A new property portal that promises to cut agents out of the home buying and selling process completely is readying itself to launch.
Agent Not Needed (ANN) is the brainchild of founders Anthony Pentland and co-founder Petros Georgiou.
Claiming that their new concept “has the estate agents worried”, it will charge would-be sellers a flat fee of £500 to list their property themselves.
The fee will only be chargeable once the sale of the property has completed.
The platform, from which agents are excluded, allows individuals to communicate, book viewings, and make offers directly online and claims to offer a “mass audience” of potential buyers.
Currently, the site is not fully live and is showcasing only “demo homes”.
However, Pentland who comes from an e-commerce background and previously founded an online clothing retailer called outfitinabox.com, said the site is due to be “reskinned” in about ten days’ time (see below for how it will look once this has happened) and will then have real properties to list.
Meanwhile, the business is being funded by the sale of crytocurrency utility tokens called ANNs.
Each token is selling at £0.025 each and can be used to pay listing fees, purchase additional features, advertise a business, or sell to other users on the platform.
ANN has created 450 million tokens, of which 400 million are for sale.
The portal aims to raise as much as £10m via the sale, of which 30% would be devoted to marketing, 20% to product development, 20% to funding its team, 15% to sales, 10% to advisors and 5% to “admin”.
Pentland said he hoped the tokens would be sold to investors and those who wished to advertise on the site.
The tokens can be traded on a marketplace on ANN’s website but the fee payable by the consumer will remain static at £500.
The business is also building a back-end auction system that allows companies in the insurance and mortgage companies to bid for leads and pay with ANN tokens.
Pentland added: “From an end user’s point of view they won’t even know about the blockchain crypto side as that’s not our message or main features of the platform.
“We sell your house and charge you 2,000 ANN tokens but you don’t hold any, so you can just pay with you bank card and in the background 50% of the revenue comes to the business and 50% goes to buy ANN tokens from the community.
“But you won’t see any of this happening, it’s all done behind the scenes.
Asked if consumers would be able to get their heads around the concept of a blockchain property portal, he said: “90% won’t, but our mission is to build a marketplace and tools that allows individuals to deal directly without an agent, with the view to use blockchain and smart contracts to speed up the rest of the process over the next five years.
“Just like how all the tech magic that happens when you post a picture on social media, the users doesn’t care whats going on behind the scenes as long as their picture is uploaded.”
Comments (52)
Blockchain and smart contracts will happen. I’m not sure this idea is the correct one but good luck. Will be interesting to see what happens with Blockchain in our industry
Great Idea – What can possibly go wrong?
So much kick back from property agents here.
Well, blockchain technology is here to stay and it would disrupt so many traditional industries and institutions.
There were so many skeptics when the internet was quite young. A great economist even predicted that the internet was unsustainable!!!!
IThe next 5-10 years would be quite interesting indeed.
sondada93
My understanding of blockchain is that it is a way of keeping records and details of transactions which are timestamped, linked and protected by encryption, so that the chain of events can not be retrospectively altered.
How do you see this process supposedly revolutionising what is genererally a few simple transactions that just need to be managed well, mainly by people dealling with the high levels of emotion involved?
I am interested to know?
So am I.
AgentV
From ANN – https://www.agentnotneeded.com/selling/help
After you (the Seller) have accepted the buyer’s offer, our platform will pass the agreed sale to a third party solicitor and conveyor who will complete the transaction. They will be in touch with you directly. Eventually in the future, our platform will complete this process automatically in house without the need for solicitors or conveyors.
So they don’t even try and find out who the buyers solicitors are? Like to see the MOS…hmmm
As mentioned in the article the site is running in demo mode, v1.1 will show the whole process and we have a conveyancer partner in place, we will provide continued update through our dashboard of the whole sales process from start to finish.
With regards to blockchain, we plan to move the whole process to the blockchain for both sales and letting systems. but thats a 5 year plan, But for now our mission is to prove that you can sell a house directly without an agent or one of the big portals. We will support the customers every step of the way.
We are a marketplace, when a buyer makes an offer we have a system that asks them if they need a conveyancer and all the info is passed down the process giving the end customer total visibility of where they are in the process.
We are not just some listing website we are building a platform. Never under estimate the underdog!
But for now our mission is to prove that you can sell a house directly without an agent or one of the big portals.
Of course you can do that…its called For Sale By Owner ( FSBO)…there are systems that already support it. I believe the largest Call Centre Lister originally designed their website around it.
But take a little tip from a long in the tooth highly experienced agent…do you believe you could sell a fine work of art as well as Christies auction house and achieve the same kind of sale price? Even if you do believe you can, most of the public won’t….and until such a day as they start believing this kind of thing you will be throwing a lot of money down the drain.
Now if you have money and really want to be profitably successful, you should look at software that works with agents not against them !!!
BSOS23PC
Yes, everybody in the industry i have spoken to has said, build the software for the agents, so they can bypass rightmove etc etc etc.
Im 100% confident that i can make this work, i have a very strong background in building platforms and social media marketing, i would go as far to say I am one of the best in the UK.
Im not against agents, plenty of people will still want to use them, just like plenty of people wont use purple bricks and prefer high street. But there is a niche out there who are tech savvy and once i prove this model works it will grow.
Nearly every online agent right now charges upfront if they sell or not, you still have to do your own viewings or pay extra £300 etc so your basically paying them £500-1000 to put your house on right move.
Any how do not expect you to agree with me, but we building it anyway and im sure we have another conversation in 12 months one of us will be right.
If you are one of the best in the UK at building platforms and social media marketing why don’t you consider working with the industry by joining us at the Ideas Network.(in@agentv.co.uk)
You might find that even with building your platform you could work with Agents……and I know exactly how.
You would stand a much greater chance of success and actually making some money (or a lot of it) rather than the much greater risk of going it completely alone.
BLOCKCHAIN
BSOS23PC
I see a lot negative comments here from the industry and the funny thing is, this business wouldn’t exists if i didn’t have a meeting Jan 2017 with “industry experts” who were also in complete denial that software will disrupt this industry in the next 5 years.
Yes i 100% agree estate agents will always be needed but we are just about giving the customer a choice. We have no intention of getting a sale and then leaving it to legals to carry all the weight.
We plan to build a platform that uses software and tech to make it much easier for everyone in the process and to make it much easier for the customer to see whats happening throughout the process.
We are not stupid, we know there will have to be human involvement and we will provide support.
Regardless of your thoughts blockchain and machine learning is going to change this industry, not today but very soon.
I see a lot negative comments here from the industry and the funny thing is, this business wouldn’t exists if i didn’t have a meeting Jan 2017 with “industry experts” who were also in complete denial that software will disrupt this industry in the next 5 years.
Regardless of your thoughts blockchain and machine learning is going to change this industry, not today but very soon.
But what makes you think the independent Full Service Agent supporting sector aren’t already working on software including artificial intelligence and machine learning?
It will all be incorporated in ‘Collective Adaptive Intelligent Marketing’
I hope so, and anything that makes the process faster and less stressful for the customer is a good thing for the whole industry. I am certainley not tarring everyone with the same brush. But you must also admit the process is slow and broken and can be improved alot.
agentnotneeded20
In my experience it is not broken…it might be slow, but only because of the amount of time getting a mortgage and conveyancing takes….so is your software going to improve those processes?
It is an agents role to make it as least stressful as possible for the owner/vendor!
In our agency, we have already successfully streamlined everything else, and am working on the software to constantly improve the processes.
Yes we plan to work throughout the process in phases over 5 years. Happy that you are embracing tech and im sure you still be around in many years to come.
Thank you, and so will be many of the independent Full Service Agents that use the software in development from us and other people, hopefully!!!
if that is the case thats a good thing for everybody involved.
Another case of industry outsiders’ naivety to the fact that it is impossible to commoditise the personal service necessary to successfully sell or let someone’s home.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/when-vcs-learn-cant-disrupt-resi-property-charles-wright/
Due to a harrowing addiction and negligent abuse in business, it is with great sorrow that I must confirm the untimely death of the symbolism of the colour purple.
RIP Purple.
Come on it is my daughters favourite colour.
My bad. Someones daughter liking the colour purple appears to be a compelling reason enough to invest in purple Proptech these days.
thats the reason i choose purple, lighten up
So – if your daughter’s favourite colour was a peculiar shade of babysh!t beige, you’d have it splattered all over your webpage.
Yeah, right you would!
While I dislike on-line agents as much as the next self-respecting real agent for the reasons that get articulated on here daily, it is the case that on-line agents, as we currently define them, are both here to stay and will increase their market share over time. So what? They’re only ever going to attract the cheapskates and the stupid which as any real agent knows to their cost prove the 80/20 rule time and again.
Also, while its highly enjoyable using the vocal on-liners for a bit of daily sport, the real agents amongst us ought to be concentrating on keeping our own act the best in can be versus our real competitors. As we all know, ‘Winter is Coming’ and there’s going to be huge consolidation in the industry – survival of the fittest and all that!
Another hair brained idea to make money. Clearly they have no idea of what is involved in the selling and buying process, if they do its a con for £500 to advertise only and chains will be an absolute nightmare to manage, falls through will escalate and agents and conveyancers will be bearing the brunt of it until its run its course with their clients realising it wasn’t that good an idea after all. It also raises that Money Laundering issue … I’ll be very surprised if the powers that be are not watching with interest.
Its time that so called “passive intermediares” are licenced. Times are changing for them not to be.
Raise £10m ??
£500 per sale payable on completion!
Investors are going to be so excited!
And the big point here, which seems to be lost,is that the majority of people are not capable of selling their own home!
Thats why we are building software and tools to assist them, we do all the marketing the buyer will only have to do the viewings and negotiate offers online. We will provide support like any other marketplace and yes it will not be for everyone but there will be a niche who will be happy to use it, thats enough for us.
Must be good news. Sale by owner is a great source of leads for traditional agents in the USA
Are they disrupters?
Undoubtedly. And game changers surely?
Let me see. What’s that old saying? Ah yes. ‘A fool and their cryptocurrency are easily parted.’
Definitely, you should not be worried 🙂
Online estate agents market share:
2016: 5%
2017: 12%
2018: 20% ( expected)
No need to worry! 🙂
12%??? Where on earth did you get that from. It is widely acknowledged from both tradition and online/hybrid/call centre/pay anyway agents that the non traditional share is only around 6% and although has grown is not growing anywhere near as fast as some had projected.
Besides as has been pointed out further up, there is a huge difference between a private selling website and a more engaging online/hybrid/whatever estate agent.
I would stake a fairly large amoung that as we push through into 2020 the non traditional market share will be at 10-12% at best where it will remain. Most of this is made up by one company who if the UK authorities follow the example of the Australian cousins, will have significant issues over this next year or so.
ArthurHouse02
Do a search for this eejit’s previous posts – a wind-up merchant who struggles to put a sentence of any sort together, never mind a sensible one. Just as long as it contains copious anti-traditional Agency ********, it’s ‘job done’ it seems.
Here’s a typical – and extremely pertinent – example from last July:
“Today, High Street estate agents vs Online agents ratio is around 75-25% … Check it! By 2019 it will be 50-50! Take it or leave it….but a fact is a fact.”
To re-post my comment to the uber-numpty, also from July last year (repeated in November) –
Are you having to really try hard to play thick-as-mince?I’d dread to think that it could actually come so naturally…
Yes, it’s only 6% when you count only 4-5 big Online estate agents like PB/Yopa/HS/HN/EP etc.
Please add
Small Online estate agents.
High street agent those now charging a fixed fee. e.g. £995/£1200/£1800 ( No more % game 🙂 )
I am working on this report which I will publish around the end of this month.
At this moment I have figures of 11.2% market share by Online estate agents but I am still missing some small online agents.
Wait for the report 🙂
We can’t wait!
How are you defining “online estate agents”?
I think he means Call Centre Listers
As the market continues to get harder and becomes more challenging over the next few years, whilst tens of thousands of new homes are unnecessarily built, I predict a decline in the market share of the so called “on-line only” as advertising alone won’t sell your property a proper estate agent will and for a decent fee!
How’s that for “commisery!!”
As is normally the case with these sorts of websites and companies, they miss the point. There may be vendors out looking to save a few quid, but buyers are often very mistrusting about people selling privately, and like it or not, buyers also need a hand when buying a property. There is a reason the vast majority of private sales fall through, because there is no one to hold anyones hand through the sales and anyone having the misguided idea that “The solicitor will do everything”…is quite frankly mad.
Hi please read our whitepaper, we do not plan to just get an offer then leave the process. We plan to use software to help make it easier and less stressful in every aspect of the process.
Website looks nice but I’m certainly not worried.
There is no reason to be worried, this is purely about choice and in the UK at the moment the big portals don’t allow individuals the option to list them selfs. so we will provide another option.
Is it April 1st already?
Cloud cuckoo land!
I will reply to this in 1 year 😉
Why the 20 after the ann bit?
When you sign up it automatically adds it to your username unless you edit your profile and remove it.
What’s the difference betweeen this and Pb .. emoov etc ? Agent not needed implies they are not visiting the property and will have no human interaction . They are doing an ICO which I recently heard described as “intelligence con offering” . Worthless coins created and swapped for actual money .
Danny, the difference is enormous. ANN are the opposite of an agent in that they don’t visit the property, don’t assist with viewings, won’t negotiate offers or vet buyers and don’t carry out all important sales progression. Because they’re not agents they’re not on the portals either and resort only to social media for buyer introductions.
The Emoov model is as an agency with a fixed fee on completion or upfront, with a hands on ‘after listing’ and sales progression process which is therefore differentiated from other ‘pure online’ models
So agents have to provide documents to not mislead buyers but you can sell your house on a d.i.y model like this?. Shows how stupid our regulators and gov’t. Really are in real world matters.