Licensing is coming. Is your team ready?

The issue

The Government has confirmed that property agents will need a licence and appropriate qualifications to work. What it hasn't confirmed is the level, who will need it, or when. For most agency owners, the temptation is to wait for the detail.

I understand why. The objection I hear most often isn't cost. It's time: "We can't spare people out of the office." But when the rules do land, every agency in the country will be trying to train its team at once. The agencies that start now will be ahead of that queue.

What good looks like

A licence-ready agency knows three things:

• Who is already qualified, and to what level.
• Who isn't, and what they do day to day.
• Who will need it. Lord Best's working group recommended that anyone carrying out core agency work (viewings, valuations, negotiating, giving advice, handling client money and managing compliance) should hold at least a Level 3 qualification, with Level 4 for directors. If the Government follows that recommendation, it would mean most of your customer-facing team, not one person per branch.

Some agencies are already going further. We work with agencies that are now training their whole team, and using it as a selling point to win new instructions. "Every member of our team is qualified" is a powerful line in a valuation.

The checklist

1. Do a team audit this quarter. List everyone, their role, and any qualifications they already hold.
2. Map roles to core agency work. Anyone doing viewings, valuations, negotiating or handling client money goes on the "will need it" list.
3. Start with your leaders. Managers and senior negotiators first, so they can support everyone else.
4. Then train the customer-facing team together. It's more efficient, and teams that learn together apply it together.
5. Say yes to enthusiasm. Anyone who shows a real interest in qualifying, whatever their role, is worth backing.
6. Plan around the diary. Book training days well ahead, and spread the team across cohorts so the office is never empty.

"But if I train them, they'll leave"

It's a question I hear a lot, so let's look at the evidence.

People don't usually leave estate agency because they've been trained. Research by Nested in 2023 put staff turnover in real estate at around 28%, and the top reason for leaving was higher pay elsewhere, followed by better roles and workload stress. On the other side, LinkedIn's 2019 Workplace Learning Report found that 94% of employees would stay longer at a company that invested in helping them learn.

So the bigger risk isn't training someone who might leave. It's not training someone who stays.

The LETiQ angle

Our Level 3 course is built around working agents: four live training days and four half-day revision sessions, on Zoom or in your own office. And every learner who qualifies with LETiQ gets free, annually updated CPD for as long as they stay with your agency. It's a reason to qualify, and a reason to stay.

Want to talk about your team? Email claudia@letiq.co.uk to book a discovery call.

Sources: GOV.UK, 29 September 2026, Regulation of Property Agents Working Group final report (2019), Nested research (The Negotiator), LinkedIn Workplace Learning Report 2019 (CNBC)

Claudia Brown, Director, LETiQ