Emoov
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Latest property news
Emoov investigated by advertising watchdog for third time since 2015
Hybrid estate agent emoov has been investigated for a third time by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) this time over claims made on its website about how much vendors can save by using its service when compared to traditional agents. An agent in Lincolnshire complained to the ASA about the claim on an www.emoov.co.uk webpage that said “our activity around Scunthorpe…£2,672 Average Customer Saving” and “our sellers saved an average of £4,378 in fees with emoov”. The complainant also highlighted that emoov had published two different fixed fees on the page without explaining the difference, one for £795 and the other for £679. The person who contacted the ASA challenged whether the savings claims could be substantiated, and whether the different fixed fees were misleading. Promises After being contacted by the ASA, emoov agreed to take the comparative claims down and has promised not to repeat them, and now makes it clear on the page that it has only one fixed fee of £795. Emoov has been investigated by the ASA twice before for being misleading, in 2015 and 2016, both of which included complaints made to the advertising watchdog about ‘fees saved’ as well as other issues including competitor…
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Latest property news
“Ill judged” Strutt & Parker advice to Millennials stirs up a Twitter storm
Strutt & Parker has prompted a Twitter storm today after releasing a report that suggested Millennial young couples should give up six ‘luxuries’ to save up enough money to get on the property ladder. The report suggests that young ‘generation renters’ could save up £64,000 within five years by cutting down nights out, takeaways, shop-bought lunchtime sandwiches, the annual city break holiday, lottery tickets and mobile upgrades. Strutt & Parker’s Head of Research Stephanie McMahon told the Evening Standard that “affordability is a problem for every major city around the world – and in London, it is raising the deposit that is the particular challenge”. “Getting on the property ladder in London is harder than ever, and with an average deposit of £94,000, people are thinking, ‘What luxuries am I willing to forgo now that will pay off five years down the line?’.” The reception for report was distinctly chilly, particularly among the Millennials targeted in the report by Strutt & Parker, which was bought by BNP Paribas in August. On Twitter the report was described as “monstrously ill judged” by blogger @Indiablock on Twitter while decidedly non-Millennial Henry Pryor also took to the social media platform to criticise the…
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Latest property news
Asking price reductions at their highest for five years, says Rightmove
Over a third of properties for sale in the UK have had their original asking prices cut since being listed, says the latest Rightmove house price index. At 37% of all existing homes for sale, this is the highest proportion dropping their prices during the autumn months for five years (see graph below), the portal says. This pushed down asking prices by 0.8% during October, the index shows, with price reductions heaviest at the top of property ladder. Rightmove says it’s a buyers’ market now and that vendors should be “wary of over-pricing” and that holding out for a Stamp Duty reduction in next week’s Budget statement to boost buyer activity. Price cutting following the Summer market high-point is a pre-Xmas tradition within the property market but the proportion of homes for sale being cut in price has been rising over the past three years and is now at a peak. “In the run-up to the festive season many sellers are trying to tempt distracted buyers to look at their property by dangling the bauble of more attractive pricing given the quieter time of year and more challenging market,” says Miles Shipside (pictured, right). “Many sellers who have been on…
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Latest property news
Taking on Purplebricks? eMoov prepares huge expansion of local experts team
Online agent eMoov has announced that it is to “drastically” increase the number of local agents in the field and has hired a former senior Spicerhaart divisional executive to manage the expansion. Richard Olliffe, who before joining eMoov had spent seven years at Spicerhaart rising through the ranks, is to help the online agent implement a huge recruitment campaign to increase its presence across the UK – which currently features five ‘local experts’ covering Essex, London, the North West, West Yorkshire, Nottingham, Derby and Sheffield. The announcement accompanying Richard’s appointment says that although the high-street shop window is “obsolete” and the multiple-branch model “no longer relevant to the UK property market”, eMoov also says home sellers “still value face-to-face contact with a local expert”. “This blend of people and tech gives eMoov the edge in a rapidly changing industry and offers the consumer a proposition that combines the best of all sectors and removes the bad,” it says. Commenting on his new job, Richard (pictured, left) says that “although my role at eMoov will be similar to my time in the high-street sector, I’m looking forward to applying that knowledge and experience to a new breed of estate agency at…
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A Question of Property: Russell Quirk, CEO of eMoov
Are online agents like yours really gaining market share? Yes, Rightmove figures show the share of online agents has increased from 2.5% in early 2015 to 6.5% today – that’s an increase of more than 100% in two years. We have data that shows, depending on area, the propensity for people to use an online agent is increasing at a significant rate. I believe it’s all about tipping point. If you talk to business experts, they believe it’s somewhere around 12% market share. We are rapidly moving towards that. Where’s this growth coming from? Look at Countrywide and Foxtons. Their listings and revenues are dropping while the decent online operators such as Purplebricks, Yopa and ourselves are growing our share and numbers in absolute terms in a market that is down by 30%. Some say it’s all fuelled by investors’ cash Yes, it is a question of cash but it’s also about proposition and execution – I think there will be two or three winners in this market. Investors are getting fickler and I know of one online agent which is struggling to raise funding now. But it’s more about that if there are ten competitors in a new market,…
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Gazumping to be outlawed? Government to consider buyer lock-ins
Communities Secretary Sajid Javid has launched another call for evidence, this time as part of a government push to reform the buying process which could see gazumping outlawed. Just days after revealing he wanted to make life fairer for leaseholders, Sajid says he wants to hear from estate agents, solicitors and mortgage lenders about how to stop gazumping, reduce time wasting and ensuring buyers commit to a sale. In his call for evidence, the Communities Secretary says mistrust between parties is one of the biggest issues faced by the industry and wants to introduce lock-in agreement to improve it, highlighting how a quarter of house purchases fall through each year. Other measures include ‘encouraging’ sellers to provide more information before they put their property on the market – which sounds like a ‘lite’ version of Labour’s Home Information Packs – and encourage more digital innovation to help speed up the buying process by making more data available online. This refers to more recent innovations such as the blockchain technology developed by Bitcoin that enables processes to move forward automatically without the need for huge amounts of paperwork and human intervention. The first property in the UK – a retail unit –…
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eMoov moves with the money: £9million
Hybrid agent secures further funding from equity investment companies to enhance its technology platform.
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Latest property news
Online agent’s latest property price map… bombs
Estate agents are always publishing guides to local, regional and national property markets but online agent eMoov has produced one of the more unusual ones. The company has launched a report on where to buy a home should you wish to avoid the major impact zones that would be created by an all-out nuclear attack on the UK. The company believes the tensions between the US and North Korea stand a good chance of triggering World War Three and is concerned what this might mean for the UK property market. Rather than build a nuclear bunker, as most Swiss did during the Cold War years of the 1970s and 1980s, eMoov suggests buying a home outside the areas most likely to be bombed by the intrepid North Korean air force, which eMoov concedes has a way to go before it is able to target the UK. eMoov has launched what is calls a ‘nukemap’ as a handy guide to fall-out averse home hunters, although they will have to be rural enthusiasts; the agent believes most of the UK’s cities will be bombed including Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Newcastle, Leeds, Manchester, Hull, Nottingham, Birmingham, Cambridge, Norwich, Oxford, London, Bristol, Swansea, Southampton, Brighton,…
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Features
Will all agents be hybrid soon?
How far will you go down the digital route to hybrid estate agency? Andrea Kirkby’s research indicates seismic change is coming.
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Latest property news
OnTheMarket.com is losing traffic and branches, claims online agent
Emoov and its founder Russell Quirk have launched an extraordinary broadside against OnTheMarket.com during which Quirk suggests it is showing “signs of terminal decline” and calls for it to drop its two-portal rule. eMoov says it has looked at data from web monitoring service Hitwise that reveals how traffic to OnTheMarket.com declined during February both year-on-year and month-on-month. Visits to the website in February were down 38% versus January, although it’s part of a seasonal trend; ZPG and Rightmove’s traffic figures were also down, by 2% each. Web traffic tends to surge during January after the festive break and then drop back down again in February. eMoov also says OnTheMarket is “haemorrhaging” branches in recent weeks and that, based on its own research among the portal’s listings, they declined by “almost 200” over the past three weeks and “looks set to fall below levels seen this time last year”,” it says. “This data highlights that two years on and despite tens of millions of pounds of investment, OnTheMarket’s audience remains a small fraction of the main portals and appears to be declining as users are clearly not engaged with the brand or proposition,” says Russell Quirk (pictured, left) OnTheMarket says it…
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