What I learned asking 8 estate agents about EVs
Eight agents, little charging know-how, and perhaps missed opportunities.
Hello, I’m Tom Riley, and welcome back to The Fast Charge, a British EV newsletter.
Top story in today’s paid edition… What I learned from speaking to eight estate agents about the EV transition.
Elsewhere… EV grants available to 13 more models, and is this the end of the British Motor industry? Meanwhile… DfT refuses my request to see the impact assessment on the new grant scheme.
As ever, if you have any comments or feedback, please reply to this email or message me on LinkedIn.
What I learned asking eight estate agents about EVs
Background: Back in early Summer, my girlfriend and I decided it was time to get a place together. This was a joyous decision, though, part of the deal was, because she’d be moving from Finsbury Park to Chiswick, I would sacrifice myself to… the estate agents. However, while I would normally slice my privates off rather than endure time with 21-year-olds covered in Dior Sauvage, it was the start of an insightful journey.
In short… I started to realise most agents ask ‘do you drive?’ as part of their standard house viewing process. And, because we do, I quickly discovered that, while agents were often very familiar with parking availability at properties, where nearby stations were, etc. None of them had any clue about the public charging options. It was enough to make me research the area a bit further…
And now… Given that the online property marketplace Zoopla has just announced new EV features as part of a partnership with Vauxhall, it feels timely to share my findings based on conversations with eight agents and the opportunities I think are being missed.
Part 1: How many properties list EV chargers?
To begin this feature, let’s start with some quick data analysis for context. To do this, I’m going to search both Rightmove and Zoopla, looking at the area of London, plus a radius of 10 miles. A huge area where it’s thought 60% of homes don’t have a driveway.
We’ll begin with Rightmove, because it remains the largest property marketplace in the UK. I conducted a search on Monday 11 August and there were 94,525 properties listed for sale. Rightmove doesn’t yet have an EV filter, so you’ve got to be a bit more manual and search specifically for listings mentioning ‘EV charger’. At the time of counting, 232 properties contain that phrase. Or… 0.25% of all for sale listings. Interestingly, a third of those 232 (so, 80) were priced at or above £1million.
Now for Zoopla. I did the same search at the same time. Sadly, they didn’t provide me with a specific figure; the site only says there are more than 50,000+ properties listed in that area. They do, though, have an EV filter, and after clicking that, it revealed 586 properties that met the criteria. So, let’s assume in the best-case scenario (being out of 50,001) Zoopla has almost double what Rightmove has in terms of real listings. But, by comparison to its size, about 4 times more of its listings contain ‘EV charger’ (1.1%) compared to Rightmove’s 0.25%. However, Zoopla scores less well on pricing, as almost half (250) of those 586 are listed at or above £1million.