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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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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Countrywide to refashion hybrid offering and beef up lettings
Countrywide’s plan to turn its business around has been revealed, including the company’s intention to relaunch its hybrid online offering. As part of its ‘back to basics’ plan, the company also says it intends to begin recruiting again at a local level and wants to revive its lettings business. “We are focused on restoring lettings capability back at regional, area and branch level and in our customer service centres,” the company says. “We believe that continued growth in the rentals market provides huge opportunity for operators who deliver the highest levels of compliance and service to landlords and tenants.” Other changes include plans to decentralise its operations, give branches more information to help them measure their performance against local competitors and relaunch its ‘hybrid’ online offering. Online players “Previous management believed that it too should offer a digital fixed fee proposition in order to compete with the online players,” the company says. “The resulting hybrid digital fee proposition, however, led to confusion for our customers who expected to receive a full service at a reduced fee.” The other key new focus for Countrywide will be to restore its revenue pipeline of ancillary income from services such as conveyancing and mortgages,…
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Average salary in property is now £58,633 and grew 12% last year, it is claimed
A salary poll of property professionals has revealed that pay rises for qualified estate agents are currently at a ten-year high and that the gender pay gap is narrowing among junior agents, but still shockingly wide at the top. These claims are made by the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) after it canvassed 7,000 professionals across all sectors of the property industry including sales and lettings agents, valuers and block managers. RICS says that across the industry the average salary for its members grew by 12% or £6,271 last year – when total remuneration packages are taken into account – to an average of £58,633. The extra cash is being spread across all regions of the UK, too, with Northern Ireland enjoying the steepest pay rises, followed by London and the South East. Bonuses levels increased last year too and now average £15,703, says RICS. The RICS & Macdonald Salary Survey also looked at the gender pay gap within the industry. Last year female property professionals under 26 years old were paid 3.5% less than their male counterparts, but overall the gender pay gap across the industry is 30%. The property sector also appears to be in relatively rude…
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Landwood’s new auction venture
A North West firm of chartered surveyors is launching Landwood Property Auctions, backed by the Landwood Group, with plans to host a series of auctions – traditional or online...
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Revealed: why Countrywide sales and lettings went awry during Platt years
Countrywide has revealed that it will take three years to turn the business around following the departure of Alison Platt in January, and also detailed how and why she left. During the final months of last year Countrywide Executive Chairman Peter Long carried out a review of why its sales and lettings business had lost so much market share and profitability since 2015. He discovered that the strategy adopted by the company to treat sales and lettings as a single retail business failed to appreciate that they are really separate entities each with different characteristics and customer bases requiring separate expertise. Long also found that the ‘one size fits all’ approach the company had adopted led to a reduction in entrepreneurial culture and that branch managers lost the autonomy to recruit and promote colleagues or develop their businesses to fit local conditions. Reducing closure costs Countrywide has also published how much its ongoing cost reduction and closures programme cost last year. Its preliminary results, which come ahead of its full Annual Report later this month, show that it spent £4.4 million on redundancies and changing the leadership structure and £1.65 million on consultants to manage costs and get “strategic initiatives”…
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‘Come back to us’, Countrywide’s Peter Long asks departed talent as profits sink
Countrywide’s Executive Chairman Peter Long (pictured, above) has called for the senior figures who left the business during the Alison Platt years to return to the company as the company reveals its latest figures. Overall income reduced by 9% during 2017 and profits dropped by 23%, driven by a poorly-performing sales and lettings where profits fell by 45% from £48.4 million in 2016 to £26.4 million last year. This is a third year in a row the results from its core branch network have been poor. Countrywide’s mortgage business, which is highly dependent on its pipeline from the branches, also generated less profit last year, down from £22.7 million to £19.7 million. But one area of the business doing well is its B2B services operation. Profits increased by 13% to £35.6 million driven by surveying, and its commercial business outfit Lambert Smith Hampton. The 2017 results also reveal that although the company made an underlying profit of £19.5 million during 2017, nearly half that of 2016, it has reported a loss of £208.1 million after taking a £225.9 million hit for exception items. The company says it will not pay a dividend for 2017. In response to the figures, Countrywide…
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Purplebricks Australia fined £11,200 after regulator receives complaints about its fixed fees
Purplebricks Australia has been fined AU$20,000 (£11,200) by the Queensland Office of Fair Trading (OFT) following complaints that it had misled customers about its fixed-fee offering, and not followed accounting and other business rules. OFT says it received “several complaints” about misleading claims both on Purplebricks’ website and within advertising. In a similar way that some consumers and agents complain about Purplebricks in the UK, it was claimed that Purplebricks was not clear that its fees were charged whether a property is sold or not. “Between November 2016 and June 2017, Purplebricks Australia Pty Ltd, entered into agreements with consumers who were not made aware of the terms of the fees charged,” a statement from the Queensland Office of Fair Trading says. “Consumers were also misled about additional services offered by Purplebricks, despite the agency advertising ‘low, fixed fees’ for their services when selling property. “Purplebricks [also] failed to fulfil some of its regulatory obligations about use of appropriate accounts software, use of a non-Queensland bank account and notification of substitute licensees and other places of business.” In a statement to Australian website Financial Review, Purplebricks’ CEO in Australia, Ryan Dinsdale (pictured, above), said his company had worked with the…
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