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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Fine & Country opes new office in Maresme
Fine & Country has opened a new office in Maresme, Spain, to service the Barcelona coast, the surrounding coastal areas of Sant Andreu de Llanvaneres and the city of Mataro.
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Lettings agent offers homeless a £2,000-a-month apartment for free over Christmas
A serviced apartment rentals company is offering a £2,000-a-month, two-bedroom flat (pictured, right) in Kings Cross, central London, free of charge to homeless people over Christmas. The company, City Booker, is headed up by Laurence Lemeche who himself was homeless during his 20s when he first moved to London and says he remembers being in a cycle of homelessness and unemployment – unable to get a job because he had no home and not able get a home because he was unemployed. Laurence (pictured, below) says at one point he slept in his car, but that this cycle was broken when a landlord gave him somewhere to sleep and now he wants to do the same for one of the capital’s homeless, who make up one in every 59 Londoners, according to housing charity Shelter. He hopes that his offer of free accommodation will inspire other landlords to do the same and “help someone else turn their lives around this Christmas”. Any agents or landlords who know someone who is homeless should direct them to Lawrence’s Facebook page to apply to live in the flat. According to Shelter there will be 307,000 people sleeping rough or living in temporary housing…
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Clive Emson’s biggest sale of year raises £23 million
Clive Emson Auctioneers’ sales topped £23 million at their autumn auction, with a sale rate of 79 per cent across 179 lots for the auction...
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Rokstone opens lettings in London
Prime central London agent Rokstone has launched a new lettings division, extending its residential offering.
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Purplebricks agrees to clarify what ‘pay nothing upfront’ means on its website
It has been a busy week for the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) which has had to deal with three property firms referred to it by members of the public, including Purplebricks. This will be the fifth time this year the hybrid agency has been dealt with by the ASA and the tenth time overall since 2015. This time the hybrid agency has agreed to add a clickable but tiny ‘information’ symbol (see below) on its ‘What’s included in our fixed fee’ page next to the words ‘A choice to pay nothing upfront’. A member of the public complained that this could be misleading because, if a vendor chooses to pay later they either have to use Purplebricks’ Advanced Conveyancing Services or, if they don’t, pay an administration fee of £360 including VAT. After being contacted by the ASA, Purplebricks inserted the pop-up information button containing the words explaining this, and the case was resolved informally. Two other agents The other agents featuring in this week’s ASA cases include Property Collection Worldwide and Space4Living. Cambridge-based the Property Collection Worldwide had been reported for claiming to be the “UK’s leading estate agents’ marketing specialists”, a claim that when challenged it agreed to…
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‘Only strong letting agents will survive fees ban’
Not many letting agents can say they have been able to buy up three rivals within three years of establishing their business from scratch. But that is what Angela Newark can claim after revealing today that she has bought the property management portfolio of sales and now former letting agent Martin Lonsdale in Saltaire, West Yorkshire, taking her managed stock to over 800 properties. In 2014 she cold-started a Martin & Co franchised branch in Saltaire but then bought rival Village Estates in 2015 and then the Keighley office of Whitegates in 2016 (pictured, below), also part of the Martin & Co family. Letting agents “I’m a beneficiary of the multi-brand strategy of The Property Franchise Group as I trade both as Whitegates and Martin & Co,” she says. “Central office assisted me with the acquisitions and I’m looking at other businesses currently. I know agents are worried about the tenant fee ban, but the strong will survive, and my business is now set for further growth in 2018”, said Angela. The Property Franchise Group owns six franchised lettings brands including Martin & Co, EweMove, CJ Hole, Ellis & Co, Parkers and Whitegates and operation nearly 300 branches. The detail of the tenant fees ban…
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Thousands of online viewers watch agent’s spoof John Lewis Xmas TV ad
A video parodying this year’s John Lewis Xmas TV ad featuring a young boy and a monster living under his bed has now been watched by 10,000 people and attracted over 200 likes on Facebook. Helmores, which is based in the town of Crediton north of Exeter and claims a heritage reaching back to 1699, filmed its own version of the high street retailer’s advertisement almost scene for scene. Instead of a small boy it’s a George, a 40-year-old office worker and rather than a monster, it’s Ian the friendly estate agent. And as in the John Lewis original, George and Ian then go on to spend each night in George’s bedroom playing Scaletrix with his ‘estate agent’ and subsequently falling asleep during the day – at work, playing football and having his hair cut. The situation is resolved when what appears to be the man’s wife gives him a set of keys with a Helmores call card tied to it – and ends with the tagline ‘Moving home doesn’t need to be scary’. The budget version of the £7m John Lewis ad was completed on a “very small budget” in just a week by the Cornish estate agent, which…
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Purplebricks Australia boss cashes in shares worth £146,000
The CEO of Purplebricks Australia has cashed in shares worth £146,000 after exercising his share options in the company, it has been revealed, just after the one-year anniversary of the country launch. Ryan Dinsdale (pictured, right), who joined Purplebricks in June 2016 following time spent at Virgin Money, Telstra and an online broker in Australia, has led the Purplebricks operation in Oz to recent success including, so far, sales totalling property worth $1 billion AUS. His team earlier this week reported revenues of £6.8 million and a gross profit of £3.6 million, and an average income per instruction of $5,282 AUD. He has also increased the number of Local Property Experts working for Purplebricks in Australia to 105, the company’s latest interim trading statement says. Austrian market share It also says that Australia has been more successful than the UK by one measure – market share – which is now higher than the UK 74% of the online market. At the same time Ryan sold his shares, Purplebricks revealed that a further 1.17 million ordinary share options have been exercised by “certain employees”, indicating that some original founding but non director-level staff at the company have also cashed in shares…
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Italy Sotherby’s International Realty launches in Sardinia
Italy Sotheby’s International Realty, has launched its first office in Sardinia.
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Independent estate agent challenged over speed-of-sale claims
Independent estate agent Curchods has got into hot water with the advertising watchdog over two direct mailshots it sent out recently. In both the mailshots the company, which has its headquarters in West Horsley and operates 21 branches across Surrey, made claims about how fast it could sell properties and exchange contracts, and also the total value of its property sales over the past 12 months. But a single complainant – presumably a local competitor – challenged whether theses claims could be substantiated, and the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) approached Curchods – which is owned by parent company Simpsons Estate Agents Ltd – to investigate. Curchods, which is one of Surrey’s oldest estate agent brands with a history stretching back 75 years, agreed to withdraw the marketing material containing the claims about average speed of contract exchange. Also, the company agreed to insert qualifications into other material about the number of sales per hour it achieves and was able to prove to the ASA the number of sales it had made over the past year. On this basis, the ASA says the complaint was informally resolved. Brexit worries Curchods’ parent company Simpson Estate Agents bought the sales operation of local…
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