HouseSimple has claimed it is now ranked in second place among online agents.
According to CEO Alex Gosling, his site is behind Purplebricks but “well ahead of eMoov” in terms of new listings.
Gosling also claimed that HouseSimple is catching up with Purplebricks fast “and doing so more much more cost-efficiently” by not burning through a large marketing budget.
Gosling said that HouseSimple is now up to 120 listings a week “which will soon equate to 500 listings per month”.
He said: “This is double that of any of eMoov, Tepilo and House Network, who are all around 60 per week still.”
The new listings that HouseSimple asked us to look at are all Zoopla’s.
At the weekend, Purplebricks’ 371 compared with HouseSimple’s 92.
Tepilo had 64, eMoov 58, House Network 46 and easyProperty 30.
HouseSimple, which recently attracted £5m of investment from Carphone warehouse founder Sir Charles Dunstone, is currently offering a week’s free trial followed by a weekly pay-as-you-go tariff of £9.
We put the claim that HouseSimple is now in second place and “well ahead of eMoov” in the online stakes to eMoov.
Founder Russell Quirk said: “HouseSimple had a good week last week, but that was only last week.
“It’s a bit silly to put out a statement claiming greatness based on a one-week snapshot just because, for the first time, it shows they had a better week.
“It’s akin to overtaking Lewis Hamilton in a Sainsbury’s car park and declaring you have won the F1 world championship.”
Quirk added that eMoov is currently averaging 340 listings a month. He said that even if HouseSimple’s claim to be listing 120 a week proved consistent, it would result in a monthly run rate of 520 – “certainly not double our monthly figure”.
Quirk said: “A free one-week trial may not be a particularly sustainable approach for HouseSimple, which is ironic given their criticism of Purplebricks’ marketing spend and their own cost-efficiency.
“I might send Alex Gosling a calculator as a FREE gift.”
In July, Quirk placed HouseSimple fourth in a ranking of online agents based on current inventory and weekly run rate.
Comments (6)
I’m beginning to wonder if property eye are running some kind of advertising campaign for Mr Quirk.. Please can you start to publish some actual news on the industry and forget about this daydream believer!?
EHenderson confirms being 2nd is the NEW 1st!
Has someone not told HouseSimple that Countrywide, Hunters, LSL etc etc are all online agents too. In fact 99.999% of agents appar to be online these days.
Total stock is a much better measure of market strength while new instructions is only valuable if its part of a trend. Some cursory research shows PB to be way ahead in this metric with Emoov second.
A better headline would have been “Quirk compares himself to racing legend Hamilton.”
Too early to say if he’s driving a 2009 McLaren or a 2015 Mercedes though!
Stock numbers can be manipulated. Isn’t Quirk well known for keeping sold stock listed for as long as he can to distort his market position? You get a better idea of how they’re doing looking at monthly listings.
Just checked Zoopla’s numbers and it seems Tepilo have overtaken Emoov aswell! Hopefully this means the end of the smug comments from Russell Quirk.