Some 40% of estate agents have lost their job

Posted: 15 Dec 2009 11:54:59 GMT

Estate agents across the UK have "slashed and burned" their staff, which has resulted in 40 per cent of the industry losing their job, according to one expert.

Ed Mead, director at Douglas and Gordon - an independent estate agents in London - says offices that would have previously had five people working in them "now have one man and a dog".

Mr Mead's comments come in response to statistics from the Local Data Company, which revealed that there has been a 16 per cent reduction in the number of estate agencies in 2009 across the country as a whole.

He calls this data "misleading" because although not a huge amount of agencies have closed, a lot of people in the industry have lost their jobs.

The Rightmove House Price Index has shown that asking prices have fallen by 2.2 per cent to an average of £221,463 in the month of December to date.

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