Entrepreneurship and the changing structure of estate agency in the UK Available to Purchase

In the 1970s estate agency in the UK was a highly fragmented industry. Small, locally based, independent businesses dominated the industry. This industry structure meant that estate agency was seen as a typical entrepreneurial activity. By the first half of the 1990s, however, most estate agencies were in the hands of large institutions in the financial services sector, although recently independent estate agents have begun to reappear on the high street. Nevertheless the dramatic change in the character and structure of estate agency in the UK between the end of the 1970s and the present day raises a number of questions about the nature of entrepreneurship and its impact on industry development. In this paper the development of estate agency in the UK over the past 20 years is analysed, in order to ascertain, first, the relationship between an industry’s fragmentation and the existence of entrepreneurial opportunities within it, and, secondly, the extent to which the radical change in the industry’s structure during that period was the result of the exploitation of an entrepreneurial opportunity.