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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Admin and contract fees ‘morally reprehensible’ says leading letting agent
A London estate agent has labelled letting agents’ administration and contract fees charged to tenants as ‘indefensible and morally reprehensible’ and says that is why his company doesn’t charge them. The comments came in an opinion piece written for North London newspaper the Ham&High by Simon Gerrard of 13-branch sales and letting agent Martyn Gerrard, which bills itself as the agent ‘where integrity counts’. “There are only two reasons why agents charge the fees. Some cut their fees to landlords to attract stock and then simply charge hazily explained admin fees to the tenants to make up the shortfall,” he says. “Alternatively, and even worse, some agents still charge the landlord the full fee and then also charge the tenants. “Either way it is estimated that a ban of these tenant fees will wipe 10-20 per cent off the turnover of agents who have been charging these spurious fees to tenants. Although this may result in fewer cut price unregulated agents, which is no bad thing, the unintended consequence is that tenants will ultimately be worse off.” Martyn Gerrard, which was established in 1964, does charge tenants a fee, albeit a much lower one than the government’s £233 national average,…
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Emson November sales rocket
Clive Emson sold land and property worth more than £18.5 million at its latest sale.
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Hunters reports strong performance as Harry Hill steps down from CEO role
Sales and letting franchise business Hunters has reported a strong performance in the second half of its financial year despite the challenges of the second homes Stamp Duty changes and Brexit, it says. This includes an aggressive push for more franchisees, its trading update reveals. Hunters says it is on track to add 30 franchisees this year taking the total to 180 branches of which 11 are owned and 169 franchised. The company which floated on AIM in July last year, also reports that during 2015 existing businesses reporting their first full calendar year with the group grew turnover by 29%. This has helped increase revenue for Hunters, which says network income to 31st October 2016 was almost £29 million, an increase of 16% on last year’s results. The company also has reported that its network is split 58/42 between the south and north, and the lettings income increased by 18% compared to last year. But Hunters also says it is less exposed to a potential ban on tenant fees because 72% of its group revenues are from sales and that it is therefore “confident [the company] can manage and adapt accordingly”. “The Board is aware that the industry experienced…
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Fees complaint to ASA highlights new ‘hybrid’ landlord
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) today published a complaint about Ace Relocations, a hybrid HMO landlord that offers professional renters in London rooms within shared properties and blocks of flats and calls itself a ‘house share company’. The complaint was about an advert that the company had place on Spareroom.com, which stated that all bills were included and a cleaner provided. The ASA considered that the advert was likely to have breached its advertising code because “it does not make it clear that the cleaner, and some other costs, are not included in the monthly rent despite the main claim made in the ad”, the ASA said. Ace Relocations agreed to amend both its current website listings and any future adverts, and the ASA file case was closed. What this highlights is the emerging world of hybrid-landlords-cum-property-managers like Ace Relocations. It offers agents and indirectly landlords the opportunity to rent properties outside the traditional tenancy model. Ace Relocations says it is ‘not an estate agent’. It rents properties directly from agents via a ‘commercial contract’ and then rents them to professional tenants. The company doesn’t describe itself as a landlord but, like one, collects the rent and holds the deposit while, like an…
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Countrywide closures: IoW agent latest to shut branches
The Countrywide closures saga continues after one of its agents on the Isle of Wight became the latest to have branches closed and staff redeployed or put through a consultation process. Watson Bull & Porter, which currently has eight branches on the island and had already closed its Shanklin office before the latest announcement, says it is to close a further two branches, possibly by the end of the year. The company, which has been trading for over 150 years, would not reveal which two offices would face closure as their staff are going through a consultation process before they close their doors. Countrywide released a statement to local media saying that “as always, we remain committed to working with colleagues to ensure that those who wish to be redeployed are supported in doing so”. The company also said that it had ‘updated’ all its staff last week on changes to its retail and London businesses about the “next phase of change which includes streamlining our branch footprint and strengthening our regional management structure”. The Isle of Wight closures are part of a move by Countrywide to slim down its operations which has included the amalgamation of several London agencies into the…
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Hatched says Connells cash has helped it double in size
Online-only estate agency Hatched says it has doubled the size of its size of its headcount including local consultants and head office team since it was acquired by Connells Group in November 2015. Hatched say it is now on a further recruitment drive and is looking for “ambitious property professionals” to help expand its network of regional offices and consultants. The company has nine regional or local offices in Leeds, Preston, Guildford, Wigan, Bradford, Nottingham, Maidstone, Birmingham, Manchester, Sheffield and Exeter. It’s the latest development for the ten-year-old agency which operates a network of directly employed consultants who work from home, rather than using self-employed agents as Purplebricks does, and claims to have been the first hybrid agency to have targeted former high street agents to join its team since it first began recruiting in 2010. “It’s an exciting time to join our business as we continue to build on the successes of previous years, with the immense support of Connells Group that we have had throughout 2016,” says Adam Day (pictured), who started the company after eight years after working at Hertfordshire agency Country Properties, where he was branch manager. “This is an opportunity for entrepreneurial individuals to have true…
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Trust in agents rises in 2016, national poll reveals
Trust in agents has increased by five percent over the past year, research has revealed. Polling organisation Ipsos MORI in partnership with Mumsnet asked over a thousand people across the UK last month whether they trusted agents to tell the truth. Of these 30% said they did, although 65% said they didn’t. A further 5% said they didn’t know. The research also revealed that only government ministers and politicians are less trusted than agents, and that nurses, doctors, judges, scientists and the police are the most trusted. But hidden in the research are figures that hint at why people rate estate agents more highly than last year, and why overall agents are not trusted. The simple answer is that the more likely a person is to have used a sales or letting agent recently, the less they trust them. And the drop in the number of homes being sold at the moment following the Stamp Duty changes, and Brexit jitters, means fewer people have used an agent recently. And trust levels among members of the public are highest (58%) among those who own their homes outright and who therefore are less likely to have moved recently. “Also, it appears that…
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Brexit vote has helped us, says Purplebricks CEO
Purplebricks CEO Michael Bruce says the uncertainty caused by the Brexit vote in June has been an opportunity for the company, which released its results this week. Speaking during an interview with London-based website DirectorsTalk, Bruce suggested that he saw “Brexit as an opportunity to grow our market share and get out there an educated the UK consumers that the cost of selling your house is too high, you’ve been paying it for too long, and that the unfair commission based model agency is not the one that you should choose”. “We have been very pleased to see that the UK consumer is making that choice, and that there is a seismic change happening in the estate agency [sector] and we’re at the forefront of that change – and we’re looking to capitalise on it.” The comments come after Purplebricks yesterday reported its first profit of £300,000 as well as a 119% increase in the number of Local Property Experts joining the company over the past six months. “This shows that more and more people from the industry want to join Purplebricks to offer a better quality of service,” says Bruce. “It’s why we’re the most positively reviewed estate agent in the…
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Belvoir Acquisitions
Following Belvoir’s recent acquisition of Northwood, the company has announced the partial funding of a further four franchisee-led acquisitions and the expansion of its acquisition programme to other brands within the group.
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Purplebricks results: company reports first profits despite ‘challenging’ market
Purplebricks has revealed its latest financial results for this year covering the key post-Brexit months from May to October, which have produced its first profits since launching in 2015. The results released this morning show that the business generated a profit of £300,000 compared to a loss of £600,00 during the same six-month period last year. The company says it is also on course to reach its target Local Property Expert total of 340 by the end of this year. But while it has also increased its revenue per customer by 20.6% to £1,000 and reported a 108% increase in instructions, Purplebricks says the property market is a “challenging” place to do business. This has helped slow its earlier spectacular growth. The company generated revenue of £18.7m during the period, up 159% up on last year although not the extraordinary 448% growth it revealed when it last reported in May. Cost of sales have also increased from £3.1 million to £8.3m compared to the same period last year, although how much it spends on sales and marketing stayed the same. “Although we recognise that the UK market backdrop is tough, we continue to have a confident outlook for the future,”…
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