Male chartered surveyors earn on average over £11,000 more per year than women surveyors.
The gender pay gap has widened markedly in the last year, the RICS has reported in its latest survey carried out with Macdonald & Company.
A year ago, the difference in male and female pay was £7,000.
Male RICS members earn on average £54,931 versus £43,818 for women.
The gap is evident across the majority of age groups and is greatest for those aged between 46-55, where the difference in average salary is 25.7%.
As an organisation, the RICS is heavily male-dominated. Globally, just 15% of qualified surveyors are women, with only 21% of trainees being female. In the UK the RICS has created a ‘diversity hub’ designed to encourage firms to sign up to the Inclusive Employer Quality Mark.
The latest salary survey records the average salary this year to be £52,362, with an average bonus of £11,604.
While this is a 4.5% decrease compared to 2016, the demographics of the survey have changed. Respondents with ten years’ experience or less rose by 9% (from 31% to 40%) while those with 16 years’ experience or more fell 10% (from 56% to 46%)
A total of 93 RICS members who described themselves as estate or letting agents answered the survey.
Their basic salary is £38,929 with an average bonus of £20,835 – almost £60,000.
Overall, respondents working in London continue to earn the highest average salary (£61,141) and command a premium of 15.5% over the south-east and 41% over Northern Ireland/Republic of Ireland.
The majority of regions have seen a decrease but East Anglia (+3.4%), south-west/Wales (+2.6%) and Northern Ireland/Republic of Ireland (+1.4%) buck this trend with growth in average wages.
More positively, however, over half of respondents (53%) believe their organisation will increase headcount in this year: 47% of respondents expect their organisation to modestly increase headcount, while 6% expect a significant increase in headcount in 2017.
Sarah Speirs, director of communications and external affairs at RICS, said: “While it is encouraging that those entering the sector are now seeing pay equality, the fact that the pay gap has widened overall is disheartening.
“The industry has started to take action but must maintain this momentum to create a more balanced workforce that attracts the best talent if it wants to remain competitive.”
The survey had a sample size of 8,463.
This particular piece of research leading to a recent article on the BBC website suggesting, “Agents enjoyed a bumper pay raise last year of 8%, in line with an 8% rise in house prices. Coincidence?”. A rather irritating and unhelpful article implying Agency is a license to print money, somewhat at odds with the experience of most Agents I speak to.
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A sample size of 92, thats right 92, RICS members saying they are either estate agents or letting agents is not a large enough sample to make any meaningful comment except that the RICS continue to ‘speak’ as being representative of the industry.It must be embarassing for the RICS that only 1% of those who replied are in residential agency/lettings. The BBC like most media pick up the sound bites just to grab a headline or two and as always are not interested in the whole story.
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“A sample size of 92, thats right 92, RICS members… is not a large enough sample to make any meaningful comment…”
That’s very true, Mr Turner – but it’s all that were awake at the time of the survey.
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