©Michele Monticello Essay https://www.michelemonticello.com/ all photos ©Michele Monticello

For more than a century, estate agency has been built around brands. That may be about to change. Knight Frank’s decision to introduce an affiliate broker network has been presented as a new business model. It may instead be an early sign of something much bigger—a shift in where trust, reputation and value reside within professional services. For much of the last century, estate agency was organised around the office. A prominent high street branch, a recognised name and a team of negotiators formed the foundation of the business. Clients instructed the brand, and the brand assigned an agent. Trust flowed from the institution.

The affiliate model quietly reverses that relationship. Rather than employing every negotiator, firms increasingly provide the infrastructure technology, compliance, marketing, administration and international reach while experienced agents build and manage their own businesses. The company supplies the platform; the individual creates the client relationship. This may appear to be a structural change, but it reflects something deeper. For most of the last century, a company’s reputation helped people decide who they could trust. There was little information available about individual professionals, so the name above the door mattered most. Today, that has changed.

Clients can read reviews, watch videos, follow someone’s work online and hear directly from previous customers. They no longer need to rely solely on the company’s reputation to judge the individual behind it. Trust has become personal again. Estate agency is not unique. Investors follow fund managers. Readers follow journalists. Clients seek out particular lawyers, architects and consultants across many professions, reputation is gradually moving from the institution to the individual.

This raises an obvious question. If trust increasingly belongs to the individual, what becomes of the brand? The answer is not that brands disappear. Their role changes. A respected brand still provides standards, compliance, technology, international reach and collective credibility. Those things remain valuable. But increasingly, the brand is no longer the destination. It becomes the platform. The strongest organisations of the future may not be those that own the most offices, but those that attract the most respected professionals. Their competitive advantage will lie less in employing talent than in enabling it.

Ironically, this may also represent a return to the profession’s roots. Before the era of national chains, estate agency was built around trusted local figures whose names carried weight within their communities. People instructed them because they knew them personally and trusted their judgement. Technology has not replaced that principle. It has simply allowed it to flourish on a much larger scale. A reputation that was once confined to a town can now extend across regions, countries and even internationally. The affiliate model is therefore unlikely to be the destination. It is better understood as a bridge between two eras, one in which institutions owned trust, and another in which institutions increasingly support those who earn it.

Perhaps this is not simply the future of estate agency. It may be the future of professional work itself. As technology reduces the importance of place, organisations increasingly become platforms rather than destinations. Their role is no longer to own reputation, but to enable it. In doing so, reputation returns to where it has always mattered most—not in institutions, but in people. In the end, clients have never really chosen companies. They have chosen people they trust.

Resources :

https://www.knightfrank.co.uk/newsroom/article/2026/4/knight-frank-goes-for-growth-with-launch-of-new-residential-affiliate-broker-network

https://thenegotiator.co.uk/news/agencies-people-news/leading-estate-agency-offers-new-brokers-big-rewards/

https://propertyindustryeye.com/knight-frank-targets-growth-with-self-employed-affiliate-estate-agency-model/