easyProperty
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Movers & Shakers
easyProperty announces new MD
easyProperty has appointed Russell Humphrey as Managing Director of their online estate agency business. Humphrey, formerly of YOPA, has extensive experience in independent, corporate and online estate agency.
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Latest property news
He’s off again! Adam Day leaves EasyProperty to join newly-enlarged Emoov
Hatched founder Adam Day says he was drawn to Emoov new No.2 position within the online agency market, after less than 12 months at EasyProperty.
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Latest property news
Savills and easyProperty battle it out this Sunday…on TV
Two opposing giants of the property industry are due to do battle this weekend, but not in the place you might imagine. The pinstripe suits at Savills are to take on the online orange-ness of easyProperty at 8pm on Sunday during ITV historical drama Victoria (pictured, right) during which the two agents will be screening their new adverts. Savills is expected to be first with its new campaign called A Savills Love Story which, the agent says, will build “on the successful concept of talking houses which featured in the Savills campaign last year, this year’s theme goes a step further in bringing homes, and our deep attachment to them, to life”. The company admits both versions of its new TV advert – one shot on a beach (being aired on Sunday) and the other in a park – are fairly surreal, each showing a couple ‘meeting’ their current and future homes and discussing their forthcoming move. “Savills is a business which prides itself on its hunger, drive, and agility in a changing market. The 2017 campaign was a success and has given us the confidence to press forward,” says Alison Dean, head of consumer marketing at Savills. “We want to…
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easyProperty claims to be largest Purplebricks rival following relaunch
EasyProperty has relaunched its business following the merger with the Guild of Property Professionals and now claims to be the second largest hybrid agent in the UK after Purplebricks. The company has also finished merging its lead generation, sales progression and negotiation platform with the Guild. Now, vendors who enquire via the new easyProperty website will be funnelled through to the relevant local property expert, who will be a dedicated member of staff from the local licensee’s high street branch. Easyproperty says this way there will be a clear difference between a licensee’s high street brand and the easyProperty hybrid offering, unlike Countrywide’s approach of offering both services locally on the same website. So far easyProperty says it has 333 signed-up licensees and 368 consumer-facing local property professionals who are currently undergoing training with former Hatched founder Adam Day. “Today is when we move to delivery our product to the consumer after three months of work,” says easyProperty Chief Executive Jon Cooke. “Consumer behaviour is changing and we are adapting to what [they] want – for us, it’s all about technology and people.” EasyProperty has also revealed a new structure with private equity and banking specialist Mark Phillips appointed as…
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Latest property news
Hatched founder joins easyProperty as Head of Operations
Adam Day, the founder of online estate agency Hatched.co.uk has joined easyProperty.com as its Head of Operations, just 15 months after Hatched was bought by Connells. On his Linkedin profile Adam lists himself as “taking a break” in between leaving Hatched earlier this month and joining easyProperty, although in December last year Adam was on a recruitment for more Hatched agents, saying it was an “exciting time to join our business as we continue to build on the successes of previous years”. Adam (pictured, right) has joined easyProperty to set up the systems and procedures that will transform the website from an exclusively consumer-facing operation into the geographically licensed B2B offering that easyProperty CEO Jon Cooke describes as “the convergence of high street agency with online sales and lettings”. And Adam has his work cut out – easyProperty expects to relaunch in September this year. £60m deal with GPEA Adam’s arrival at easyProperty follows the £60m deal between the Guild of Professional Estate Agents and easyProperty to merge earlier this month and that 270-plus GPEA members have signed up so far to be easyProperty licensees out of a potential pool of 800. In return for a fee, easyProperty is licensing…
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Latest property news
Over 270 Guild agents sign up to be easyProperty licence holders
Over 270 estate agents belonging to The Guild of Property Professionals have signed up to become easyProperty licence holders out of a potential pool of 800, it has been revealed. Online-only agent easyProperty was bought by the Guild’s parent company GPEA last month, a deal that completed on 12th July. This will eventually create a new parent company, e-Prop Services, although back in June the deal was framed as a merger on the main Easy.com site where all the Easy brands established by founder Stelios Haji–Ioannou are listed. The drive to persuade to Guild members to sign up to be geographically-based licence holders for the easyProperty brand and service follows an 11-date race around the country by a roadshow outlining the proposition. GPEA claims 70% of those who turned up to the roadshows signed up via a ‘letter of intent’ to become easyProperty licence holders. easyProperty CEO Jon Cooke (pictured, left) says the business will be relaunched in September as a part B2B, part consumer orientated operation, rather than its current consumer facing only offering. News of the new sign-ups follows criticism of the easyPropery and GPEA deal last month by leading proptech consultant James Dearsley, who questioned the deal’s…
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Hundreds of agents sign up to be easyProperty licensees, says Jon Cooke
EasyProperty has come out fighting following criticism of its merger with The Guild of Property Professionals last week, revealing that there has been “strong” take-up among the industry for its new territorial licensing system. Jon Cooke (pictured, below), the CEO of both easyProperty and the merged company’s parent group e-Prop Services, also says that he is receiving enquiries from non-members of the Guild but, while it currently only available to Guild menbers, it not a “compulsory” add-on and instead an “option” for members. Following criticism by leading proptech expert James Dearsley and industry veteran Ed Mead last week in which they questioned the merger’s likely success and highlighted its weaknesses, Jon says easyProperty has received 500 territory requests from Guild members including many from a sales roadshow that has been under way since June 14th. He says letters of intent were sent to all the agents who attended the three-hour roadshows and that a third of them signed and returned them. The roadshows have been conducted across the including in Coventry, London, Tunbridge Wells, Southampton, Exeter, Bristol, Manchester, Yorkshire, Newcastle and East Anglia. “There has been a lot of industry speculation from naysayers who seem to have a louder voice…
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Proptech expert heavily criticises merger of easyProperty and Guild
Leading proptech consultant James Dearsley (pictured, below) says he doubts the Guild of Property Professionals merger with online agent easyProperty will deliver the result that the two organisations are hoping for. The key plank of his criticism is that EastProperty has yet to gain the market traction needed to prove that it can work, and that therefore the merger deal is an “enormous risk” for the Guild. Last week it was announced that GPEA, the parent company of the Guild and Fine & Country, was to merge with easyProperty backed by £15 million from venture capital firm Toscafund Asset Management LLP. It was said that the deal would provide independent agents with the option to access easyProperty’s fixed-price sales and lettings packages through a monthly brand and technology licence. The deal creates a new structure for the soon-to-be merged businesses which will all be under an umbrella PLC called e-Prop Services, headed up by former GPEA CEO and industry veteran Jon Cooke. The key focus of the new entity, it says, is to offer sales and lettings services to consumers across the entire market including high end via Fine & Country to mass-market budget vendors via easyProperty. Digital transformation In…
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EasyProperty withdraws advertising claims after ASA probe
Online agent easyProperty.com has agreed to withdraw several claims about its service from any future advertising following a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). The complaint was made by a member of the public who had clicked on a link within a Google-sponsored search result to an ad that included: “Get an offer within 20 weeks”, “Save £2809 on estate agent fees”, “No commission fees” and “Save with low fixed fees”. After contacting easyProperty, the complainant was quoted a saving of less than £2,809 and “was not given an explanation of how the advertiser could get them offers within 20 weeks”, the ASA says, and then challenged whether the claims in the ad were misleading and could be substantiated. Claims removed EasyProperty has now removed “Get an offer within 20 weeks” and “Save £2809 on estate agent fees” from its advertising. It also agreed in future ads to use less definitive savings claims – such as ‘You could save’ and that they would make it clear that the ‘offer within 20 weeks claim’ actually referred to their money back guarantee offer, whereby consumers would receive a refund if their property wasn’t sold within 20 weeks. On this basis and…
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Latest property news
Are the online-only agents gaining traction?
After reading the criticism of online-only agents by their traditional counterparts on Twitter it’s clear that much of the industry dislikes and fears the way these digital ‘disruptors’ do business. High profile operators such as Purplebricks, Easyproperty, emoov and House Network regularly feature in the national press and, helped by their extensive PR outfits, are hard at work persuading the public that online-only agents are the future. Research by The Negotiator into the market reveals a different picture. The online-only agents have a fair way to go yet before they can claim to be a major threat to traditional agents, industry data reveals. With the exception of hybrids (i.e. staffed but without high street branches) such as Purplebricks and YOPA, they have yet to gain a significant foothold in the market. There are 21,925 properties currently listed on Rightmove by online or hybrid agents which is 4.03% of the market based on Rightmove’s current listing of 543,612 (minus the online agents). Purplebricks dominates the online sector with 44% of all listed properties listed followed by HouseSimple (12%), emoov (9.8%) and Easyproperty (7.2%), Housenetwork (6.4%) and YOPA (5.5%). Most of the smaller online agents including recently-launch Settled, which lists 316 properties for sale, have the same inventory of a five to…
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