A new league table of online agents shows just how decisively Purplebricks has pulled away from the pack.
The table, put together by SellingUp, ranks 35 online agents.
It did so by assessing how many properties each had available for sale on Zoopla this week.
The rankings show Purplebricks in first place with 6,582 properties; next is eMoov (1,392), followed by HouseSimple (1,280) and Sarah Beeny’s Tepilo with 926.
Behind these are House Network (897) and easyProperty (891).
There is then a drop to Sell Simple (428), Hatched (375), Open House (254), and YOPA (238).
The rankings, which suggest one real front-runner, followed by five challengers, and then a large progressive drop, do not include any properties under offer.
SellingUp says: “The reason we are not counting properties that are under offer is that some estate agencies – notably Purplebricks themselves – appear to remove a high proportion of properties from Zoopla when they go under offer.
“This way, by only counting listings that are completely available, we have a more level playing field when ranking the online agents by size.
“Some online estate agents may claim that they are very quick at getting properties to ‘under offer’ and therefore they could appear lower on this table than they would otherwise be.
“In the interests of clarity, the only material difference in the rank of the major big six agents if ‘under offer’ properties were included would be that 4 and 5 would swap places, making House Network larger than Tepilo.”
If the ranking is correct, then star fund manager Neil Woodford will be delighted after pumping millions into owning almost a one-third stake in the company that has yet to be profitable.
However, some online agents’ backers may be disappointed.
Carphone Warehouse entrepreneur Charles Dunstone has thrown £5m at HouseSimple, but it significantly lags Purplebricks in the stakes.
Estates Direct’s chairman is Steve Smith, co-founder of Poundland. According to the ranking, it has only 100 properties for sale.
http://www.sellingup.com/purplebricks-competitors-league-table
Comments (45)
I’ll bet the self proclaimed ‘perpetual mouthpiece of the industry’* is well pleased that his ‘huff and puff’ & considerable marketing spend has yielded an impressive 9.4% of the online agent market share.
*Source: Twitter bio of @emoovceo
Make that a MAXIMUM 9.4% market share – there are squillions of ‘online’ agents which don’t make the list – and not all can afford Zoopla’s exorbitant fees in any case.
The Quirkster’s feathers can’t be fluffed up by this news…
…but as long as he doesn’t get anyone to read it to him he’ll be blissfully ignorant.
How many estate agents are actually employed by online agents? not many I guess!
Re their boards/presence I posted exactly the same on another thread. Purplebricks have a lot of noticeable presence in my midlands town; many are sold. They are succeeding in traction but they will still need to work out how to make this model profitable.
I go back to the issue of us essentially paying a fortune to rm/z giving pb etc the only outlet they have to succeed. This is reducing slightly our market share, but more noticeable our ability to charge a proper fee.
Where ever I go I see Purple Bricks “for sale” boards and certainly more then any other on-line only company so even if the stats are rigged I would still think that PB are ahead of their on-line brothers and just goes to show the power of TV advertising if you can afford it and is taking the public in like sheep.
As P-Daddy commented, time is soon to run out for PB when people come to their senses and realise that the true net profit of this company is likely to be well in the red while the directors soak up their big salary. Their own figures on expenditure is not covered by the income and the share price has to be one of the biggest con’s? Too many players supporting them cannot afford to let it now fail and many will continue to prop it up or be replaced by more sheep.
Traditional Estate Agency is now under threat by disruptive IT (surprised this didn’t happen a decade or so ago). Plan ahead ladies and gentleman ….. it is not likely to go away but can be beaten if you show you have the expertise and service that the public will be confident in. Take your eye off the ball and that ball will gather momentum as media has a history of transforming people minds/attitudes know matter how much you can bleat.
I Spoke to a lady today who said she is using PB because she was let down by independent agents in the past. She lives in a house that can be advertised by ‘good’ (not great) local agents for less than PB but she went with PB purely as she has lost her trust in Independents. this is not a good sign for the industry.
We are our own worst enemy in this game. Soon these online agents will start to lose the public confidence and it will all balance out in the end.
P-Daddy –
All the noteworthy online agents are on both Rightmove and Zoopla so it wouldn’t make a difference, but Zoopla was used because they make it much easier to count publicly available property listings than Rightmove does. No great mystery to that. If we were doing a comparison of the entire property market then of course we would have to work from Rightmove data, but that wasn’t the scope.
87% of stats are made up on the spot….Statistics and more lies.
I am intrigued why Zoopla was used for comparison and not Rightmove where there is the largest market/data supply of houses for sale!
Anyway, time will tell and fairly soon Purplebricks will need to report to the City and all will be revealed. They do have momentum, there is a scary valuation for the company (guess that’s what happens when you let estate agents value something for you), but they have achieved traction for one so young. It has tapped into the online mentality and there will be a few that will survive and thrive, the others will die. It is the same with any High Street, when there is an easy market, the herd follows until times get tough. The revenue they achieve is not only the charge for selling, but the legal and viewing bolt on services. I am intrigued about cash flow; not all their clients are paying on instruction, but using the 10 month option to pay up even though it ties them to the legal package. If clients are unhappy, all they have to do is threaten to put negative feedback on the rating sites….watch how a call center reacts to that….! Their model only works with a churn of sales and new instructions, with a slow down in the market, rest assured the local property experts won’t like the area and distances they have to cover for a few 100’s of £….especially when self employed!! I personally think the online model is here to stay but in drastically reduced numbers, but the greatest challenge in the future is if the portals like the look of the online model and become agents themselves…all in the name of shareholder returns! The city analysts are already putting it out there including one that covers this sector Jefferies
A few £100 to sell your house = Loads sign up
Do a shocking job = Not many get sold
Relist on a regular basis = inflated figures
Purple Bricks in profit = not any time soon
So bottom line.
Exactly how much of the property market are the onliners taking or realistically predicted to take in 2016.
1% ? 5% ?
I still think this online business model is a flash in the pan with a limited life. I do think however we are going to see a real sea change business model in the next 10 years but it’s going to be based on the mobile phone (bit like Uber taxi but for property selling and letting).
Currently sitting at below 3% and falling. Investors, take note.
Still 3% of the total UK property market.
Next question: How many years has it taken this business model to get 3% market share ?
Then
How much have they spent collectively in marketing and advertising to get 3% market share ?
Any guesses anyone ?
It has taken 18 years to get to 2.7%. I first heard a Radio 4 program about listing ‘agents’ taking money and doing nothing thereafter in 1998. By the ‘antagonising autumn’ of 2013 when there was a whole bunch of confident reckonings on EAT they had 2%.
Since then the model has pillaged every penny it can get it hands on to add an extra 5400 listings- they are buying business for an obscene amount of other people’s money per listing.
18 months ago Trevor Mealham calculated they were spending about £32,000,000 to advertise about 16,000 properties between them but charging <£1000. £2000 spend to bring in less than half that? genius!
18 years ago on radio 4 !
So what the average age of an investment banker ?
Bet they were under 10 years of age 18 years ago when this was first broadcast !
There are apps these day that allow ‘sheep investors’ to track people like Woodford. This isn’t an exercise in disrupting estate agency it is about investment; because Woodford is in by default so are a whole bunch of people who are simply clicking yes or accept on an app.
Mind you that is more ethical than some people who have boasted about raiding kiddy’s savings for investment.
Call me a cynic, but if you remove a property as soon as it goes ‘under offer’, it is classed within Zoopla statistics as an ‘exchange’ for that agent*. Of course, this doesn’t do that agents published statistics any harm.
Furthermore, if we take a notional fall though rate of 33% (taken from the moment a memorandum of sale is issued), all of those properties will then be ‘re-listed’ as ‘new-in’ if the sale collapses. Once again, to the outside observer/ consumer/ investor, this will appear that the agent concerned is listing far more new instructions than in fact they are. Such a practice would also have the effect of protecting the agents listing to ‘sstc’ ratio.
Entirely separately from this story and any of the firms mentioned within it, Henry Pryor is currently championing money laundering problems within estate agency which deserves the spotlight he is shining on it. Money laundering is a process of converting dodgy money into seemingly legitimate money. What Rightmove and Zoopla are permitting by mis-reporting properties that are re-listed as ‘new-in’ or ‘sold’ etc. is that the statistics gained within their ‘pro’ and ‘plus’ tools is, I would argue, effectively laundering some agents dodgy data.
*Running a suitable comparables report on Zoopla and Rightmove will verify this
Completely agree that concealing the origin of illegally obtained funds that in turn is used to fund terrorism, human trafficking and drug smuggling is the same as Rightmove and Zoopla not putting too much effort into agents removing and adding houses for sale on their sites.
Money laundering has been going on since time immemorial by those who wished to make their income appear as if from a respectable source and not from something immoral or illegal. Very popular in the days of prohibition and still used by petty and major criminals alike as well as the extreme end of the scale you mentioned.
Similarly, agents who deliberately mislead consumers by falsifying property data and then use that data to mislead investors or customers that they are achieving better results than they in fact are, use the published statistical data facilitated by the portals to make that companies statistics look legitimate and accurate (laundered if you will).
If you are happy to overlook criminal acts* that in London alone have resulted in a several Billion pound distortion of the property market, then I am very happy that you are (I hope), as you describe yourself, an ‘Outsider’ to the property industry I care so passionately about.
*Breaches of CPR and The Fraud Act etc.
“If the ranking is correct, then star fund manager Neil Woodford will be delighted after pumping millions into owning almost a one-third stake in the company that has yet to be profitable”
If the ranking table is correct I would have thought he would be passing a 9x4x3 baked clay cuboid; the “huge”, predicted, £25,000,000 by May 2016 won’t be coming from 6600 current listings. Even at £200 profit per listing, by the time all the vertical opportunities have been exploited, they would need to be registering about 10500 properties each month with an indicator volume of about 32000 portal listings.
Despite all that is going on with their listings 6600 current listings is by my reckoning about 20% of the volume required to deliver on promises/predications/claims made.
Off his meds again
Another considered and quality post from Eamonn, well done!
Robert – can you clarify your point suggesting that 10500 monthly listings would translate into 32,000 portal listings? Is this because of fall throughs being re-listed, juggling, dark arts????
Thanks
One of the Bruces claimed they would deliver £25,000,000 by May 2016 ( one of the first stories on EYE 2 years ago) I guessed at best the would make £200 profit from each listing by the time they have paid fixed costs etc so they require 125000 genuine, fee paying listings each year; (10500/month) As properties have a 13 week life cycle at any one time they should be showing about 32,000 listings on portals.
There will be a break point where they move from loss, to break even, to profit At the point where they were supposed to be delivering “huge” profits they are apparently getting close to break even.
Ok – thanks for clarifying. Yes, I generally assume a 3 month life cycle for listings visibility (assuming the agent isn’t leaving FS stuff showing indefinitely, even after it’s withdrawn) however, in the case of the listing data being discussed here, it’s only counting FS listings, so perhaps an 8 week lifecycle might be more applicable seeing as the UO stuff isn’t being taken into consideration? If so, perhaps 20k listings might be more appropriate. Either way, they’re still a long way off at a time when interest in online agency should be at its peak.
Given Chris Wood’s analyse suggests online agent listings are falling, 6500 monthly FS listings may represent their peak penetration, in which case it won’t be long until questions are asked.
The Zoopla link to our listings can be found here; http://www.zoopla.co.uk/find-agents/?company_name=EweMove%20Sales%20and%20Lettings&radius=0&search_source=find-agents
You can also use it to verify other agents listings
HEADS GONE
Hi Ros,
I was incensed when I read the report that you’ve reported on today because it is completely flawed when it comes to our numbers.
I suspect the data is collected from Zoopla – where it is easy to track agents listing using their ‘Search Agents’ tab.
We have a central account and 18 branch accounts. I seems that they have only taken into account the central account.
This is very lazy data collection carried out by someone who has no idea how multiple branches works – Perhaps because we’re not ‘online’ but have real people working in local areas.
You can see our recent stats from Zoopla’s email themselves [Zoopla report attached to emai]
As of 3rd May we had 899 sales and 117 lets, live.
That’s 1,016 listings taking into account all the branches.
You can see all our 19 zoopla accounts and listings by > CLICKING HERE
That puts us 4th in the table.
But even that does not tell the whole story.
We listed 353 properties alone last month representing 51% year on year growth.
Can you update your article to reflect the inaccuracy –
I’ve got no problem in you asking them to clarify their data because this is misleading and inaccurate and libelous and I’ll be taking it up with them direct.
Many thanks,
Glenn Ackroyd
Head Shepherd
EweMove Sales and Lettings
Kind of loses the impact signing it off as ‘Head Shepherd’
I’ve heard of a head shepherd losing his flock, but never his stock.
To be fair to Glenn, he comes across well on here and his comments are far more reasoned than other onliners.
Brilliant!
Bless him, little lamb. Maybe the data is flawed for all the listings so he won’t go up the ranks quite as he thinks.
Morning Glenn
As stated in the email I’ve just sent you, the reason for this discrepancy is that we have deliberately only counted the main Ewe Move office that this morning has 209 for sale (not including under offer).
This is because your other branches are provincial in their coverage and are positioned as local branches – and this was a table for consumers to compare ‘nationwide’ online style agencies – competitors to Purplebricks. But I’ll take another look at this and am happy to make that clear within the blog piece’s notes. I should say that whether or not you agree with the way it’s counted it’s in no way ‘libellous’. I’ll make a note in the blog today to clarify as per your request.
Oliver
SellingUp
This not correct at all.
All of our branches operate the SAME WAY.
One model with a local person on the ground and the same service for the customer.
We have local people in every town. There is no differentiation between ‘Online’ and ‘Local Branch’ offering.
The 19 branches are not provincial offices. It is simply a way Zoopla have allowed us to market about properties based on over 1,000 listings.The more listings we have, the more online branches they allow us to use.
So either include our aggregate data in totality, or not at all – Because we operate with local people in local areas – Not a diluted and cheap online offering.
Our offering is about service – hence we charge the same as ‘traditional agents’ – And we’re No. 1 in the UK on Trustpilot based on reviews.
A note in your blog is not correct as people will look at the source table. Correct the number as stated or remove us if we don’t fit the cheap online model you’re trying to compare.
Glenn, thanks for the clarification on your business model and how it relates to Zoopla. I’ll take another look at the Ewe Move listing today to see if a revision to the table is warranted.
Update – having spoken at length to Glenn, the Head Shepherd at Ewe Move, this morning, he has explained his company’s structure, pricing model etc. in detail. I had to agree, despite appearances, there are significant differences between how Ewe Move operates and the general perception of what an online agent is.
Therefore, we have removed Ewe Move from the league table on SellingUp and have suggested PIE updates the story to reflect that. Hope that clears it up.
It still begs the question – what kind of estate agent is Ewe Move? This is what is so fascinating about this sector, so many models are emerging and time will tell which ones the public embrace or reject.
You need to have the same conversation with all the others then as your data for them will be flawed. Only fair.
Typhoon –
I don’t think so. Ewe Move is a special case, due to the very alternative nature of its model – neither traditional set up, nor online agent, and was always borderline for inclusion.
In which case why do you want to be included in a table that purely measures “online” agents. If you’re saying that you’re not an online agent and don’t offer a “cheap” service, surely you would want to be distanced from the online only crowd?
Correct Shaun.
And that’s why when asked by Oliver whether I’d rather be included or not with updated figures, I confirmed not.
Oliver kindly agreed to update the table, which he’s now done.
We don’t like our personal service based proposition to be compared to pay up front, cheap online service.
And how many properties are on the market UK wide?
More important question,this time next year how many on line agents will be left. Looks like the shephard of the north may be put out to grass soon!
Seems odd that Express Estate Agency is missing, they had over 4000 listings last time I visited? Big number to of been missed considering that would of made them bigger than no 2, 3 and 4 combined.
Morning OnlineEA.
This came up last time we did a league table on online agents. We don’t count Express because while they may be web marketing driven and nationwide they don’t appear (to us anyway) to fit the common model of an online agent. e.g. they don’t publish a fixed fee, they don’t allow vendors to sign up independently online to buy the service, plus they specifically distance themselves from the label ‘online agent’ on their website. I totally accept that it’s a fine line though and we may well revise our definition in the future.
Oliver
SellingUp
We don’t count Express because… they don’t appear (to us anyway) to fit the common model of an online agent
From to their Facebook page:
“The official Facebook page for Express Estate Agency – the UK’s largest online estate agent”
With respect, whatever you might think, believe or decide, I would suggest that your opinion is trumped in this instance.
PeeBee-
I suggest you also check their page: http://www.expressestateagency.co.uk/what-makes-us-different/
…in which they are at pains to differentiate themselves from online estate agents, a whole table is devoted to that point. Whoever does their social media taglines may want to check that one.
Besides, a company calling itself an OEA would be only one factor in how we would attempt to categorise the company. What they actually look like in terms of pricing, set-up etc. is very important too.
Of course routinely “portal juggling” stock could artificially inflate this figure and mislead the average consumer when making a transactional decision…