Agencies & People
News covering the businesses, activities, people and personalities in estate agency and letting agency and wider residential property industry.
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Purplebricks signals imminent move into Europe with extra £125m from German publisher
German publisher and property portal owner Axel Springer has invested £125 million in Purplebricks for 11.5% of its share capital, it has been announced, subject to a board meeting likely to rubber-stamp the deal next month. The surprise move by the €7 billion publisher of Europe’s largest tabloid newspaper Bild is to help fund a faster roll-out of the hybrid agency in the US, to prepare for entry into new markets and to improve its IT systems. Berlin-based Axel Springer’s investment, which echoes the Daily Mail’s involvement with Zoopla, is being led by its classified advertising chief Andreas Wiele, who joins the Purplebricks’ board as a non-exec director. But the investment also adds to Axel Springer’s existing property portal portfolio – it operates several leading European versions of Rightmove including SeLoger, Immowelt and Immoweb. European expansion? And like many UK publishers who have invested in digital media in the past, the move is designed to offset the huge migration by many agents from traditional publishing to online, and suggests an imminent move by the hybrid agent into European markets such as Germany and France. “Under the leadership of its founder Michael Bruce, Purplebricks has created a highly innovative digital real…
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Allied Surveyors Scotland expands into St Andrews
Allied Surveyors Scotland Plc has opened a new office in St Andrews and appointed Nigel Forrest as a Director to head the valuation department.
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IAM Sold reports £322.6m sales
Outsourced auction management provider, IAM Sold, is the largest independent residential auctioneer in the UK based on lots sold according to the EIG league table.
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Purplebricks is being caught up by rival YOPA says leading investment bank
Purplebricks’ growth is stalling and it’s being caught up by rival YOPA, say analysts at Swiss banking giant UBS It has released a research note that both highlights Purplebricks’ slowing growth and cuts the likely final market share in the UK from 15% to 12%. UBS has subsequently dropped its target price for Purplebricks from £3.05p to £2.85p. Shares in Purplebricks are currently trading at approximately £3.36p each. The bank has also reiterated its advice that investors should sell their shares in the company. As well as flagging up slowing growth for the hybrid agency, the bank says its Subject to Contact market share has been flatlining since September last year at approximately 5%. Raise questions “Given the importance of the Spring Market, we believe that this level of progress will be below management’s expectations, and will raise questions around the potential market share Purplebricks is able to achieve,” it says. UBS also says that one of its key competitors, Savills-backed YOPA, is beginning to catch up Purplebricks and now has 0.5% of the market, and that many hybrid and online agents are now offering ‘no sale, no fee’ options to customers, something Purplebricks does not. “Whilst [YOPA’s market share]…
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Humphreys of Chester increases market share
Estate agency Humphreys of Chester reports that it has taken the number one spot in its region for the fourth year running in respect of its sales business, as well as finishing 2017 as the top agent in Chester for lettings.
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IPS Estates announces partnership with SDL Auctions
IPS Estates has partnered with the Midlands auction specialist, SDL Auctions.
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Savills says YOPA is now 10th largest estate agent in UK – but by what measure?
Savills has claimed that YOPA, the hybrid estate agency it invested in last year, is now a top ten UK agency. The claim was made yesterday within its preliminary full-year results for 2017 in which it also said its multi-million pound investment into the agency was its largest to date within the tech sector. Savills claimed that YOPA has grown during the past 12 months to become the 10th largest estate agent in the UK, although it didn’t reveal how this was measured. After a long exchange between Savills and The Negotiator, we can reveal that last year Savills believes YOPA was the 10th largest estate agent by new listings, rather than existing listings, branches or employees. Savills has achieved the ‘top ten’ status for YOPA by comparing brands rather than groupings of estate agents such as Countrywide or LSL, whose combined new instructions from all their brands are likely to be considerably higher than YOPA’s. YOPA, which has approximately 100 local agents, also has some way to go before it can claim to be the largest agent by existing listings on Rightmove. It has 3,000 while Savills has over 6,000 and Purplebricks currently lists over 16,000. Newspapers’ cash In…
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Savills invests in two tech start-ups as it reveals bumper 2017
Savills has reported a bumper 2017 including a 7% jump in profits at its UK residential operation to £18.7 million, in stark contrast to many of its competitors including Foxtons. Group revenue, which includes both its residential and commercial property activities, increased by 11% to £1.6 billion on which it made a profit of £140 million last year, up 3.5% on 2016. Outgoing Group Chief Executive Jeremy Helsby (pictured, left) says a “resilient” performance by the UK residential team was “key to this result”. This business grew its turnover by 4% to £128.9 million, helped by more high-value property transactions in both UK resales and new homes and an increase in fees charged, all of which helped offset 3% fewer sales overall in the UK. Savills also says it sold 4% more properties within its ‘core’ London market, driven by plummeting prices in the capital which have helped re-start activity. Proptech The company has also revealed its latest proptech investments via its Grosvenor Hill Venture outfit, which it used to invest in online agency YOPA in June 2016. Savills claims YOPA is now the 10th largest agent in the UK, although it doesn’t reveal by what yardstick. The latest tech…
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Emoov investigated by advertising watchdog for third time since 2015
Hybrid estate agent emoov has been investigated for a third time by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) this time over claims made on its website about how much vendors can save by using its service when compared to traditional agents. An agent in Lincolnshire complained to the ASA about the claim on an www.emoov.co.uk webpage that said “our activity around Scunthorpe…£2,672 Average Customer Saving” and “our sellers saved an average of £4,378 in fees with emoov”. The complainant also highlighted that emoov had published two different fixed fees on the page without explaining the difference, one for £795 and the other for £679. The person who contacted the ASA challenged whether the savings claims could be substantiated, and whether the different fixed fees were misleading. Promises After being contacted by the ASA, emoov agreed to take the comparative claims down and has promised not to repeat them, and now makes it clear on the page that it has only one fixed fee of £795. Emoov has been investigated by the ASA twice before for being misleading, in 2015 and 2016, both of which included complaints made to the advertising watchdog about ‘fees saved’ as well as other issues including competitor…
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Purplebricks gifts new CEO in UK stock options worth £400,000
Purplebricks has revealed that its recently-appointed CEO in the UK Lee Wainright has been given stock options worth £415,000 through the company’s employee share option scheme. Lee (pictured, below) has been given 100,000 shares in Purplebricks at an exercise price – i.e. the fixed sale value of each share – of £4.15p, although how long he will have to wait to cash them in is not made clear. Purplebricks is tight lipped about why Lee has been granted the stock options now, but risky start-up companies such as Purplebricks often use share options to make up for the higher salaries that senior executives might earn if they were working for longer-established, more profitable organisations. That, in Lee’s case, was Countrywide where he was Managing Director of Bairstow Eves and Mann London before joining Purplebricks 12 months ago, where he initially held the title of UK Operations Director. It is also likely that he has been given these golden handcuffs to soften the blow of what is a bone-rattling role. Only a few weeks after being appointed UK CEO, Lee endured a painful grilling when he appeared on a BBC Radio 5Live show that investigated some of its marketing practices. The…
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