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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Who? Eric Eckardt to lead Purplebricks’ US operation
The newly-installed CEO of the Purplebricks’ USA operation is Eric Eckardt (pictured), a 42-year-old serial property tech start-up entrepreneur and keen skier with a background in investment banking. Educated in New York, he then joined the banking industry where he spent nine years working for three different banks including JP Morgan, Bank of Tokyo and ABN AMRO, before setting up his own company Eckhardt Holdings LLC. He used that as a vehicle to launch several start-ups including a private mortgage company and an online brokerage firm called ZonicRealty which he launched in 2012 with his brother. It prompted a lot of media coverage in the US, but in June 2016 morphed into Dwellowner.com. Like its predecessor, the company is a flat-fee brokerage rather than charging agents a percentage-based commission. At the same time Eric Eckardt was steering another business, Luxembourg-based Hubzu.com where he was a vice-president working direct with US brokers. Hubzu specialises in selling bank-owned properties but hired Eckardt to help move the company into the US real estate market. He left in 2015 and returned to the US to focus on his DwellExchange business, which he describes as a full-service hybrid real estate brokerage – something that no…
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Michael Bruce raises £50 million from City for Purplebricks USA
Hybrid agent Purplebricks has raised funds through a share issue to help the company break into the US market and launch Purplebricks USA. The funding move raised £50 million pounds via AIM by offering shares at £2.20 each, just under its current share price of £2.26p, which rose by 2.1% during late trading yesterday. The placing was over subscribed and raised several million more than Purplebricks had sought. The company says the cash will be used to set up operations in several key US states during the second half of 2017, and estimates the potential commission cake in the US is approximately $70 billion or £56 billion. The move into America follows Purplebricks’ entry into the Australian market in August last year in Melbourne and Brisbane, which by October it had deemed to be a “great success”. The company currently has 437 properties for sale on its Australian website, up from less than a 100 in October. But unlike in Australia, where the estate agency business is very similar to the UK one, in the US properties are sold in a way that could suit the Purplebricks model as many realtors there are self-employed. “We are confident that with our understanding…
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Another senior Countrywide veteran exits business
The brain drain out of Countrywide continues apace after Nick Dunning Associates announced it has appointed Julian Irby as chief financial officer and a main board director. Other senior former Countrywide staff at Nick Dunning Associates include Graham Harrison (former MD of lettings) and Matt Hewitt (former chief marketing officer) as well as Nick Dunning. Irby will start in April and arrives from Countrywide following a 16-year career at the company where he held several roles including as finance director of its lettings division and, most recently, national sales and lettings finance director. It is not a surprise that Irby has moved over; he worked with Nick Dunning at Countrywide and like Dunning has wide experience of acquiring and merging businesses. Nick set up his company in November last year after a seven-year stint at Countrywide and since leaving, has embarked upon a programme of acquisitions with the aim of creating a fourth large corporate in the property sector, and says he intends to buy 20 mainly lettings businesses a year for the next five years. Most recently, it bought up Badger Holdings, parent company of the 26-branch Townends and Regents network. “I am extremely excited to be joining Nick Dunning…
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Gender pay gap widens as property pay rises
Salaries for UK property professionals remained robust in 2017, according to the latest survey by RICS and Macdonald & Company, but the gender pay gap has increased from last year. The key findings were: • Male property professionals earn on average £11000 more than female counterparts (£7000 in 2016) • Sector salary pay rises up 7.2% overall- above UK wage inflation* • Average salaries down, but largely explained by changing demographics of the survey Male property professionals earn, on average, £11,113 more than their female colleagues (£54,931 versus £43,818). The gap is evident across the majority of age groups and is greatest for those aged between 46-55, where the difference in average salary is 25.7%. Encouragingly, the gender pay gap is now less evident in those starting out in property with females earning slightly more than males – which is a turnaround from last year where the pay gap was most evident in 18-22 year olds. The survey is also still indicating the attraction of property as a career. Of those who received a pay rise in 2017 in the industry the average increase was 7.7% (up from 7.1% in 2016). This is far above UK wage inflation which sits at 2.7%*. Considering the…
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Suffolk Negotiator Awards winner branches out
After their recent success winning ‘New Agency of the Year’ at The Negotiator Awards, Best Estates has opened their third office in Sudbury.
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Land and New Homes Network Grows
A fast growing network which brings estate agents and house builders together has moved into new offices with a long term plan to turn them into a hub for high calibre businesses related to the property industry.
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Fenn Wright Acquires Thorntons
Independently owned East Anglian estate agency Fenn Wright has acquired the respected, Sudbury based, Thorntons for an undisclosed fee.
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Purplebricks Australia ‘growing’
Michael Bruce, CEO, Purplebricks, says that its launch into Australia has had a fantastic start.
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Why did Northwood withdraw circular that used commonly-used Rightmove data?
Franchise network agent Northwood GB, which was acquired by rival Belvoir in June last year, has been reported to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) for making an unsubstantiated claim in a circular it distributed to clients, even though the information is widely available elsewhere. Northwood had stated within it: “Did you know that between Christmas Day and 1st working day in January last year Rightmove had a 195% increase in their visits to their website”. The complainant challenged whether this claim could be substantiated and, after the ASA contacted Northwood, was told the circular had been withdrawn and the matter was resolved informally. Links to the circular on the company’s Facebook page have also been taken down. “We told them to ensure in future, they held robust substantiation information for any claims made in their advertising,” the ASA said. Northwood’s reluctance to substantiate the claim is odd, given that the ‘195% increase’ statistic has been repeated in several local newspapers including the Hampshire Chronicle, and is therefore likely to have been based on a Rightmove press release. Also, Northwood is not the only agent in the UK to have repeated the ‘195% increase in visits’ claim. Hamptons International (see left)…
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Which? says over-pricing costs vendors £4.3bn a year
Consumer champion organisation Which? has launched a scathing report on sales agents that will make painful and probably infuriating reading for many. Its research found that of the 370,000 property sales it looked at between October 2105 and September 2016, one in five had been heavily reduced in price between asking and final agreed price, and that the optimistically-valued properties sold more slowly and for less. More controversially, Which? says online-only and hybrid agents sold more homes that hadn’t been reduced in price compared to traditional agents. Also, Which? says its data suggests overvalued properties take 64 days longer to sell than the rest, and that properties that start out over-priced don’t generally later achieve a higher one than an ‘uninflated’ one. The best-performing agents across the UK for selling above the asking price are also revealed, as are those Which? says are the ‘worst’. In London these include Fine & Country, James Pendleton, EasyProperty, Camerons Stiff & Co, Watson Bull & Porter, Faron Sutaria, Chestertons and Marsh & Parsons. Outside London it includes Redferns in the SW, Nick Tart in the West Midlands, Boxall Brown & Jones in the East Midlands, Aldreds in the East of England, Whitegates in…
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