Agencies & People
News covering the businesses, activities, people and personalities in estate agency and letting agency and wider residential property industry.
-
Purplebricks is ignoring advertising watchdog’s ruling over fee transparency, claims CIELA
Purplebricks is to be investigated by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) over a ruling the watchdog published last year which upheld a complaint by the Charter for Independent Estates and Lettings Agents (CIELA) about its TV advertising. CIELA claims that Purplebricks is still not being clear about its upfront fee structure, despite the ASA saying it should do when, in October, the ASA found that Purplebricks’ ‘commisery’ TV ads had breached its Code of Broadcast Advertising. In the comments, the ASA said Purplebricks must “ensure that when making a comparison to other fee models in their ads, they made it clear that their flat fee was always payable.” Last week CIELA made a further complaint to the ASA, pointing out that several of Purplebricks’ online adverts made the same claims, and had not been amended to reflect the ASA’s earlier decision. CIELA has been told by the ASA that its complaint will not be taken forward. In an email to CIELA, it has said that “having considered your complaint, we have determined that it is not necessary to reinvestigate the issue, in light of the previous ruling. “Instead, we will refer this matter directly to our Compliance team to take…
Read More » -
Homeless pair use Foxtons to put a roof over their heads
London agent Foxtons do their bit for charity including supporting the capital’s Air Ambulance service but an initiative taken by a pair of homeless people over the past two weeks probably won’t make it onto their corporate social responsibility website. Max Bloom and Stephen Watt, both of whom had recently been made homeless, built a floating single-room house out of borrowed beer kegs, old sheds and used discarded Foxtons For Sale signs to make its striking roof. The juxtaposition of the Foxtons signs and the floating home created a stir on Twitter, and one neighbouring boat owner told The Evening Standard it was “worthy of the Tate modern”. But the Canal and River Trust aren’t art fans. The pair were forcibly evicted from their floating home last Thursday early in the morning and given two minutes to clear their possessions before a floating crane destroyed the structure. Solar panels Max and Stephen had spent a month planning the house, which included heating and cooking facilities, and had planned to add solar panels. The pair had also put in an application to the trust to have it registered. The pair have now been made homeless again. The trust say the hut…
Read More » -
Purplebricks shares continue freefall despite robust radio defence of sales by new UK CEO
The Purplebricks share price has continued to tumble today dropping this morning by 10% to £3.74p a share, down from its all-time high of £5.13p. This follows a price crash late last week during which its share price dropped by nearly 15%, prompted in part – it is claimed by Purplebricks – by a market report from investment analyst Jefferies that claimed it is selling fewer properties than the 78% sales rate it currently promotes. The company’s new CEO Lee Wainwright (pictured, below) went public over the weekend and appeared on a BBC5Live radio programme, during which he called into question the basis of Jefferies report, saying: “Purplebricks wouldn’t be growing at the rate it is if we were only selling half the properties we list”. “The reason we’re capturing the imagination of consumers is that the old way [isn’t] working,” he added. “I’ve been in the estate agency for 26 years, I’ve worked on the high street, I know that the performance of Purplebricks is incredible compared to the high street estate agencies. “Customers want a better way, they want more transparency on fees and the convenience of 24-hour technology and they want a cost-effective way of doing estate…
Read More » -
SDL Auctions announces 40 date auction calendar
SDL Auctions has announced a record breaking number of 40 dates for its 2018 auction calendar.
Read More » -
AllAgents asks reviewers to prove their posts are not ‘fake’
Glasgow-based reviews website allAgents has taken the “unprecedented step” of asking people posting on its site to prove they are genuine customers of an agent before their comments can go live. The site, which has been involved in a prolonged battle with Purplebricks over claims by the agent that some negative posts on allAgents are ‘fake’, says it has made the move “due to previous threats of legal action” by Purplebricks. “They are not fake, they are genuine customer concerns,” a statement released by allAgents over the weekend says. AllAgents claims it is now the only review site in the UK to ask customers for proof of this kind prior to posts going live. The announcement is the culmination of nearly six months of wrangling between the two firms after Purplebricks asked the site to take down the ‘fake’ negative reviews. The website declined to do so. In December talks between it and Purplebricks broke down after allAgents’ Director of Business Development said the hybrid agent’s “business ethics are not in line with our own”. one-star reviews Of the 11 reviews posted on the reviews website since the New Year, all bar one award Purplebricks one star out of five…
Read More » -
How to survive today’s increasingly competitive and online property marketplace
Our guest columnist and agent Paul Cooney reveals how his company has thrived despite both the online threat and swanky corporate competitors with big budgets.
Read More » -
Purplebricks hits back at analyst’s report that it only sells half of listed properties.
Purplebricks has rebuffed a report issued yesterday by City investment analyst Jefferies which claimed that the company only sold approximately half of all the properties it lists for sale, and advised investors to sell their shares in the company. The Jefferies report, while praising the rapid rise of Purplebricks, criticised the company for not revealing how many houses it really sells and that, sellers who were not successful using their service had already paid up-front for the service. Analysts at Jefferies also wondered what would happen if the “model stumbled” when consumers realised the service they pay for isn’t a guaranteed sale. The revelation prompted a steep decline in the company’s shares yesterday, which dropped in price by 7.5% on the AIM stock exchange during brisk trading. Single month Purplebricks says the data used by Jefferies to make the claims was based on just a single month’s trading and “does not include properties that have completed but have yet to be uploaded to the Land Registry,” the company says in a statement this morning. It also says its full-year trading remains in line with expectations. The hybrid agent also says the data used did not include properties that had exchanged,…
Read More » -
Countrywide share price freefall continues valuing firm at just £200m
The Countrywide share price freefall continued yesterday plunging by 10.5% to 84.9p per share, an all-time low for the company (see graph, right). Its share price had rallied slightly in recent days following the departure of CEO Alison Platt, but investor confidence in the future of the company and the overall property market appears to be waning again despite Chairman Peter Long recently stating that he would stay on until the company’s problems had been sorted out, and the promotion of Paul Creffield to Group Operations Director. The sudden drop in shares is likely to be a result of major shareholders offloading their exposure to the company’s shares and recent figures from the Land Registry revealing a 21% drop in year-on-year property transactions during 2017. The most significant shareholders in Countrywide are Oaktree Capital with 33%, Brandes Investment Partners with 19%, Apollo Investors (10%), Harris Associates (7.6%). Investec Asset Management ( 6.2%) and Jupiter Asset Management (5.8%). Following the departure of Alison Platt, Peter Long’s salary was doubled from £180,000 to £360,000 as ‘golden handcuffs’ to incentivise the long-serving industry stalwart to remain with the company, while Platt’s severance deal is yet to be announced, although it likely to run…
Read More » -
Andrews sells it surveying business to SimplyBiz after shifting “core focus”
Britain’s most ethical estate agency group, Andrews, has sold its chartered surveying business to The SimplyBiz Group for an undisclosed sum. Andrews says that after much research, it believes SimplyBiz is a suitable buyer because it shares the “same moral fibre”. Landmark, which turns over approximately £5 million a year according to its latest full-year accounts and achieved a profit margin of 13.5% or £675,700, no longer fits into Andrews’ “core focus”, says Group Chief Executive David Westgate. Landmark is based in Bristol and will transfer over to SimplyBiz without the loss of any of the 55 people the company employs, Andrews has confirmed. The SimplyBiz Group is a rapidly-expanding umbrella company for a range of services and financial products including mortgages and pensions to financial advisers It was launched in 2002 and now claims some 3,500 clients. Within its latest accounts published in July last year Landmark reported that its profits were down 3.5% and turnover by 2%, largely due to the EU Referendum in June 2016, which “considerably affected volumes”. Landmark was set up ten years ago by Andrews and, after at least six years of losses as it gained traction, began making profits four years ago. “Landmark…
Read More » -
Is Britain building again? New home registrations rose by 6% during 2017, says NHBC
The promise by the Conservatives to get the UK building again is being delivered if the most recent new home registrations from NHBC are any thing to go by. It says 160,000 homes were registered to be built last year in the UK, an increase of 6% on 2016 during which 152,017 properties were registered. NHBC’s new homes registration figures aren’t always an comprehensive view of the market, partially because its members only represent 80% of all builders, and also because registrations don’t always turn into bricks and mortar. For example, only 141,685 new homes were built last year, nearly 19% fewer than the number registered. Nevertheless, NHBC says the number of homes built by the private sector grew year-on-year during 2017 by 3% to 118,825. Also, the number of affordable homes increased 14% to 31,781, the highest ever figure. The surge in house building took place in nine out of the UK’s 12 regions and includes London, which has seen a decline in the number of new homes registered every year since 2014, helping reassure agents there that it’s property market may be reviving. Other areas of the country which saw significant increases include the East Midlands, Wales and…
Read More »
