idwells' 2030 Doubling Plan Signals Consultancy Sector Shake-Up

idwells, the UK property consultancy, has confirmed it is pressing ahead with an ambitious growth strategy adopted in 2024 that aims to double the size of the business by 2030. While the firm has not disclosed granular targets publicly, industry observers understand the plan spans headcount, revenue, fee income and geographic footprint — a scale of ambition that places idwells firmly among a cohort of mid-tier consultancies seeking to challenge the dominance of the sector's largest players.

This matters well beyond the walls of one firm's boardroom. The property consultancy sector is the connective tissue of the UK real estate market — advising landlords on lease structuring, guiding developers through planning risk, and helping institutional investors underwrite acquisitions in an environment where interest rates, construction costs and regulatory change have made every transaction more technically demanding. When a consultancy commits to doubling in six years, it is effectively betting that demand for high-quality advisory work will keep expanding faster than the broader market — a bet that has strong supporting evidence. CBRE, JLL, Savills and Knight Frank have all reported resilient advisory revenues even as transaction volumes softened through 2023 and into 2024, with commercial investment turnover down an estimated 25-30% year-on-year in parts of the office and retail sectors, according to MSCI data. Advisory income, by contrast, has proven far stickier than deal-contingent fees, because landlords and investors need guidance precisely when markets are volatile.

Regionally, the implications are significant. Consultancies pursuing rapid expansion typically look beyond London to the so-called 'big six' regional cities — Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool, Newcastle and Bristol — where commercial and residential development pipelines remain active despite higher borrowing costs. Manchester's build-to-rent sector alone has attracted over £2bn of institutional capital in the past three years, while Birmingham's regeneration around HS2-adjacent sites continues to draw developer interest despite the project's troubled history. Firms doubling their scale need boots on the ground in these markets, not just London headquarters, because investors increasingly demand local planning knowledge, rental evidence and asset management expertise that a purely London-centric model cannot deliver. Surrey and the wider South East, meanwhile, remain a battleground for high-value residential and mixed-use consultancy work, driven by affluent owner-occupiers and family offices seeking advice on everything from planning appeals to inheritance-driven disposals.

For buy-to-let landlords and first-time buyers, the growth of consultancy firms is not directly visible but indirectly consequential. A more competitive, better-resourced advisory sector tends to produce sharper market data, more transparent valuations, and faster resolution of planning disputes — all of which feed through into pricing efficiency. Landlords navigating the Renters' Rights Bill and tightening EPC requirements, for instance, increasingly rely on consultancy-led compliance advice rather than informal guidance, a shift that has expanded fee-earning opportunities for firms willing to build specialist regulatory teams. First-time buyers benefit less directly, though improved market transparency around new-build pricing and planning viability assessments can, over time, support more realistic development appraisals and therefore more responsive housing supply.

Commercial investors and developers stand to gain the most from a more competitive consultancy landscape. As firms like idwells scale up, they typically invest in data analytics, ESG advisory capability and cross-border investment expertise — services that have become essential rather than optional since institutional capital began pricing carbon risk into commercial asset valuations. Developers pursuing complex, phased schemes in cities such as Leeds and Liverpool increasingly need consultancies capable of running parallel planning, funding and marketing workstreams simultaneously, a capability that smaller boutique firms often cannot match. A consultancy doubling in size by 2030 is, in effect, positioning itself to capture a larger share of this higher-margin, technically complex advisory work rather than competing purely on transactional fee income.

Looking ahead 12 months, expect consolidation pressure across the mid-tier consultancy space to intensify. Firms without a credible growth or specialisation strategy risk being squeezed between the scale advantages of the global giants and the agility of boutique regional specialists. idwells' public commitment to doubling by 2030 should be read as both a growth ambition and a competitive signal to rivals and clients alike: the firms that invest now in regional coverage, regulatory expertise and data capability will be the ones setting fee benchmarks and advising on the largest transactions when the current rate-cutting cycle eventually reignites transaction volumes. For investors selecting advisory partners, the message is clear — scale and specialism, not just brand heritage, will increasingly determine who wins the mandates that matter.