Strike, the hybrid agency, formerly Housesimple, is the fastest growing estate agency brand in the UK, new figures reveal.
The company has shared fresh data from property consultancy TwentyCi that shows Strike ranked second in the UK by market share – new instructions – in January, and is the fastest growing year-on-year – up 49.1%.
Sam Mitchell, chief executive officer at Strike, said: “We are delighted that Strike’s ‘sell your home for free proposition’ has captured the public’s imagination.
“It is astonishing that within a few weeks of our nationwide launch we are the second largest in the UK. Great to see that year-on-year we are also, by some way, the fastest growing agent. I’m very proud of what our team has achieved already in 2022.”
The data – see below – has been redacted at the request of TwentyCi.
“They have asked that we redact the other agent names but it’s interesting that three of the top ten are online agents,” Mitchell added.
Although three online agents, Purplebricks, Yopa and Strike, feature on the top ten list, it is important to point out that market share of hybrid and online agents dropped to just 6.7% last year, down from 8% in 2020.
Property Industry Eye approached TwentyCi and requested consent to publish an unredacted version of the data but our request was denied.
A spokesperson for TwentyCi told EYE: “The analysis and the associated table are not for external publication but are for internal use only by the organisation that commissions the analysis.”
However, the spokesperson did confirm that Strike is “the fastest growing based on analysis by TwentyCi”.
But while the year-on-year data for January 2021 has been redacted, the annual data for Q3 2021 was made public, and will enable you to draw broad comparisons.
Major funding will enable Strike to ‘scale up’ and expand nationwide
Comments (16)
“Property Industry Eye approached TwentyCi and requested consent to publish an unredacted version of the data but our request was denied.”
No doubt they got too much grief in November – when all the other companies queried their so-called “Market Share” figure – to fall for the same one again…
From The Times, today:
Strike makes around half to two thirds of its revenues from the potential buyers: each house typically is viewed by ten to eleven of them. “All of those people are prospective customers for any services that are to do with house-moving, be that conveyancing, mortgage advice or surveys, removals, electricity, broadband. We’ve got relationships with gyms, online supermarkets.”
So – according to that statement, they have more to potentially gain selling a viewer a shopping delivery than selling the viewer their vendor’s home.
THAT should fill homeowners all over the nation with confidence… (insert ‘rolling eyes’ emoji here…)
In November they were jumping up and down crowing that they had made a 65% improvement on the previous year. Now – similar crowing about a 49% increase YoY.
So let’s be perfectly clear here… their “improvement” is going backwards.
And they think that’s good, somehow.
But, if a company can lose £5 million in a year (cumulative losses £55 million to date on paper – and eleven months of further trading to be added to – or is it subtracted from when it’s haemorrhaging money – those figures) and think it’s a good result, I guess they will be (male chicken)-a-hoop about what is, in reality, a 24.6% reduction in “improvement” in the space of one three months.
I LOVE FIGURES, me!
Not a lot of point if you’re also top of the loss making chart. How much have PB lost over the years? At some point whoever is setting fire to their cash with these outfits will give up.
is it a race to see who can be the biggest loss maker in the industry?
Oh – I think that race is well and truly run and won already!
Strike is so successful selling houses for free it has accumulated losses of £55m to date in its annual accounts – what is the point ?
Legal, having worked the N/NW London markets for many years I have met some of the biggest BS’ers in property, but this almost takes the cake and the cherry on top. £55m losses is not a successful business and the head honcho (same name as a character in EastEnders) kind of fits the bill for just another BS’er onboard this particular gravy train.
BTW, if anyone knows where the train is stopping let me I’d love to get on board, I’ve been looking for a gravy train for years.
Another day, another business celebrating their ‘market share’ again.
. There are many better measures of success.
Yes with cost of living rising so much I have decided to pay my staff in market share instead so much easier than using money/profit.
It’s not free!
Agree Gangsta Agent.
According to their valuers and their own website they sell at least 6 out of 10 of their clients a Marketing Boost at £499 and a significant number more take a hosted viewing pack at £699. Total fee for those clients on listing is just under £1,200.
Of course lets not also forget the huge referral fees they take on a conveyance. Purchase a property at £250,000 – referral fee is £575 + VAT.
This model will continue to develop in this market where sales are easy to come by but will go the same way as PB when things get tougher which inevitably they always do.
But FREE it definitley is not!
The referral fee of £575 + VAT is astonishing – as an example for a £250k purchase of a freehold property as a 1st time buyer with a mortgage the legal fees quoted are £985 + VAT so after deducting the referral fee paid to Strike the lawyers work for £410 + VAT. Why do they cheapen themselves to this ridiculous level ? There is no way the lawyers can offer a 1st class service for peanuts.
Shame we don’t get to see the redacted data. Bit pointless without that sadly.
You are seeing the redacted data!
In truth, there is nothing to see that is important anyway.
Market share is data that is manipulated by whoever compiles it to look favourably on who has asked them to compile it. You can tweak the areas in which you take your sample untill you get the result you require. Most estate agents branches operate in a very small geographical area often in a sub sector of a postcode, you can only draw a true comparison if you compare like for like but to do so is near impossible on a grand scale. If you ask lots of small agents they will tell you they are market leaders in the areas in which they operate, that is estate agency how it should be, local.
true market share comparison can only be undertaken by measuring