Tepilo, Emoov and online letting agent Urban have announced their merger – the first consolidation in the online sector, and designed to leapfrog Yopa to take second place in the sector behind Purplebricks.
The new entity has secured a total of £15m in new funding, with “airtime for equity” investment from Channel 4 heralding a major TV advertising campaign.
The new merged business will be headed by Emoov’s Russell Quirk, with the management team including Urban’s Adam Male.
Other members of the management team include Frank McGlade and Lucy Milne, formerly of Just Eat, Guy Halfhead who was with Bookatable, and Ivan Ramirez, formerly of Groupon.
However, there is no mention of Nick Charnock, the CEO of Tepilo. Nor is it clear whether the three brands will continue to operate.
Urban, the least well-known of the trio to have merged, this afternoon had 28 sales properties listed on Rightmove and 316 rental homes. Emoov had 2,206 and Tepilo, 2,253 – in both cases, sales properties only.
Quirk said of the deal: “This is a pivotal move in the fast-growing digital sales and lettings sector and is designed to place us as one of the absolute winners in the space.
“We’ve joined together two of the best known fixed fee estate agency businesses to make the ‘Number Two’ contender, along with one of the UK’s most established online lettings companies, and a war-chest of £15m in new cash and media power.
“Strategically, this is a powerful combination and with the very best senior team to deliver on our plan to improve and further dominate the estate agency industry.”
TV presenter Sarah Beeny, who founded Tepilo in 2009, said: “This deal creates a truly powerful partnership of property experts that are focused upon doing right by the customer and improving the home buying, selling and rental process for all.
“I’m truly delighted with the combination of the Emoov, Tepilo and Urban families to form such a valuable proposition.”
Vinay Solanki, head of Channel 4’s Commercial Growth Fund, said: “This is an exciting time for Emoov and presents a great opportunity for Channel 4 to get involved with disrupting a fast-moving and competitive sector in digital transition.
“We’re looking forward to working with Emoov on their first TV campaign as a newly merged major industry player to help the brand achieve the reach and awareness that only TV advertising has proven to effectively deliver at scale.”
Comments (48)
Bit late to the party, but way I read it is three failing business looking to consolidate to avoid further loses.
I think this is a master class in mutual kidology; disruptors and disrupted in some weird, ironic and desperate relationship.
Telly advertising was great when there were 2 commercial stations pumping out regular programs at regular times when the audience profile could be understood. I don’t know how many channels are available for me to watch. When and if ever there’s a second part to a program I’ve watched and enjoyed I have no idea when to find part 2. I will record a series to a hard drive and never find time to watch it, I will catch up or on demand something I’m keen to watch but the reality is I don’t watch the telly like I used to and nor do many others.
Channel 4 has a diverse audience. I can’t think of much beyond Countdown that’s watched by an audience that might own their own home. I am even struggling to think of what else is on Channel 4. In short telly advertising has been more disrupted by the internet and digital than agency has. If you’re finding it harder and harder to sell advertising and there’s an opportunity to invest and become your own client at minimal cash cost that fills the gaps between the programs it makes sense to take it and create a positive headline.
One hundred million pound merger! great headline but there simply isn’t any substance to the number or the offering. If £4.55 million plus another £9 million wasn’t enough to make Emoov viable in its own right and then all the celebrity and advertising of Tepilo wasn’t enough how suddenly is the trust and history and #local reputation essential for agency suddenly going to appear?
There might be £15m card rate worth of advertising but who will see it? Who will do something about it and how many homes will it sell?
Good luck to everyone involved. I am not knocking the attempt but I seriously can’t see this having any better chance of success than the stuff that’s been tried already. This probably works nostalgically and egotistically on paper but I’m simply not convinced TV advertising is a cost effective and measurable way to reach a fragmented and unpredictable house selling audience.
Mr May.
“Channel 4 has a diverse audience.”
It makes perfect sense.
Channel 4 was the original TV “disrupter”, wasn’t it!
It launched in 1982 – in the days when a satellite dish strapped to a council semi looked like something that Jodrell Bank would claim as having been TWOCd.
It set out to be ‘controversial’; airing content that the other channels steered clear of – usually, it has to be said, for the right reasons…
Admittedly there are a few gems in the pile – Countdown being one. They brought Cheers to the UK screen… Frasier… Friends – and a host of US shows that may well otherwise never have been aired.
But where they finally grasped the UK audience’s attention was when, in 1986, they dared to screen the “Red Warning Triangle” films – a set of ’18’-rated Euro flicks that were supposed to set the audience’s pulses racing.
They wouldn’t be noticed on CBeebies today – but 32 years ago they probably raised a few EYEbrows… among other things.
Now if they were on today… THAT audience would be the perfect target for eMoTepiBan.
Every t0sser in the UK would be tuned in.
>I am not knocking the attempt but I seriously can’t see this having any better chance of success than the stuff that’s been tried already. This probably works nostalgically and egotistically on paper but I’m simply not convinced TV advertising is a cost effective and measurable way to reach a fragmented and unpredictable house selling audience.
There is little doubt that PurpleBricks’ TV advertising is what has moved the company into profit in the UK. All the spin-off publicity provided by bitter traditional Estate Agents has probably helped too with the public thinking PurpleBricks must be good if traditional agents are so worried about them.
Whether Chanel 4 advertising will work is another question. PurpleBricks certainly have a commanding lead in terms of brand recognition. Will Chanel 4 ads. be enough to take some market share from them? Then more generally, how long will it take the online sector to take more market share from traditional agents? These are important questions, especially for the online agents who don’t have a UK profit and will need investors to keep them going if making a loss.
Oh look – the silencing order must have been lifted.
dom-boy to follow? – or is he still on the naughty step for calling into question the sanity/intelligence of PB customers?
Yet again a comment of no relevance to the topic of the article from PeeBee, Attacking people trying to contribute.
>the silencing order must have been lifted
You clearly continue to live in a world of conspiracy theories driven by speculation 🙂
“Yet again a comment of no relevance to the topic of the article from PeeBee, Attacking people trying to contribute.”
Contribute? Debateable.
Relevance to the topic of the article? Tenuous at best – bordering on ‘not of the same planet’.
Hijack for #purple_purposes? Checkbox ticked and confirmed.
Your agenda gave you away, ducky – it waddled into the room quacking the news of your impending arrival.
My bet is that dom-boy is struggling to keep from posting just to prove me wrong.
That being the case – I’ll post the same comment every day!
It’s a war not a battle, fizz bang is great in the moment, useless in the scheme of things, PB and the others are not good at what we do, demonstrably locally and anecdotally everywhere, not good doesn’t work long term for any business regardless of name awareness, funding or individual champions
Sorry to be blunt but why have you attempted to make this about Purplebricks?
The lunacy of spending far more than any agent in history to attract loss leader instructions through guess work telly advertising is an unsustainable luxury.
The ‘stupid ads’ as they’re becoming known as are burning cash at a massive rate and despite what you want everyone to believe simply are not attracting a sustainable market share that would stand on it’s own two feet if the adverts were withdrawn.
Competition is healthy for business.
But Misleading the public, stating FSBO sites are Proper Estate Agents is not.
Purple Bricks, Yopa, House Simple, Tepillo, Emoove and Easy Property etc in my opinion are Glorified “FOR SALE BY OWNER SITES”
The comments on these articles about online agencies are ridiculous. It’s their business to run their business. If you run a traditional agency I’d suggest you should spend more time running that and less time commenting on your competition. As we all know it’s the first thing a bad agent does…
And I’d suggest if this commentary offends you, then go elsewhere, the internet is a big place, posters here spend plenty of time running their businesses, this lounge is downtime and culturally we have a lot in common aka not having anything in common with field agent / call center / pay up front, it may be an echo chamber but it’s real and I’m not sure what’s real at all with onliners, on the ground day to day they’re garbage
So Urban have 28 properties listed on rightmove and this makes them ‘players’ in the market? Am I missing something? We’ve listed that many properties this month alone and I don’t consider us to be players in any marketplace. Every day I see more and more victims falling foul of the ‘online’ propaganda only to lose their stake and pay a proper agent to get them out of the mess they’re in, I’ve been to one today, already dropped the price £20k with PB and it needs to come down a further £20k before they have a prayer of selling it! Never mind though so long at the LPE (you what) got his commission, that’s all that matters!
Sunbeam, check out their letting listings.
They do quite nicely on that front.
Lol, using the Countdown vowel and consonant game play, best I can come up with is Molotov E-pie
Chancers the lot of em
Polite Emoov – it would require less effort for the graphics designer and transform the image of the brand !
‘Formerly of Just Eat, Bookatable and Groupon’.
Glad they can bring their expert knowledge of Estate Agency to the table.
Probably know where to go for a nice social though 😉
THIS IS A REALLY SMART MOVE. It’s just what happens. Sainsburys and Asda are merging, and look at how big they’re going to be.
Sarah Beeny, who founded Tepilo in 2009, said: “This deal creates a truly powerful partnership of property experts that are focused upon doing right by the customer and improving the home buying, selling and rental process for all.
Yea right Sarah, of course you have the best wishes of people at heart….nothing to do with you making more wadges of money, on top of what you get from your privileged position of having earned shed loads of money from TV programs.
How about the many small local family supporting businesses you are trying to help destroy so you can make more money for yourself?
Why £100million, what makes them worth anything at all. They make no money, and have very little in the way of assets, or is it ok just to make this stuff up.
I presume the value is 15 million for a 15% stake.
As for Emoovs first TV campaign hasn’t that already started and as we know Emoov are disgusting, or disgruntled or disturbed or something like that.
“…and further dominate the estate agency industry”
When did the initial domination happen then? Did I miss somethng?
The end of the beginning or the beginning of the end ?
So once again an equity investor joins in, offering this time free advertising, in order to help destroy many small family supporting businesses throughout the country to line the pockets further of already very wealthy people.
How about free advertising on national TV for us small independents to level the playing field? You can have a share of our equity in return.
Where is the competition and markets authority in all of this….I thought allowing subsidised fees/deliberate losses to destroy competition was illegal in their eyes?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cemTusT9ufs
Whilst there are still well run and profitable small EA businesses making money and adding market share that is very tough case to make stick. I always think reading these comments on online agents that people are worried by them because they have reason to be.
What I mean by that is if I have a decent little agency business and don’t have to try very hard to make the profit I want to and now all of a sudden something has come along that might burst my bubble I am going to angry about it. If however I graft as hard as I can and know my business is bullet proof then I probably just ignore the pin and carry on business as usual without feeling the need to comment publicly in an angry cornered animal way.
Just my thoughts no offence intended.
ARC
I am not worried for just myself, I am worried for every small independent out there who is presently struggling with historicly low stock levels, falling fees and unfair competition from other companies that can afford to make huge losses in order to buy market share. Add on top of this costs that cannot be reduced by economy of scale and it is a perfect storm.
Estimates put this at 3 to 4,000 independent agents that are currently in this situation. Many of these actually charge a similar average fee to the Call Centre Listers, offer a No Sale No Fee basis and deliver a much higher level of service.
But this is all lost when you are ‘heavily out marketed’ to vendors by a free offering that you have no option of utilising, allied to misleading propaganda.
So what do you do for a living to support your family….and I’ll paint a picture that will bring it home to you personally?
By the way…….no business is bulletproof!
If the cap fits……….
If the cap fits……….
But you don’t know that it does do you?…you just made wide sweeping statements based on your own pejudices without knowing what the truth is for individual businesses.
Like I say, let us know what you do to earn a living and support your family, and I’ll show you a picture that illustrates it more succinctly for you.
Sorry AV my comments were as normal meant somewhat tongue in cheek and not aimed at you specifically more of general observation about some of the comments that appear when this is the subject matter.
Apology accepted….no one can ever accuse me of not working as hard as I can….not sure I can remember having had a single full day off this year so far…..
I don’t earn a fortune either, but I would earn a fairer living (for my level of experience , expertise and the hours I work) if I hadn’t lost eight properties so far this year to Call Centre Listers… properties that I would normally have expected to win (because of the roads and areas they are in) if I had been called out to appraise them.
These are listed by companies that provide a much lower level of service and charge an up front fee, whether they sell or not, as opposed to my ‘No Sale No Fee’ that is often less than £500 more.
But of course I don’t get free TV advertising, which might have got me in the door for those eight appraisals!
I get it AV it was not aimed at you but I do think there are a lot of people complaining in the like I described.
Arc you sound like the idealistic trainer type,or perhaps don’t live in the real world of commerce, nor the coal face of estate agency.
Here it is simply.
There are 100 properties being listed in a month in town a. Town A has 10 estate agents. These estate agents are largely well run with good staff. Each agent gets 10 properties a month. Fees being charged average 1.5%
1 year later the market has dropped and there are only 70 properties coming to market.The amount the public will now pay has dropped to 1.3%. Each agent now lists 7 properties and receive a lower fee for these 7.
However there are now heavily funded internet listers on the local radio and television, and they have taken 10 of these properties each month.
Each agent now lists only 6 properties. Guess what’s happened to their businesses. You can dress it up all you want but the fact is the figures don’t lie and good business are suffering. In this business of selling we don’t have the ability to gain sales where houses are not coming to market. I have seen it in my own town, unprecedented EA closures.
Feel sorry for the investors. Have you ever met or tried conversing with G.Halfhead?
Nuff’ said.
Cannot wait to see TepMoov !
2 firms who can’t make it alone so have gone with each other as a last ditch attempt for some sort of pay out.
Not sure why Beeny is piping up, she was booted off the Tepilo board by the Daily Express boys!
This is a scam, they can’t keep on fooling the investors.
This needs to be investigated by the Financial Conduct Authority or whoever should regulate these types of scams.
Investment is always a gamble and will continue to be one. If you choose not to invest it wisely then more fool the individual concerned let’s not get too health and safety please.
“This is a pivotal move in the fast-growing digital sales and lettings sector” as we were running out of money
I read the article and thought I was going to get away with having to read the word “disruption” but then it turned up in the penultimate paragraph! 🙁
£15m war-chest? PB’s ***** that in a year of lie-telling and exaggerated claims. Race to bottom starts in 3-2-1 . . .
Oddly, the two firms are an anagram of ‘Opt to move lie’
oooh! Oooh! I just realised this mentions Purplebricks. Come on dom & ducky, you haven’t posted on PIE for ages, thank goodness. Time to come and spout some more drivel.
See below.
Ah yes. Pops up with all the predictability of a sunrise but not nearly so welcome.
Default Dead. Only a matter of time.
Default Dead. Only a matter of time.
Must be shome misteak Ed. Your headline £100m merger – shouldn’t that read £one pound? Mind you £15m should pay a few salaries for a while……
So, the money-burning bonfire just got a whole lot bigger. And will still end in dismal failure.