EXCLUSIVE: ‘We’re beating the other portals’ says Boomin boss
Michael Bruce says the platform is signing up 100-150 branches a week and is well on the way to having 7,000 on board.
Boomin boss Michael Bruce says his portal has more agents signed up now than the other big portals did when they were in start-up mode’.
Four months after launching at the beginning of April, Boomin is now signing up 100-150 branches a week and now has 6,700 in total, he tells The Neg.
Bruce says it took the other portals between three and six years to get to where Boomin’s is now, and that Zoopla was only able to do this via the acquisition of smaller rival portals such as Propertyfinder and PrimeLocation.
Bruce also says the other portals’ focus on high-volume lead delivery is often ‘at the expensive of quality’.
Instead, Bruce wants to focus instead on helping agents re-engage with the home buyers and sellers in a way that the other portals have made hard to do.
Branch walk-ins
“No so long ago people would walk into branches or phone up agents to see what they had available to buy but that’s much less likely to be the case these days,” he says.
“We want to bring agents, vendors and buyers closer together using clever technology during the early part of the sales process, rather than keeping them apart.”
The Negotiator also asked whether, as rumoured, he is seeking financial backing from the big estate agencies – for example Foxtons have invested £2 million in the platform – in the same way Countrywide, Hamptons, Savills and several other big agencies backed Rightmove and Zoopla during their start-up years.
Bruce did not rule this in or out, only saying that Boomin is currently concentrating on building out the platform, and that he would prefer to see ‘every agent’ benefit from the portal.