Purplebricks
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Purplebricks hits back at analyst’s report that it only sells half of listed properties.
Purplebricks has rebuffed a report issued yesterday by City investment analyst Jefferies which claimed that the company only sold approximately half of all the properties it lists for sale, and advised investors to sell their shares in the company. The Jefferies report, while praising the rapid rise of Purplebricks, criticised the company for not revealing how many houses it really sells and that, sellers who were not successful using their service had already paid up-front for the service. Analysts at Jefferies also wondered what would happen if the “model stumbled” when consumers realised the service they pay for isn’t a guaranteed sale. The revelation prompted a steep decline in the company’s shares yesterday, which dropped in price by 7.5% on the AIM stock exchange during brisk trading. Single month Purplebricks says the data used by Jefferies to make the claims was based on just a single month’s trading and “does not include properties that have completed but have yet to be uploaded to the Land Registry,” the company says in a statement this morning. It also says its full-year trading remains in line with expectations. The hybrid agent also says the data used did not include properties that had exchanged,…
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Purplebricks launches in New York, expands Los Angeles operation
Purplebricks has announced to the London Stock Exchange that it is to launch in New York in Spring this year, the second area it has targeted since establishing its US arm last year. CEO Michael Bruce has also revealed that the company has this month also expanded its existing Los Angeles operation, moving into neighbouring San Diego, Sacramento and Fresno. The company says it is targeting the New York area because it has some of the fattest ‘standard’ commission rates in the US at 7%, a high average sale value of $561,000 and a very busy market – transaction rates are double that anywhere else in the States. Michael Bruce (pictured, left), who recently stepped down as UK CEO to grapple with the company’s global expansion, says: “It is a sign of confidence in the potential of the US business that we are today announcing our expansion to cover both the East and West coast, with our planned entry into the New York market. “With higher than average rates of commission and transaction volumes, New York was the natural first move on the East Coast for Purplebricks. Referring to US CEO Eric Eckardt’s (pictured, right) previous form in the New York property market including…
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Michael Bruce steps aside to let former Countrywide exec run Purplebricks UK operation
Former Countrywide divisional manager Lee Wainright has been made CEO of Purplebricks’ UK operation as the pressures of running a global empire bear down on the company’s founder and previous CEO Michael Bruce (pictured, right). Lee has been the company’s operational chief since March last year and before that enjoyed a long career at Countrywide, which he joined as a school leaver and during a 26-year stint there rose to be a Divisional Managing Director, a post he held for 12 years. During his short tenure at Purplebricks Lee (pictured, left) has overseen the growth of its operational and customer service teams, a key plank in its attempt to persuade vendors and landlords that it is a ‘proper estate agent’ as the current ‘wedding’ TV advert proclaims. This has included Lee’s direct involvement in training up some 300 Local Property Experts, the launch of its new ‘concierge’ style customer support service based in Derbyshire, and the launch of both a Post Sales Support and Conveyancing Sales team. As well as promoting Lee to CEO, Purplebricks has recruited a former British Gas call centre professional, Sophie Fox (pictured, below), to run the Purplebricks telephone lines. “We are very fortunate to have…
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Purplebricks vs allAgents – who is the real ‘rogue one’ in this one-star war?
Agent reviews website allAgents has come out fighting after Purplebricks yesterday said its experience of the site had “been very poor”. The hybrid agency went on to say that “we have never sought or had any commercial agreement with allAgents and we have no desire to work with them in the future”. But the reviews website, which has been in dispute with Purplebricks since at least September after the agency challenged whether negative reviews on its website were true or not, is not taking the criticism lying down. allAgents says it welcomes Purplebricks statement that “they don’t want to work with the UK’s largest independent review website for the property industry” because the only people allAgents wants to work with “are consumers”. “When it comes to the 300,000 reviews on our site, we don’t want to work with Purplebricks, or any agent for that matter,” says allAgents director Martin McKenzie (pictured, left). “We work for the consumer. Unlike other sites, we have no commercial agreements with agents, which is why they are a fair reflection of consumers’ experiences – good and bad. “We’ re a business of course, and agents pay us for such services as branding and property listing…
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Purplebricks Australia boss cashes in shares worth £146,000
The CEO of Purplebricks Australia has cashed in shares worth £146,000 after exercising his share options in the company, it has been revealed, just after the one-year anniversary of the country launch. Ryan Dinsdale (pictured, right), who joined Purplebricks in June 2016 following time spent at Virgin Money, Telstra and an online broker in Australia, has led the Purplebricks operation in Oz to recent success including, so far, sales totalling property worth $1 billion AUS. His team earlier this week reported revenues of £6.8 million and a gross profit of £3.6 million, and an average income per instruction of $5,282 AUD. He has also increased the number of Local Property Experts working for Purplebricks in Australia to 105, the company’s latest interim trading statement says. Austrian market share It also says that Australia has been more successful than the UK by one measure – market share – which is now higher than the UK 74% of the online market. At the same time Ryan sold his shares, Purplebricks revealed that a further 1.17 million ordinary share options have been exercised by “certain employees”, indicating that some original founding but non director-level staff at the company have also cashed in shares…
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allAgents reinstates ‘majority’ of negative Purplebricks reviews after negotiations break down
Reviews website allAgents has reinstated Purplebricks’ reviews on its site including “the majority” of the negative ones and half of the questionable ‘five-star’ postings that sparked a two-month spat between the two organisations. allAgents says it has not reposted half of the ‘five star’ reviews after the people who originally wrote them failed to respond to checks by the reviews website’s team, and that it will in future only be accepting reviews from vendors who have sold their homes via Purplebricks or “withdrawn from the agreement with Purplebricks”. “We will continue not to allow duplicate postings by the same client for the same transaction. This will give a more complete picture of Purplebricks’ service, as customers may feel very different at the end of the process, than they do at the pre-sales stage,” says allAgents’ Martin McKenzie. This would appear to end the three-month long dispute between Purplebricks and allAgents, which saw the hybrid agent threaten legal action over 26 negative reviews posted on the agent reviews site. Negative reviews Purplebricks claimed the negative reviews were fake and, after allAgents investigated each one, only three could not be verified as real. A further five were also taken down by allAgents…
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allAgents to make ‘significant’ announcement about Purplebricks next week
Estate agent reviews website allAgents.com has said it is to make a ‘major announcement’ next week about its battle with Purplebricks and has confirmed that talks with the online agent have broken down. Martin McKenzie (pictured, below), Director of Business Development at Glasgow-based allAgents.co.uk, says the talks fell apart because “our negotiations with Purplebricks broke down as we feel their business ethics are not in line with our own”. “However, there’s been a lot going on behind the scenes and we plan to make a major announcement early next week. We will not be bullied into submission by them, or anyone else.” The row between the two sides kicked off in September when allAgents.co.uk refused to take down reviews that Purplebricks considered to be ‘fake’ or ‘could not be justified’, according to Purplebricks founder Michael Bruce (pictured, right). But allAgents.com refused to back down despite repeated threats from the online agent if the reviews were not removed and, after replacing the Purplebricks account page on its site with a message decrying the company’s actions, began a crowdfunding campaign to raise £50,000 legal fighting fund. It reached £45,380 before its closing date. Peace talks allAgents said at the time that it would…
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Online agent YOPA investigated again by advertising watchdog
Online agent YOPA has been investigated by the advertising watchdog just two weeks after being reported for potentially misleading claims on its website. This time the London-based sales and lettings agency was reported by a member of the public for a mailshot sent to them that advertised its sales service but, they claimed, wasn’t clearly marked as marketing material. After being approached by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), YOPA has now promised not to repeat the mailshot and that future advertising of this kind would be clearly marked as such in future. YOPA has been reported five times since it started two years ago including three times this year and once in 2016 and 2015 all of which have been informally resolved, although this hasn’t deterred investors – both Savills and LSL have put substantial amounts of money into the firm. Online agents Among the online agents, Emoov leads the pack for complaints to the ASA with ten referred to the watchdog so far including two serious complaints, one of which was upheld and another upheld in part, and eight informally resolved cases. Not far behind it is Purplebricks, which has had been referred to the ASA nine times including…
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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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