Once at the top of the red-hot property market, UK real estate brokers feel the pinch

Slick, well-dressed, and widely loathed, real estate brokers prospered in Britain's galloping property market for much of the past decade.

But with prices drooping and sales volumes shrinking, the brokers, known here as estate agents, are having to work harder to cut their deals. Many have already lost their jobs.

Some are even getting a little sympathy. But only a little.

"Yeah, we're hated," laughed Shane Jackson, a sales director with Atkinson McLeod, an east London estate agency just outside the capital's bustling financial district.

Jackson and his colleague Andrew Groocock described a period in which properties used to sell within 24 or 48 hours, even at what Groocock delicately called "a slightly inflated price."

"We've been spoiled for the last two or three years in this area," said Groocock, as he looked back fondly on the end of the boom times. "People were desperate."

Now that the global squeeze on credit has burst Britain's property bubble, many brokers find themselves facing hard times.

Brokers' incomes are falling, according to Trevor Kent, a former president of the National Association of Estate Agents and a well-known property pundit. Kent estimated that the average agent might have started off making 50,000 pounds (US$100,000) a year in boom times _ most of that on the 2 to 3 percent commission brokers make on sales.

"Suddenly they're down to 30,000 (US$60,000) or 25,000 (US$50,000)," he said. "Some agents have not made a sale in two months."

Figures released almost daily by banks, consultancies, and trade bodies show why.

The Council of Mortgage Lenders said Tuesday that lending to first-time buyers and existing home owners in the first quarter dropped to the lowest level in 30 years, reflecting a sharp drop in the number of homes changing hands. New home loans for first-time buyers and homeowners slumped in March by 48 percent compared to a year earlier.

The number of house-hunters on agents' books has fallen as mortgage approvals have plummeted, the NAEA said. In the spring of 2006, the average broker was closing a deal nearly every other day. Now the figure has fallen to seven a month, the association said.

Fewer sales mean large scale job losses, according to a report put out by the Center for Economics and Business Research last week. The center predicted that 15,000 estate agents and others involved in property management would disappear this year, out of 290,000 jobs.

"Although unlikely to be the victims of the credit crunch that will garner the most sympathy, estate agents and others involved in managing real estate are likely to find the next 12 months particularly tough," said Jorg Radeke, one of the report's authors.

"No one sheds a tear" when an agent is thrown out of work," said Peter Watts, who has covered property for TimeOut London, where the average home price reached nearly 360,000 pounds (US$720,000) earlier this year. People struggling to pay giant mortgages "kind of take pleasure in watching estate agents hitting the ground with a bump," he said.

But Watts said the schadenfreude was unwarranted. He said estate agents had unfairly copped the blame when buyers or sellers hiked prices or slashed offers in a "vigorous and cutthroat market."

Jackson agreed, saying England's monthslong process of formalizing home sales encouraged buyers and sellers to try to cheat each other at the last minute, leaving estate agents to shoulder the blame.

"Their profession is almost as maligned as murdering and raping, and all they've ever tried to do is put a roof over our heads," a Daily Telegraph editorial said last year.

But then again, the fast-talking brokers also have a reputation for sharp dealing. An undercover British Broadcasting Corp. report, aired in 2006, allegedly showed staff at major agencies faking signatures, forging documents and fleecing buyers to squeeze as much cash as possible out of each sale.

Groocock said lack of licensing or industry rules were to blame for the rogues. He said his agency rigorously trained and registered its employees but that others did not.

"You're handling someone's most valuable asset, and yet you don't actually have any qualifications to do so," he said, describing rogue estate agents.

The property industry has recently endorsed his view, saying in a recent report that a body should be set up with the power to screen brokers, enforce professional standards and ban unscrupulous estate agents. It also called for ways to shorten England's ponderous home sale process.

Meanwhile, Groocock said the slowdown had not affected his sales, although some properties now take more than a month and some 30-40 viewings to make their asking price, he said.

Groocock said he relished the challenge. "It means that you're motivated, you're actually doing something to earn your fee," he said.

"It's back to being a proper estate agent."