SDL Surveying has reported that, despite increased lockdown measures, the level of business volume activity throughout October and November has shown ‘no signs of slowing’.
The residential surveying and valuations firm said that October was the latest month to be its business ever, for both volumes completed and revenue generated.
SDL Surveying said that figures to date for November meant it was likely to follow the same pattern.
As a result, it is continuing to recruit surveyors, both internally and to its network, in order to grow the capacity and take full advantage of these higher volumes.
It said its lender clients continued to indicate significant targets for 2021 and, as a result, it would focus on driving growth in its surveyor numbers in order to surpass its service level agreements and to help bring on board new lender clients.
SDL Surveying outlined a number of other ongoing objectives alongside recruitment and capacity growth, including provision of training and development to all its surveyors.
Training continues to be held remotely via Zoom sessions with a focus on SDL’s iPad technology in order to help surveyors carry out the mortgage valuation work required by lender clients.
Simon Jackson (pictured), managing director of SDL Surveying, said: “Despite increased restrictions across the UK, and the introduction of a second lockdown in England, business volumes and activity levels in the housing market show no signs of slowing.
“In both October and, to date, in November we’ve seen consumers wanting their housing transactions to continue in as normal a way as possible, especially in light of the stamp duty holiday deadline and the focus on completing before the end of March next year.
“We continue to conduct the vast majority of our work through physical valuations; however we are also carrying out desktop valuations, particularly for those consumers who are self-isolating and cannot have a surveyor entering their home.
“Our lender clients have signalled strong targets for the rest of this year and next, therefore we continue to look at our recruitment strategy in order to add the required capacity necessary to deal with this workload, and to add further clients to our roster.
“Part of our ongoing focus is on ensuring we continue to operate a market-leading service alongside the delivery of quality reports and surveys. This is why we will always work closely with our surveyors to ensure their training and development is a key priority.
“We appreciate that, in this environment, our delivery has to be somewhat different with remote training seminars and sessions, but the feedback we’ve received has been overwhelmingly positive, and we’ll continue to work in this way for the foreseeable future.”
