Estate agency comparison site GetAgent raises £2.2 million from latest investment round
Venture capitalists join forces with Channel 4 to raise extra funds for the four-year-old proptech firm.
Estate agent comparison website GetAgent has closed a new funding round and has raised £2.2 million from several investors including one with links to other digital property projects, TV channel Channel 4 and the founder of a leading photo printing platform.
GetAgent’s business is based on providing consumers with estate agent comparison rankings based on sales performance, time taken to sell and price achieved relative to original asking price. It also provides agents with leads that they only pay for if the introductions turn into sales.
GetAgent claims the funding round is an endorsement for traditional estate agents, saying that the investment is “no coincidence against a backdrop of trouble for the online/hybrid estate agency contingent, a sector that until recently was hailed as a big disruptor”, the company says.
“Some ten years since the appearance of the first cheap, online estate agents, the market share of traditional agents is a resolute 95% despite hundreds of millions of pounds spent on TV and Google ads,” says Colby Short, GetAgent’s Co-Founder and CEO (left).
Although he claims his tech is ‘agent agnostic’ the company has a track record of being critical of hybrid and online agents. Two years ago it published a survey that revealed how the then leading agents had sold at best 57% of their stock over a 14-month period.
“Some ten years since the appearance of the first cheap, online estate agents, the market share of traditional agents is a resolute 95% despite hundreds of millions of pounds spent on TV and Google ads.” says Short.
The new backers of GetAgent include Marchmont Ventures; Christian Woolfenden, Managing Director of PhotoBox.com as well as an additional investment by Channel through its Commercial Growth Fund.