, I'm joined by David Powell, CEO of Andrews Property Group.

0:40In this episode, we discuss resilience after the financial crash, how the property sector has evolved into a service-driven business, and why housing affordability and stamp duty remain major challenges for the UK economy.

0:57Well, today on All About Business, I couldn't be more delighted than to welcome David Powell, who's travelled to talk to me today from Bristol. David is the CEO of Andrews Property Group, a UK estate agency and property services company. David joined Andrews in 2021 and was quickly promoted through senior roles going from commercial director in 2022 to managing director in 2024 and CEO by 2025. So we'll be asking you about this meteoric rise, David. Andrews Property Group, I think it's important to say, is owned by the Andrews Charitable Trust, which means profits generated by the group are used for charitable causes, which creates long term social impact.

1:43So not only does this help to support good causes, but it also, I believe, creates a people first culture within the business. So David, thanks for coming in. Let's start at the beginning. I understand you started out in your career in property at a very early age. How did that come about? Yeah, of course. I started at 19. It was my first, well, I would class as my first real job from education. It was not by design. I don't think anyone chooses property, but you fall into it, and then you very quickly fall in love with it. So 19 was my first role as a junior negotiator. So I like that. You fall into it, and then you fall in love with it.

2:22So you were a school leaver at this point? Yes, I went through traditional school, then college for two years, and then finished. Went to America, a little bit of traveling, Camp America, a bit of sports coaching, and then straight into a state's agency. And where was that? Agency was just south of Bristol, a little town called Nelsey. So it was a small independent business, which only formed about six months before I joined. So David, what was it about estate agency or property that you fell in love with? What are the specifics of that? I think if you take it back, it's people. I enjoy people, I enjoy speaking to people, helping people.

3:03And I guess you're dealing with one of the hardest things someone will go through, i.e. buying a house. So you got to know your clients very well. I enjoyed the buzz of selling. I enjoyed the buzz of achieving. and you could do all of that whilst helping people secure the dream home. Not always a dream move for some people. Sometimes it wasn't a move they wanted to make. So it's the problem solving of that piece as well. So it was the people aspect of the job, it sounds to me, that you particularly liked as a young man. But you obviously did well because you were a manager of one of these agencies at the tender age of 21.

3:40Yes. So what happened? How did you get promoted so quickly? So, estate agency has a funny way of operating. You become good at selling houses. So, you very quickly get promoted to valuing houses off the back of that activity. And when you become good at valuing properties, you then get given people to look after. So, it feels quite disconnected, but that's the path that you generally take. So, because you're good at one thing, you very quickly move to the next thing and ultimately get on to run your own office. And in a lot of estate agencies, the manager is generally the one that leads by example for people to follow and a lot of learning on the job.

4:21So it was a quick route to management, but generally through just making sure that you're leading in the right way. So you're 21. Describe it to me. How many people are in the office? There were three people in the office plus myself. So we had four. What sort of ages were they? They were older. So you were the youngest? Yes, very much so. So was this a certain pressure on you? Did you feel it? No, I didn't feel it because I was too busy at 21 trying to achieve. So I was head down running forwards and they were part of the team just to help aid that process. So you were ambitious? Very much so.

4:56That's what carried you along. What did you learn? What were your early lessons as a young manager, as a young agent that carried you forward in your career? Yeah, I think my lessons learned at that point were probably relatively short. It was probably when I moved to the next company where you then started to think about your impact a little bit more. So you can kind of race to a certain point with your eyes closed and then you have that point of reflection. What next? And I think as I made that transition, you started to ensure that you are actually taking people with you and not just running there yourself.

5:33Hang on. So you stayed, how long were you at this first company? I was at that firm for just over two and a half years. So you left at 21. I left, yes, just at 21 and a half, then moved on to a regional firm where I continued the same role in a slightly different environment. Were you a manager somewhere else? Absolutely, yeah. All right. But as a young manager, what were the things that you learned? What were the things that you maybe were surprised by or found novel or interesting? it um again yeah probably what i found interesting um were the people because everyone's different um and and also then not everyone was the same as myself which i didn't quite understand at the beginning i felt i wanted to achieve a lot so everyone else should want to achieve a lot and i wanted to work longer hours everyone else should want to work longer hours and that was some pushback on a little bit of pushback yeah so not everyone's the same is a good early lesson.

6:24Very much so. And I think from that, yeah, it was trying to win the hearts and minds and you realise that not every heart and mind was the same. And that was the big learn for myself at an early age. So what did you learn in terms of how to do that and how to take people with you and how to achieve a strong team that's successful? Yeah, absolutely. We had, I mean, I was quite fortunate in that part where we had a lot of people that were similar minded, but not everyone. And everyone had slightly different work and styles. So the big lesson was to make sure that it worked for them as well as it worked for myself and it worked for someone else.

6:59And at that point, it was just trying to make the team gel whilst they had very much different focuses in work as well as outside of work. So you're building a career as an estate agent. It seems to me one of the things that's attractive about a estate agency and why it might have been a good place to start for you is success and contribution is very transparent, isn't it? you're either selling houses or you're not yeah yeah it's for me it's a career i reflect on and we talk about it certainly back then the industry's changed somewhat but to your point there you could put a lot of effort in you see the reward quite quickly um i think with rising costs and various other dynamics that's perhaps come out of the industry a little bit um but at 21 on um you were able to earn quite healthy money um purely through effort so you get a commission on the sale you would earn commission on the sale uh various uh other areas you might earn referral business would be quite big in our industry um so you you could rack that up quite quickly if you were willing to put the hours in and yeah the more hours you put in the more you're able to sell and ultimately the end result was quite positive you know i was thinking about the options listening to you, David, that are available to young people today.

8:16And the journey you've just described of going into a business, being able to earn pretty good money by working hard, learning a lot about people and progressing early in your career, is really very attractive. Because I think a lot of young people are wondering which way to go. Would you advocate a state agency or something people is is that still possible there's been a few changes i guess over the time so during because of rising costs in various areas and national living wage and i and the way the industry's changes were in terms of portals particularly um yeah the expense of running a business is higher therefore the profit margins in our industry today would be smaller and that's put some pressure on being able to earn as much as quickly as we used to be able to do um so almost a bit like property You're having to play a medium game or a longer term game now to get to those levels.

9:13It's not quite as easy for people to earn that so quickly. So it's not booming in the way it was then? Not booming the way it is, but I'd absolutely advocate it as a career path. But you're probably taking a slightly more sustained journey to a certain level. So what qualities would you be looking for in people you're hiring that would be well suited to that career? It's really about people. if you have a genuine interest in building good relationships if you have a real interest in making sure you're creating good positive outcomes for your customer then those qualities will put you in good stead for a you know a good career in in property and how do you spot those people generally personality more so is making sure you're not coming across with someone that's just after a quick gain because that generally might win in certain scenarios but it's not going to play out in medium term so someone that can express that it might be through good customer service and current roles our industry is changing in the sense it's more about the service being provided rather than a salesy experience people generally get put off by a salesy experience but they want comfort that you're going to look after their needs and you're going to be able to support those so your your career obviously you know progressed well for a period of time and then you came across 2008 and the crash occurred you know obviously there was a booming property market before that but quite the reverse afterwards what what happened to you in that situation yeah the the company that i was working for at the time uh unfortunately went into administration so um you know one day you're in work next day you're not and that that was a bit of a learn so from that point it was really a case of what what happens next I opted in 2009 to open my own estate agency business off the back of that which was quite a difficult time not very many transactions and some businesses were starting to push into other revenue streams lettings being a big one so I opened a sales and lettings business that went back into the office that I left from the previous company so there was some continuity in geographical location um and um two of the staff members actually came back and joined myself as well so in some respects it felt a bit like bau but we went about to put a different brand so you put the old team back together we put the band back together and we got along with it yeah good for you for good for you for leading that initiative so where was that um that was in western supermare just south of bristol right um so it was why did Did you locate there because you'd been there before?

11:55It was simply, in some ways, it was the easy choice to go back into the office that I came out of. It's an area that we'd been running around the streets for six, seven years. We would have repeat customers. It's really to jump off the back of that and take full advantage of it. Yeah. So how did you get on then with your own business? That was great. I learned a lot during those three years, an awful lot. and again we had some quick successes which was which was great and we really as a small team we really enjoyed uh those three years and you were able to do things that would be quite difficult to do in a bigger organization as as Andrews is today um so really enjoyed that part but there was a reflection moment for myself where I could be more impactful in a slightly bigger operation um the four walls the same five people um lovely as they were but it was a case of i think i could do more than this and and at that point i wasn't really too sure how i could really build that business to a scale worth having quickly enough um so i thought well there's a bigger world out there and and we were approached it wasn't part of the plan but i was approached to to buy the business um and that kind of coincided with my thought process at the time and um opted to sell that to a regional firm which I then went on to run that regional firm for for seven years so you stayed with the business so I yep sold stayed as part of the furniture did that do you think they bought the business so they could get you into the yeah I'd like to think so um I think it was certainly the the purpose of that business was to try and buy a number of businesses to build together to build a regional sales and lessons business in the area so initially the plan was just to merge my business into it and with the view of real growth thereafter which we went on to do and we acquired a lot of businesses and then my role very quickly got involved in running initially a very large part of that business and then all of it very quickly thereafter so it was an interesting time again learned an awful lot certainly through the acquisition piece and merging businesses.

14:07And again, you're back to merging people. And where that went well, we had great success. Where we didn't, there were certainly some challenges. What are the key sort of ingredients that are needed to make it successful, that merging of people or businesses? Yeah, alignment. Absolutely alignment. And we purchased a lot of smaller businesses that were quite handheld by owners. that came with some challenges particularly if that didn't quite fit in the way that we were running and and they might have been sitting in a very small business for 20 years and then all of a sudden they've been mopped up into something slightly bigger so that would create you know an unsettlement to some of those smaller teams so really trying to embrace those people as quickly as you can and you did some better than others it seems from what you just said yeah absolutely We had some fantastic results through that, generally where people felt that it was a real improvement for them.

15:05It created opportunities. It created sustainability. Where people felt they were losing something, whether or not they were or they were not. But if they felt they were losing in the deal, then that would become a slightly tougher challenge. so sort of painting a view of the future which is positive for the new team as part of the wider group was an important part of that role was it absolutely and um i guess the lesson through that was whilst it might have felt like a positive trajectory for for myself and for the business that might not have been the positive trajectory for that person all of a sudden yeah they're part of something they might not want it to be so sometimes it wasn't for everyone and that's the challenges with acquisition.

15:49So what happened then? You built this business, added lots of agencies together. Yeah, absolutely. And my time came to an end in that business in 2019. What happened? Why? I think that largely because my view of the way forwards was slightly differently aligned to the owners at that point. And I think for me, it got to a point where I've done my stint in that business. I've taken it as far as I felt I could have done. the owners had a slightly different view. And at the time, it was quite a difficult time, but reflecting back, it was absolutely the right thing that happened. And then from there, I opted to take a year off to really reflect what I wanted to do and where I went.

16:36And I had two very young boys at the time. It's great to spend a bit of time at home with them. Can I ask what sort of age you were at this point? At that point, I was 39. My boys were two and four. um again work a lot of hours so it was case of spend a bit of good quality time with with my wife and the two boys and really enjoyed it uh for the first couple of months but and and then you're really missing that work element the buzz and the purpose um beyond being a father you wanted to kind of get back into the working environment but but i sustained 12 months off and then yep coming back into employment was difficult at that time so you sustain you say you sustain 12 months because you'd made a decision to take a year i made a decision to take a year out and have a have a real break which which was nice for your family i think the first part was yeah uh after that they might want me so was it was it was it hard to re-engage then after this sabbatical if you like it was um job market at that point um so we're talking 2020 um pandemic and so just just before the pandemic so it was so it's kind of the back end of 2019 going into 2020 and we the job market didn't seem to be overly fluent or certainly in in the industry and no it wasn't i remember that period because i remember thinking there might be a recession coming and then there was a big one because of the pandemic yeah i i took both bullets there i think but the where where i found it really interesting is when you go into company and I was trying to enter at a similar director level.

18:08And there was a lot of nervousness over someone just taking a year off. What, amongst the other people? Yeah, so you'll be going up against some very strong candidates, some great roles, but you've had a year off and they've carried on. And I think for many, I had a lot of feedback around a bit of concern around that. Are you just going to take another year off, et cetera, et cetera? So how did you answer that? I answered it very honestly, rightly or wrongly, but I opted to take a year off and I want to go again and go on to achieve something. So that was difficult. And I think with the shortage of jobs available that I found, you started to go down the ladder, so to speak, because ultimately I got to that point I needed to earn some money as well.

18:52So there was a sort of year off penalty in the way you were assessed. It felt like it a little bit. And it makes me reflect quite differently when I see a gap in someone's CV. I think before I probably might have taken a similar sort of view why have you just taken a year off and then as I so what would you do now I'd try and understand why they've taken that year off have you come across people who've done that yeah absolutely have the reasons been similar or have they been different I think we've had some various scenarios in that some might not have felt like they were telling the truth and some that absolutely were and for good reason they've taken a break.

19:33It might be through mental health, needed rest. Well, the words in my mind are burnout. I mean, is that what you're talking about when you say mental health? I think so. That's probably something I suffered from in 2019 that led me to sign up to having a bit of time out. And it's entirely healthy to take a break. Yeah, I think the world is becoming more accepted to some of these principles, but certainly at the time I found it difficult. Right. So you weren't being given the sort of chance that you feel you should have been. I don't think so. And then the challenge is where do you go from there?

20:10So what happened? Where did you go from there? I started to take, I had to start looking at lower level roles. And that created challenges. So you've been applying for what, managing director jobs? Absolutely, yeah. And then you would start looking at lower level roles. And that created another battle that no one felt you were going to stay there. um and probably true when you say lower level roles what were you pitching at regional level right regional level manager roles and um so so and and eventually that's that's where i ended up and i i took a a regional equivalent to a regional manager level role and um and another estate in another estate agency group yeah and then what happened um that that was short-lived uh through the covid piece we um eight weeks after starting um we went into lockdown so um so that was tough uh that was a bit tough good timing it wasn't great timing if i pushed everything back 12 months it would have been fantastic um so it it led to kind of you know one minute you wanted to be back in work you were next minute you were back at home and you've just been there for a year so it was an interesting time um and then going into the early days of covid no one knew what was happening with the job market so and at that point there were some financial battles where you had to earn some money um so it was a case of reinventing myself slightly i started to venture more towards land and new homes um which is a slightly different style of work within our industry um and and that's what really brought me to andrews eventually um which was about a year after that period so land and new homes could you just explain what that is and yeah land a new home specifically working with uh plc's smes um yeah really trying to find companies and small companies big and small um and what uh you were land sourcing so trying to find development opportunity for them and then seeing that through to the end process so you were looking for land for them to develop for them to develop and then you continue the journey all the way through so they build and then you sell on their building residential residential residential properties.

22:13Right. So there's meant to be a lot more of this going on in the country than there is, isn't there? Because the government wants to build millions of houses. Allegedly. But it's not happening, is it? It's not happening. Why is that, do you think? A lot of reasons. I mean, the target of 1.5 million over a five-year term, they'd have to increase output by 50%. It's not going to happen. It's not going to happen. There's no appetite for developers to do so. It was never going to happen, was it, really? No, it wasn't. It certainly wasn't going to happen in that term um whether or not they could get the house in order to deliver on a second term if they get that far um but it wasn't going to happen in that part uh you didn't have the planning um the planning teams were just not set up to even deliver that if they wanted to uh developers had no incentive to increase their output by 50 percent the housing market didn't lend to supporting an increase of such either.

23:05And whilst housing associations would mop up as many properties as they would want to, but someone's still going to build that. The rise of costs in building, in staffing, everything kind of went against and made those principles quite difficult. Andrews, I believe, headhunted you. Yes. So what did they want you to do for them? They've seen very quick success in delivering a lot of business in that region in the Bristol area. So the ask was very much come and do that in Andrews, but on a bigger scale. And that is very quickly how I got involved with Andrews. So the attraction there was to come and do that on a slightly bigger platform without really looking too far forward to that point.

23:50For me, it was about taking an opportunity that was put in front of you. So at this point, it would be helpful, I think, for our listeners just to describe Andrews. How big is it? Where does it operate? How many people? That sort of thing. And Andrews is 350, 360 staff. We have 40 offices that span across Bristol, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire, and then we come across into the southeast, London, Surrey, Kent, and Essex. So the south of England. South of England, very much so. We focus very much on estate agency, residential let-ins, mortgages, block management, landed new homes, estate management.

24:27so generally anything stuck around the the estate agency core market so you joined as commercial director and your role was really to build this land and property business line yeah that was the initial um role that i came into andrews very quickly i got involved in a couple of the other income streams be it the corporate division um and then very quickly after that um anything that effectively creating money came under my stewardship so that was heading up all of those frontline income streams right and from there you became CEO yeah there was MD and then CEO so we we went on a bill of a turnaround project in 22 so the company had a new short term CEO so I was promoted into MD to support that gentleman and when that contract came to the end that's when moved into the CEO role.

25:25So that was a pretty meteoric rise. It was yeah and what do you think what advice would you give others who ambitious to sort of achieve higher levels in an organization to focus on look out for think about? Yeah I think largely it's looking for opportunities where you can make a difference because if you can make a difference someone will recognize it. I think if you sit in an area where it becomes yeah it doesn't matter what you do the end results the same it's difficult to stand out from the crowd in that and i i think i had an advantage of coming into andrews at a certain time where actually you could make a difference um and if you make a significant difference it's difficult to ignore it and then it allows you to go on and help others do the same which is how that journey came about you've said earlier in our conversation that this has become a i think your words were high cost low margin business what why is that what's happened and estate agency still relies on a lot of people manpower so despite the rise of uh prop tech in our industry and prop tech is what prop tech is is effectively uh largely software pieces that help us do our job and we label that through prop tech so property technology related technology um and there's an awful lot of it um there's there's an awful lot on it and i sit on a couple of panels committees that help support some of that but the cost of that the cost the rising cost of portals um significantly um and the continuation you're thinking of right move zoopla on the market would be the free fees um estate agents can pay quite a lot of money on on those uh and and then the the increase in cost to staff as well.

27:10So the combination of all three, along with premises, haven't got any cheaper. The combination of all of that means that the overheads for running a business of such, it means that, I guess, if you go back when I started, you could run a sales-only business. Now you are reliant on having other income streams to that, be it lettings, mortgages, conveyance in so that it's very difficult to run just a sales only business of scale yes so you're saying i think that traditional sales isn't enough to sustain um no most agencies anymore no i don't think it is there there there is a uh a slightly new model in our industry which is kind of the american model um so it's individuals working by themselves um selling properties without the overheads of offices and so on and so forth, and almost under a franchise model of sorts, that creates lower overheads.

28:13And I think for those individuals, they will, if they're successful, will earn a good salary. The bit that's questioned there is whether or not they're actually building a business, because they are the business. So it'll be very difficult for them to go on and sell that at some point. so I think if you're going to grow a business in in the country that will cover property in its fall then yeah those five or six multiple income streams are pretty important so what what misconceptions David do people have about estate agency I mean it's one of those careers a bit like employment agents that gets a bit of heat every now and again which one's worse so what what misconceptions tell us what the big one is it's an untrusted industry um and and that's often thrown around quite quickly um and and i think that that's a bit of a shame because there's a lot of i'm sure like recruitment there's a lot of good businesses doing a lot of good things um and always you know that it's the bad ones that grab your starting point is a degree of mistrust massively yeah i think the industry really suffers with a lack of transparency And I think if we use the advances in PropTech particularly to move that forwards, if the whole system was more transparent, then I think customers will understand actually the amount of work good estate agents actually do.

29:37So you think, what isn't transparent that should be then to be specific? think i i think largely um all of it from if we go to the very beginning i think one of the things that is changing for us is is values property values initially um there is far more information available today that you know even someone sitting in their own home can gather a good amount of information to start to gauge the price more you can look at what the house or flat next door was sold for can't you exactly and and i guess if you go back to when i started it's harder to get all that information so you can find that stuff out so it's fairly transparent already so if someone comes around and tells you your house is worth x you can check that quite quickly you you can do um the challenge then comes that the customer has a responsibility at that point if they're given three different valuations and there could be 100 grand between top and bottom yeah they might believe the bottom ones but they might hope for the top um and unfortunately that's where you can end up with a slight disparency so i suppose a criticism of agencies in the past is that they say your house is worth more to get your business and then the offers are always lower yeah they don't have the buyers who will pay that no so i think it's important today when when people are looking to buy their house they're not just looking at the the valuations they're looking at the detail behind that how many properties does this agent sell what what is the number of houses they sell compared to the number of houses they take on and if they take that next step um that that's a good question so they should ask how many houses they sell relative to how many they take on absolutely yeah yeah and would they get an honest answer um well they can find that out um find it out how do you do that information is available i mean if you just simply go to the portals as a quick test right move right move right move zoopla on the market if you just go and have a look at the number of properties that that business that branch is marketing so you could go and look up andrews on right you can look up andrews if we give you a branch of bath you can have a look at bath it will show you all of the properties are on the market with that agent that that office particularly and then you can have a look at the ones that are marked as sold subject of contracts and the ones that are still available so it'll start to give you a bit of a test to how so you can begin to see how quickly they're selling them absolutely Absolutely, yeah.

32:02And as agents, we can see the timeframe of all of our competitors whilst they can see ours as well. So what you have on the back of these portals, there's more information in the back end. So unfortunately, customers can't access it, but we certainly can. So if you're at the point where you are not sure of the information being provided, other agents will be able to confirm that. So what's more important to you as an agent, the buyer or the seller? The seller attracts the buyers. So you need the seller to attract the buyers, and then the buyers might be sellers themselves. So for us, largely, what we're after are people that want to sell properties.

32:40Right. And how do you find them? Ultimately, you use one property to attract the next seller. So for every house that we might put on the market, your aim is to try and find two extra sellers. so if Mr and Mrs Smith are looking for a four bedroom house they will start looking they'll start looking mainly before they put their house on the market so you build a relationship with them if you can find them the right house then they use you to sell theirs and what are the main pressures then facing the housing market now well we've got a few affordability is the big the big piece um in terms of interest rates higher than they used to be uh the property values higher than they have ever have been uh and and i think the affordability part between what mortgages are available um what we have seen in my time is it's very difficult to buy a house by yourself today you're almost reliant on two salaries to make multiples work um so what sort of multiples would you look um i mean they're up as much as seven times multiple which is quite scary um and i think what we are seeing there is the bank of mum and dad really helping that part time.

33:51So seven times earnings? Seven times earnings just to create the affordability piece to make that mortgage work. And what's the sort of interest rate that's typically being charged? Interest rate typically around now is about 4.5%. Right. So that's a lot of money. It is. And then you've got taxes on top of that. Yep. Stamp duty being a big one for sure. So if you are a second first time mover so you've you've had the the piece of first time buyer behind you if you're selling that house for the first time buying your second home uh then you're liable for stamp duty which which can be quite excessive how much would that be um a half million pound house is 15 000 pounds in stamp duty right so it's a lot goes up to 10 on absolutely once you start to get higher up the ladder um yeah you can be looking at a 75 80 90 000 pound stamp duty bill right um and if you're downsizing as well um yeah you could end up with a 50 000 pound bill for stamp duty just for downsizing it's a deterrent to move so people does that mean people is that a challenge that people are sitting tight because of this yeah absolutely because if they're sitting tight to release a couple hundred thousand pounds but losing a hundred thousand of it in moving costs uh why would why would they so we've got deterrent to get people to move up we've got deterrent for people to move down it's it's not a popular tax this is having a dampening effect on the market I can expect completely absolutely and also for investors if you're looking to buy to rent out um you're you're paying higher percentages on that as well so since that tax was changed we've certainly seen when was that um that was about 2021 I believe I'd have to check that so you blame the Tories for that one that's because Labour get a lot of heat for some other things but yeah absolutely no that was a tory tax um for sure um and and you know since that investors yeah they certainly have reduced right so you've launched something i believe called the stamp duty campaign yes what is it why have you launched it so we launched a stamp duty campaign last year uh really to i guess the ceo of andrews i felt i had a responsibility to do something for our consumer as much as the business um andrews have got a history of making improvements to the industry and I wanted to continue that.

36:10In 1962 the CEO of Andrews at that time created the National Association of Estate Agents and that was the inspiration to think what else can we do and stamp duty has been a problem for some time. The Tories were in power for 14 years, changed it multiple times, they actually took it away, pulled it back in. They now have a campaign to get rid of it which is always quite interesting but we felt well it was something that was upon the market needed a boost every time the stamp duty has been given an incentive the market gets a kick um and they brought it back and it's also you can feel the market was getting a little bit tougher um you could see this real affordability crisis happening in front of us and we felt well let's use our voice to see if we can make a change um we got great support by right move by supla um by phil spencer and we had a lot of agents supporting that campaign um itv then came and filmed what was the campaign saying though the campaign was the message the campaign was to find an affordable approach to paying stamp duty i think at that time we had a belief that the government were not just going to turn this off um stamp duty creates well now it creates up to 20 billion pounds per annum uh at the point of the campaign it was about 15 uh and over two-thirds of that is from property related transactions actions um as in sales so the campaign was look we accept that the government are probably not going to just turn it off because they need the revenue um so can we make a more affordable approach to it being paid so can we pay stamp duty over a 10-year period rather than all up front um that was the campaign but you know we were happy we're happy for the whole tax to disappear but it was about creating the conversation um and it did that we had a lot of conversation about stamp duty leading into the autumn budget.

37:59Unfortunately, Labour released a number of ideas and suggestions of what they were going to do. The Conservatives started to mute, we want to get rid of it. So the campaign almost came to a natural end because of that. But we're certainly still looking for the solution to solve that problem. So were you surprised by the public response? What was it? Yeah, the public response was great. The problem with stamp duty, it's only a problem when you're looking to move home it's very difficult to get excited by it when you've got no interest in moving so that was a learn from it um also we had some great support from some of our fellow estate agents and we had some that didn't want to get involved despite there being a real benefit for the whole industry but ultimately it's trying to get a benefit for the consumer to make it more affordable to move home so those people looking to move were very supportive so so why why do you think david that meaningful changes haven't happened yet in this space um yeah i think there's a concern that if you remove stamp duty what happens to house prices and and previously you've seen it you remove stamp duty or you bring in another incentive like help to buy for developers and it encourages more people to buy and it's trying to control that because otherwise prices shoot up um so i think from a government perspective that they don't want to see prices shoot up to such a point get that uh i think they've also got a you know how do they backfill the whole of 15 to 20 billion pounds there's an argument to say that the increased activity through the economy will cover that gap um which is okay in a rising economy if you have one that goes backwards then where do you go from there i mean a lot of businesses have different priorities when it comes to tax changes.

39:43I mean, you're too outstamp duty, you're in the property world. Earlier, we spoke to somebody in hospitality who's worried about VAT being too high. People who care about jobs worry about national insurance. I mean, it feels to me, looking at the overall landscape, simply that taxes are too high. And this is suppressing business activity. Would you agree with that? I would. You touched on national insurance there and that's one that's really hits us as a business. What that's done is slowed our growth where we would want to bring more roles into the business that's created a significant burden of cost to us that's prevented that from happening.

40:23So what you're saying is you've not created the jobs you would have created because of that? No the national living wage increase of last year and the NI increase has cost us just short of£600 ,000. Just your business? Just our business? 350 people. 600 ,000 pounds. 600 ,000 pounds was the impact to our business. So if you do the arithmetic and multiply that across the country. Significant. Huge. Absolutely significant. Massive hit. And that's just prevented growth because that's money we would have invested in absolutely growing. That we have, yeah, I say lost, but it's just no longer there to do something.

40:58Well, it's not yours to do things with, is it? Absolutely. And it's gone. so um that would that would explain why the business is not growing yeah yeah i think we've for us as a business we've gone through quite a journey and and really made some big inroads but yeah that that was a real kick for us um we actually pre-built our budget and we had something in it but we certainly didn't have that scale um so where we set out a budget um before that was announced we had to go back to that budget rip out a bit more and reset ourselves so that that was a big big kick for us right so i mean we've discussed discussed some of the sort of dampness i mean what opportunities do you think still exist for property entrepreneurship today i mean there are always opportunities david there is yeah fortune favors the brave so what what would you say is sort of areas that people should be looking at where are these opportunities for the future There is still plenty of opportunity, I think.

41:59But I guess as property has now become a slightly longer term investment, if we go back to early 2000s, you could buy a house very quickly, make some money, sell it on. Those days are behind us. That's going to be harder to do. There's certainly still opportunity in redevelopment, properties that we often call them as flipped, where people will buy something run down, turn it around and then move it forward. They might refinance, rent it and then go on to the next one. There's still great opportunity in the buy-to-let market, although there have been significant changes in regulation recently with Renters' Rights Act.