Saturday at 11am is the busiest hour of the week for property viewings in Britain with almost 250,000 starting during the slot over the past year, new research reveals.
Data from estate agency CRM provider Alto shows 4.6% of an entire week’s property viewings take place during that single 60-minute period.
In fact, the five busiest viewing hours of the week are all on Saturday, running consecutively from 10am through to 2pm.
The busiest non-Saturday period is Friday at 4pm, when viewing volumes are 45% lower than the Saturday 11am peak.
SATURDAY DOMINATES
Some 95% of viewings take place between Monday and Saturday and between 9am and 6pm, according to Alto.
Just 4.69% happen on a Sunday or after 6pm, despite those periods potentially being more convenient for buyers and renters who work conventional hours.
Saturday now accounts for 11.5 times as many viewings as Sunday.
However, Alto’s figures also reveal that the most popular periods are among those most likely to result in cancellations.
Viewings scheduled for 10am on Saturday are cancelled 23% of the time – the highest rate for any hour of the day.
By comparison, 7pm viewings have a cancellation rate of 19%, while Sunday is the least likely day for cancellations at 19%.
OUT-OF-HOURS GAP
The research also suggests a significant proportion of estate agency branches continue to operate viewing diaries largely around traditional opening hours.
Of 2,228 branches that booked at least 50 viewings during the year, 10.5% did not arrange a single viewing after 6pm and almost a quarter – 24% – did not book any on a Sunday.
Where evening and Sunday viewings are offered, they are also substantially more likely to be unaccompanied.
Some 71% of viewings taking place at 7pm are unaccompanied, compared with around one in four during the middle of a weekday. On Sundays, 67% are unaccompanied.
Evening viewing activity also drops substantially during winter, accounting for 3.8% of the diary during summer but just 2.1% in January.
RETHINKING THE DIARY
An Alto spokesperson says: “Agents are the hardest-working people in property. But the diary has been built around when branches are open rather than when their customers can come, and perhaps that model needs to be looked at, because a handful of evening slots is the difference between four viewings and eight.”
