Stowhill Estates: where they list, and what the spread costs

What we found

Stowhill Estates are a premium agency built as a franchise. Two founders, seven territory directors, one brand, stretched across eleven counties.

The stock is real and it is expensive. The median home is £1.44m and about 3,225 square feet.

Where they list

Every dot is a home they are selling right now. The rings are ten miles across, drawn round the places they cluster.

They are not scattered at random. They have real pockets. Half their homes have another Stowhill home within a mile. The trouble is what happens next to each pocket.

In most places they are a rounding error

This is their share of every home listed at £1m or more within ten miles of each pocket.

Around Marlow and Henley they have 20 homes. That sounds healthy. But there are 1,241 million pound homes for sale there, so they hold 1.4% of it. A seller comparing three agents will rarely have heard of them.

Their homes sit longer than the market

We pulled every rival listing at £750,000 and up across all ten of their areas. That is 7,950 homes. Fifty four of them are Stowhill's, so this covers over half their book.

It is not simply that their homes are dearer. The gap holds in every band up to £2.5m. Above that they match the market exactly, which is worth noting: at the very top end they are as good as anyone.

Their own website says they sell faster than other agents, and achieve 104% of the original asking price. The first of those does not show up in the data at all. The second we cannot test, because it needs the price homes actually sold for.

How long the current book has been out there

Counting older adverts for the same home, not just the live one.

The middle home has been on the market days. Around one in six has been out there over a year. Fourteen homes have been advertised more than once, so counting only the live advert understates it.

Longest sitting

Seven years on their home patch

We pulled every dead advert at £750,000 and up within ten miles of their Burford office, going back to 2019. That is 3,909 old listings from 209 agents. It shows how much of that market each agent has actually handled.

Counting dead and live adverts together, Stowhill have had homes at that price on their own home patch in seven years. Savills have had 470. Butler Sherborn, a local firm, have had 425.

One caveat. Homes listed recently are still live, so they are not in the dead advert count. That flatters the older agents a little. Stowhill are clearly busier now than they were.

The cheap end sells, the dear end sticks

Only 10 of the 100 are sold or under offer. Those ten have a middle price of £950,000. The 90 still waiting have a middle price of £1.5m.

Six of the ten are in Cheltenham, Worcester and Stratford. Those are their newer, cheaper patches. In Worcester they are actually quicker than the local market. The money is stuck in the expensive south east.

What the money looks like

If every home on the book sold at a 1.5% fee, that is about £2.35m of fee income. Spread across roughly eight fee earners that is fine. The problem is time, not price.

Their own franchise page says they have sold over £150m of property since 2016. Their current stock alone is £157m. The book they are carrying today is bigger than everything they have sold in nine years.

A quarter of the book has had a price cut, which is less than the market. But where they do cut, the average cut is 10.2%. On a £1.5m home that is £150,000 off the seller and about £2,250 off the fee.

So is the spread smart

Partly. The idea is sound. Premium homes are thin on the ground, so one town will not feed a specialist agency. You have to cover ground to find enough of them. And the franchise model means each new county costs them little to open.

But the way it is being done has three real costs.

• No local weight. In seven of their ten pockets they hold under 3% of the million pound market. Buyers register with the agents they see everywhere. Thin cover means a thin buyer list, and a thin buyer list means slow sales.
• They opened where the giants live. Marlow, Beaconsfield, Ascot and Rickmansworth are the most fought over premium markets in the country. Savills, Knight Frank and Hamptons are all there. Those are their slowest patches.
• Their best patches are the quiet ones. Burford, Abingdon, Worcester. Smaller markets, fewer national rivals, better share, and in Worcester a faster sale than the locals manage.

What we would change

• Stop opening new counties. Deepen the good ones. Getting Burford from 6% to 15% of its million pound market is worth more than a new pin in a map, and it is achievable because the market is small.
• Copy the Cotswolds and Worcester model, not the Home Counties one. Pick market towns with money and no national office. Cirencester, Chipping Norton, Ludlow, Malmesbury. Not Ascot.
• Set a minimum for a territory. A pocket with three homes in it cannot build a buyer list. Either commit enough to reach a real share, or do not open it.
• Deal with the old stock. Twelve homes have been on over a year. Every one of them is a seller telling other agents that Stowhill could not do it.
• Check the marketing claim. Saying they sell faster than other agents is easy to disprove with the same data we used. That is a risk to the brand and to franchise recruitment.