2024 – a year of cutting edge development and collaboration

by Peter Mitchell

While it’s been a year of resilience followed by recovery for the UK property market as a whole, it’s been a year of consolidation, collaboration and cutting-edge development for The ValPal Network – with the prospect of exciting times ahead early in the New Year with transformational change just around the corner.

2024 kicked off in January with the news that simmering demand boosted lead generation to a record 1.6m in 2023 – up 8% on the previous year.

And as if that wasn’t enough, the New Year got off to a flying start with over 65,948 valuation requests received by TVPN by the middle of the month – that was almost 5,500 per day.

In February we brought you some news that emerged through our partnership with data specialists, Twenty CI.

We were able to uncover a wealth of information about leads generated via Facebook and their value to agents.

The result? Roughly 1 in 5 ValPal leads generated by Facebook ads go on to instruct an agent and we offered some tips on how to ensure your agency is cashing in on those opportunities.

Vital online sales tool

 March saw what turned out to be Jeremy Hunt’s final Budget as Chancellor of the Exchequer and there was good news on the economic front from the Office of Budget Responsibility which forecast that inflation was likely to hit the 2% target by the summer.

That gave us all hope that interest rate cuts were likely in the not-too -distant future which could only stir the interests of buyers and sellers alike and it was more than appropriate for all of us here at TVPN because we celebrated our 10^th anniversary that same month.

What some agents had labelled as a ‘gimmick’ in 2014 had now established itself as a vital online sales tool and something no serious agency could live without.

Today, 8.7m sales leads later, the branch office network has flourished and now stands at more than 4300 because since we started, we’ve been determined to keep on innovating and refining to make absolutely sure that ValPal grows in its effectiveness as a lead generator and provides agents with as much vital sales intelligence as possible.

 

By late Spring we were announcing another groundbreaking partnership – this time between leading estate agency software and CRM provider, Street.co.uk with our all-in-one lead generation and nurturing system, MovePal.

And by June we were celebrating the fact that for the first time since our launch, we were able to expand our network across the sea to Northern Ireland.

 By the time Summer was in full swing there had been a base rate cut and the market had really begun to warm up.

The election had resulted in a Labour landslide and, if nothing else, the country appeared to be heading for a period of political stability.

The latest Rightmove House Price Index recorded a 19% annual rise in the number of potential buyers contacting agents about homes for sale, up from 11% in July.

An increase of buyer activity

The number of sales agreed was now 16% ahead of the near-peak-mortgage-rate period of the year before and the number of new sellers coming to market was 5% ahead of 2023. Confidence was growing!

Labour’s first Budget arrived in at the end of October and while she announced no additional help for first time buyers, Chancellor Rachel Reeves also failed to extend the lower Stamp Duty threshold deadline – this sparked an increase of buyer activity which will keep agents busy until the end of March 2025.

In November, we announced yet another partnership, this time with sales and letting CRM providers, GNB. This headline grabbing move was part of our ongoing drive to streamline technology services to agents and to integrate with as many CRM providers as possible.

Phew! So that was an express journey through 2024 and the next train to arrive on the platform will be 2025…and what a year that promises to be.

As a sneak peek, we’re so excited to tell you that we’ll be launching ValPal Pro – a revolutionary upgrade to ValPal which will transform communications with AI-voice, AI-text and AI-email that will provide automated qualification of in-bound portal leads and accelerate ‘speed to lead’ across the sector.

Merry Christmas, everybody and here’s to what looks like being a busy and prosperous New Year!

 

If you’re looking to boost your lead generation, get in touch:

https://www.valpal.co.uk/contact-us

0208 663 4940

team@valpal.co.uk