An online estate agent whose 19-year-old managing director founded the business just last year is targeting sales of over £1bn worth of homes by the end of this year.
Doorsteps, which was founded by Akshay Ruparelia while he was still in school, now lays claim to being the 14th largest estate agent in the UK, up from 41st in July last year.
That’s based on its figure of having listed 2,400 properties across the country.
EYE has asked for further clarification on this figure and how Doorsteps arrived at it.
The business charges a £99 fee upfront and currently has 1,492 properties listed for sale nationally on Rightmove, including those sold STC.
That fee does not include professional photos, a floorplan or a full property description – those are included in its £199 package.
It has an average score of 9.7/10 on Trustpilot and 4.85/5 on allAgents.
Last August the company raised £550,000 from almost 500 investors in a crowdfunding exercise.
In its pitch, it said it was worth £12m.
Ruparelia told EYE it was listing between ten and 12 new properties each working day.
He said: “We are steadily expanding our team of Doorsteps Property Experts and aim to have about 50 in place by the end of next month.
“Month on month, with the exception of December, the business is growing at 20-30%.
“We aim to have sold over £1bn worth of homes by the end of this year.”
Comments (33)
If purple bricks are selling on average £1000 fee per listing and making a loss this guy hasn’t got a chance.
He has his rightmove fees but let’s think about where his leads come from ?
It must be cost per click which the online industry is saying £200 plus per lead not all of those will convert.
Does he have staff to progress the sale ?
Rent business rates etc I think he’d be lucky to take salary and dividends of 50k which I’m sure at that age he’d be happy with but not scaleable.
Sorry kid
Quoted sold figures should always be a percentage of the original listing price (when first put on the market by that agent)….anything else is just garbage!
Above, I made reference to the doorsteps.co.uk website claim that
“The average Doorsteps customer… Gets 99% of their asking price”
Thing is, of their 1582 listings on Zoopla (up 7 in the last hour or so, it seems…), around 360 of them – 22.8% – have been reduced in price by more than one percent. Of those, over 100 have been reduced by seven percent or more – the biggest ‘reduction’ being a whopping knock-down of 50% (albeit a shared-ownership jobby).
One way or another – “99% of their asking price” 100% CAN’T mean what the property was originally listed at…
Not sure how to work out the “average customer” on my calculator, but his statement is correct in the following scenario too.
Valued at £349,500
reduced to £325,000
reduced to £299,950
reduced to £239,950
reduced to £189,500
“marketing break”
new to market at £116,500
reduced to £100,000
SOLD at £99,000 = 99% of asking price
Happy days.
I’m about to make the exact same point to the ASA about Settled who make the same ridiculous claim on their website, along with a statemet saying you can choose your completion date in advance.
Shysters, the lot of ’em.
Completely agree …..quoted sold figures should always be a percentage of the original listing price (when first put on the market by that agent)….anything else is just garbage!
I admire what he wants to do, however I see it at a different angle.
The public’s perception of Estate Agents is low already, unfortunately (in my opinion) a large number of online listers employ people without the experience or Knowledge required therefore lowering general standards of knowledge and standards on a general basis.
How does the old saying go, ‘Always employ a teenager – while they still know everything’. TBF, this one must have done something right – admire his drive and determination.
2,400 divided between the 50 ‘Doorsteps Property Experts’ means about 48 properties each. So how much do they earn per property? £25 would give them a whopping £1,200 a year. Do they follow through each sale to completion for that, as well as setting up the listing in the first place?
This yet again raises some massive issues with the relationship that traditional agents have with Rightmove.
Their rules for entry are so skewed now that that they are failing in their duty of care to their core clients.
If we all start listing private sellers at £99 or whatever we will sign the death warrant of a profession that supports Rightmove.
Good luck young man, but more importantly, good luck to the rest too; I think everyone will need luck this year to get through it.
Well done to this young man, I am an admirer of hard-working young people trying to attempt to provide an alternative to the marketplace. I may question his motive on the service levels that his company will be able to offer going forward but good luck. What I would always say is that there any many agents with several years experience that will never exchange £1 Billion worth of properties in their career. Let’s give this entrepreneur some credit for his endeavors.
Sir/Madam/prefer-not-to-disclose
I guess it’s a case of ‘Welcome to Eye’. Unless, that is, you’re an existing/previous poster who has adopted a new posting name. Otherwise, you’re a newby.
Trouble with newbys of course is that when they appear as you have, heaping praise on a certain individual… company… product… widget or other type of snake-oil, you get a lot of cynical old bu99ers like me wondering what has motivated you to visit a site for the first time and post said heaped praise.
But let’s give you the benefit of the doubt and pretend that you will be a regular contributor to a wide range of articles on the site – in which case I’m sure you will fit in well as long as you don’t mind your sanity or motives being constantly called into question.
There – that out of the way – let’s strike up a debate shall we? You state:
“What I would always say is that there any many agents with several years experience that will never exchange £1 Billion worth of properties in their career.”
Today, the Agent has 1575 listings on Zoopla, at an average listed price of £262167.
Assuming, then, that they will sell each property at an average price of £259545*, they will need to exchange on 3853 properties to hit that £1bn ‘target’.
(*based upon their website statement that “The average Doorsteps customer… Gets 99% of their asking price”)
There are many Agents who will not, as you state, sell that number of properties in their ‘industry lifetime’.
But, then – neither will Mr Ruperelia. He doesn’t “sell” anything other than spin. He doesn’t have a “career” in Estate Agency.
And I very much doubt he will be in any way associated with the industry in ten years. Probably not even in five.
When I came into the industry, the average selling price in my area was under £20000. At that figure, I would have had to sell in excess of fifty thousand homes to qualify as a “£bn seller”. Today – someone starting off today working in London would need to sell just over 2000 properties to claim the title – that is only achieved by selling as many homes/tins of beans/cars/diamonds as the price paid dictates.
I reckon that’s enough for your welcoming message. Look forward to your response. So, as is said,
#To_You…
A quick mental tot up of commission fees earned in my career ( both personally and that of offices managed by me including my own ) I reckon I’m just shy of nine million at the time of writing, how you square that with a sum for gross sales value of the houses concerned is beyond me as fees and prices have fluctuated to the degree that they have, that’s about half of what Ian wants out of OTM, I’m obviously a mug 🙁
For some reason, which is completely unknown to me, Rightmove & Zoopla bend over backwards (or forwards depending on your point of view) to offer cheap deals to the call centre agents.
It is clearly not a fair playing field, compared to the costs faced by smaller local Full Service agents.
Either they firmly believe the online brigade are unable to sustain a big enough market share for long enough to tip the balance or they have an ulterior motive to get their grubby mitts on a bigger slice of your property industry pie.
One of the problems with all of this is that as a small local agent it costs us about £300 a property to list on the portals….so how does that work for doorsteps?
What are the portal costs for them?
Akshay I salute you
He’s not an estate agent. Clever lad exploiting the sector. Not sure about Rightmove though as I understand it’s £800 pm per 50 properties.
It’s as if the portals have some kind of strange death wish!
By allowing Call Centre Listers a much cheaper per property proposition, they are encouraging, in the long term, a much lower level of revenue….how does that help them and keep their shareholders happy?
“…how does that help them and keep their shareholders happy?”
“That” doesn’t, AV…
…WE do!
Perhaps it is about time we all formed a union for Full Service Estate Agents!
Free to join.
If he sells £1bn at average property prices that is about 4100 properties. If he achieves 50% success that is 8200 instructions at £99 Is around £810k. If they have the full package maybe he makes another £50 after paying the floor plan and photographer provider. So he could bring in revenue of £1.2m. How can you value it at 10 times turnover? It is easy to dream, but be realistic for goodness sake. Alternatively call LSL they paid £20m for a share of some wet dream!!
Within your early morning quick maths lesson you forgot to add some fundamental figures… “referral fees”
This young lad is brilliant!
Rely on referral fees at your peril.
No different to the majority of the industry…
Not for much longer, you can’t charge people less for selling then get it back by the solicitor charging them more. Smoke and mirror charging is the only way onliners can make money and ZERO saving to clients in some cases.
Referral fees have not been banned and in my opinion very unlikely to be in the near future. Although I do believe they should be completely transparent to the consumer. The fees for additional services have been around much longer than any if not all of the hybrid/online model agents have been trading. It’s not something new, just something they have simply continued to offer. The service providers will pretty much always favour the agents providing volume of potential business. Technology making the process easier and more convenient across the board of all property services will then in return allow even greater volume. As it stands the company above will easily reach its target valuation. After all many consumers are making their own decisions to use these models as they simply do not believe the traditional method offers the same benefits that it used to and now have an alternative method. No customers, no business.
Surely a “national” righmove package is going to take a huge chunk of those funds….
I don’t wish to dampen youthful enthusiasm but I will guarantee Mr Ruparelia one thing about his business. Even if he does indeed sell his £1bn worth of property he will not make a single penny of profit.
Be fair, you don’t need cloth to make a coat for the king! I can think of a couple of similar agencies that don’t make any profit. If this fella has learned there’s easy money to be made from muggins why shouldn’t he have a slice of the action?
£550,000 raised at 19! Brilliant!
It’s not about the fancy headlines and the bronzed tan lines but the health of the bottom line.
Why are rightmove even allowing them to list houses? Can’t be valuing and taking photos for £99 . Not worth it.