A senior member of the Purplebricks management team has broken her silence for the first time since the troubled agency’s purchase last month by rival Strike for £1.

Dominique Highfield (main picture), who is the only senior officer to survive the deal, says it was an “enormous achievement” for Purplebricks to find a rescue buyer.

“This was an enormous achievement in the circumstances and a big test of our resilience, averting the negative consequences of a no deal.”

Highfield goes on to say in a LinkedIn post: “The power of two online estate agents combined is set to truly disrupt the market.

“We have already slashed our prices and removed the London premium, making our proposition even more competitive.”

Purplebricks announced last week it would sell homes for £999 replacing the previous pricing structure of a £1,499 London selling fee plus a £1,349 fee across the rest of the UK.

Exhausted

The board at Purplebricks, including chairman Paul Pindar and CEO Helena Marston stood down under the terms of the Strike deal.

The company was put up for sale in February after admitting all other survival strategies had been exhausted.

I am leading the integration with Sam Mitchell at the helm as our new CEO.”

Highfield says she will be “forever grateful for the opportunity Helena Marston gave me here… squeezing five years of plc experience into just six months.

“I am leading the integration with Sam Mitchell at the helm as our new CEO. Lots to do and inevitable change ahead…more learning experiences for many of us and another exciting chapter in the Purplebricks story.”

The two businesses will run separately to begin with, but the plan is to merge both businesses under the ‘Purplebricks‘ name so the Strike brand will disappear.

Shareholders also agreed that the agency will leave the AIM market on 15 June and become a private company.

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