All-out war was declared on high street agents last night amid incredible scenes at the easyProperty launch.
The theatrical event, which attempted to consign agents to history, was attended by hundreds at the Natural History Museum’s famed “dinosaurs” hall.
Amidst all the hype, easyProperty “brand partner” Sir Stelios Haji-Ionnou suggested he was pleased that yesterday’s launch started with just 67 properties in London live on the site – although this was later clarified to over 200.
This was at odds with founder Robert Ellice’s declaration that over 3,300 landlords had registered, representing over 16,000 properties.
Stelios also made reference – without mentioning the name – to Agents’ Mutuals’ OnTheMarket. He said: “I think there is probably room for two property portals. But is there room for a third one? I don’t know. Is this the next stage of disruption?”
The launch began with easyProperty’s marketing guru Chris Welch saying: “This is the end of the estate agency world as we know it.”
He said agents had failed to evolve, and that easyProperty would disrupt a “bloated” market.
Welch, a landlord, also revealed that one of his own properties had been a test on the site. After failing to let through a high street agent, it had swiftly let through easyProperty.
Victoria Whitlock, a landlord who writes a property column in the London Evening Standard’s Homes and Property supplement – supported by high street agents – rubbished agents.
She said the market was in “desperate need of change”.
Apparently pointing the finger at Foxtons, she said landlords did not want to pay for “bottles of fancy water”. Instead, she said, they wanted to cut out the middle man.
In his speech, Ellice said that the market “is in transition, no doubt about it. Traditional agents have failed to evolve.”
He said that the only evolution over several years had been mobile phones, commenting: “Pretty poor, really.”
He said that all that had happened was that mobile phones had got smaller, while Rightmove and Zoopla had entered the market, but he also suggested that listing on both was all that agents seemed to do.
He insisted that consumers want “pure, unadulterated choice” and that easyProperty would give them this with zero upfront costs and zero commission – while letting them choose to pay for the services they did want.
He said that investors were keen, with a crowdfunding campaign to raise £1m having concluded yesterday, with six days to go.
His presentation ended with an extraordinary TV-style advert for easyProperty, showing a firm called Winktons not doing much for its money. It depicted lazy agents sitting around on large posteriors.
NAEA managing director Mark Hayward, who was at last night’s event, said he found it jaw-dropping.
He said: “I had expected a much higher level of properties – not just 67 in London. So, I am very underwhelmed.
“There is a lot of hard cash behind this venture, but I cannot see this as innovative.
“I also found it strange that there seems to be complete dependence on Rightmove and Zoopla, and yet easyProperty doesn’t seem to think much of them.”
Meanwhile, in an email yesterday from Crowdcube announcing that the £1m target has been hit, interested parties are told: “easyProperty is considering all options regarding an exit with an IPO the current preferred future route, although they would consider a trade sale. Their approximate time for an IPO is around two years subject to market conditions.”
* A spokesperson for easyProperty has asked us to clarify that, while Sir Stelios referred only to 67 properties in London, in fact, by the time of the launch party, there were over 200 properties listed all told.
Comments (60)
Gotta say I LOOOOVE the search facility on the easyPlop site. I searched for a property in my town – nothing. The search said "Sorry, no properties were found matching your criteria. Please try searching a wider area." Okay – apart from the fact that it doesn't GIVE YOU the opportunity of 'widening your search', I did a catch-all and searched instead for "United Kingdom". The result… for those of you that aren't already giggling into your coffees… I refer you back two sentences for the answer rather than repeat myself! I didn't bother with a GLOBAL search… ;o)
"""" easyProperty would give them this with zero upfront costs and zero commission – while letting them choose to pay for the services they did want.""""
Pretty much what I (and probably all my competitors to a lesser degree) have been giving our clients for many years now. At the end of the day there is a cost attached to attracting new tenants. You can choose to take that cost on yourself or ask someone else to. How you want to break it down after that depends on how **** you are about the pennies in your pocket. People like Victoria would do well to take off the blinkers and understand that for my clients its actually cheaper to engage in my services than it is to run a news advert for a fortnight. Its not rocket science.
Isn't there already a letting agency called Easy Properties in London, or something similar? Could be a case of passing off!
This is just an insult, Il be honest I'm Pro online and Pro traditional at the same time, you got to be living in cuckoo land if you think that this is going to work. There's sites like purple bricks, emoov, express, house network who are seemingly doing ok but this whole thing is ugly, I'm sorry it just is. Site is awful layout is not user friendly, there are spelling errors and phrases that just don't read right. This site is not better than a small independent lad round the corner who has just set up with a £1000 budget. Lets look at it Mr Easy : You claim to beat every body by offering the lowest fess – yet there is absolutely nothing called service in the offering. Quick calculation , If you use Chris Easy then this is what its going to cost you ( and don't give me the bull about it being menu based because most people will use the packages you're selling) £59.99 for Portal Listing (2months but if you read the website it reads completely wrong implies its for 1 month then they contact you) and a hefty £149 for a description and floor plan, £39 for a board and 49 if the tenant wants a reference( by the way that £49 is charged to the landlord the tenant also gets charged £50 or £100 i assume as a couple) Then of course which landlord is going to opt for referencing and not the tenancy agreement. So lets add it up : Assuming a couple of young people are renting the property :
My rough reckoning is it is going to COST £321.98 or thereabouts per landlord and then they will make £100.00 from the tenant. Thats like 50% of the first months rent in my neck of the woods from an average property rented at £650 pm. monthly. Not all of us live in areas where the rents are £2000 a month. And at no point do you get any service its all do it yourself. I really cannot fathom the valuation and certainly don't see this orange thing changing estate agency. I strongly believe the online model is going to take a bigger share of the market over the next couple of years. It has do but to show all the bravado and imply that agents will be extinct etc…. and that easy jet sorry easy property will take over the world is utter Bol$%^ks . The investors are off their heads as well. OH AND FINALLY HES NOT INCLUDED AN EPC IN ALL THIS who pays for that or are easy exempt >???? stop being so insulting Chris. Good luck to all online ad traditional agents we have nothing to worry about easy come easy go
correction @seasoned we charge tenants £49.99 inc vat per applicant NOT landlords. Our current services are being rolled out and are but a small part of our proposition.
All said – If easyProperty dont carve out a market share which raises the 2% market share online business models currently have, then the will have more egg on their face than a man standing in a battery farm gas explosion. Remember the number of properties they claimed to have has part of their pitch to investors? If that were a property it could be construed as a Misdescription. Good luck easyProperty – this business is hard – very hard. There is no magic bullet as you may discover.
It's great to see more choice available but I think if you are going put down other people/businesses you have to make sure your own house is in order. Clearly easyProperty have not read the The Energy Performance of Buildings (England and Wales) Regulations 2012 and before they say 'nothing to do with me' well oh yes it is and it is 'material information' and portals like easyProperty need to clean up their act. Page 55 of the Guidance for lettings professionals on consumer protection law may be one place to start. Now where did I put that number for the CMA?
P.S. The DSS was replaced by the DWP in 2001 – do keep up!
I think what worries me about most internet only offerings and Easy in particular is that its a "dumbing" down of the service offered by many professional agents and misleading delivered under the banner of the same for less. The point here is that I could cut out lots of the parts of the process and perhaps offer my services for less, but the fact is that letting a property comes with huge legal burdens and quite rightly so. I will turn away instructions that I don't believe are good quality properties or landlords, I won't continue with the let of properties that are not set up properly and I won't put in tenants who are not thoroughly checked and referenced. I am sure most of the estate agents who subscribe to this site and thereby are interested enough by their industry to read these articles, probably do similar. So here comes Easy, they believe the focus should be attracting the tenant and everything else is unnecessary, to them I say when I first got into lettings all those years ago from a sales background, thats how I saw it. It was easy, no pun intended, I could get properties on, I could let them but wow did I learn the hard way, it took me a long time to unscramble some of those messes I got into, simply, because doing deals in lettings is not enough. Its not responsible and I don't think I am exaggerating when I say it could cost lives. I understand why tenants moan about the fees, and perhaps in some cases they are high, but believe me when the horror stories of this sort of offering come to light they will put the charges involved into perspective. Giving landlords the option to cut out parts of the process borders criminal negligence in my mind and I can't applaud it as the industry evolving because frankly it isn't, its just firms trying to make a two year killing from a run on selling shares in their business and doing so at the expense of the consumer.
I agree with you strongly, RA, and have had similar experience – if I could put 10 likes on this, I would!
I seem to recall a similar fuss (minus an evening visit to a museum) being made by a facebook proposition a few years ago. They were going to be better than RM, as I recall. I think they too secured large amounts of funding from somewhere. Now, what were they called…..???
I heard that the date match app social media company "tinder" were developing a property app that works in a similar way to Tinder…that will be interesting.
Notable absence of easychris today. Probably getting over his hangover 😉 The comments above remind me of the time a certain Mr Ratner slagged off (using equally inappropriate language) one of his OWN products at a meeting of shareholders. Shortly after the company imploded. I have a sneaking suspicion that with the kind of slagging off of OTHER people's products that took place amongst the dinosaurs last night, we may see a repeat. Not a great advertisement, not a great start, and a godawful website. Hubris is nearly always followed by Nemesis. I mentioned an IPO yesterday as the way forward for easyproperty and reference is made today to an IPO being part of the company's plans. If so, they are going to have to be mighty careful about what they say and not repeat the no doubt unwitting wool-over-the-eyes deception foisted on the readers of PIE in the month leading up to this all this hype & tripe.
marcH – there is a 'noticeable absence of easyChris' quite regularly I'm afraid. He doesn't like difficult questions, apparently… ;o)
Pretend you're looking for a property to rent and go take a look at the listings of easy prop over on RM. It's so bad I doubt I'd give them a second glance – even if they did have a property I might be interested in!
Not trying to stifle the debate but please would everyone avoid using language that could be considered defamatory or libelous. Accusing someone of being a liar is serious and should be avoided – whatever the provocation.
Fair do's, Nick – it also reflects badly on the site. However, I would respectfully suggest you're a couple of weeks too late in respect of raising the 'liar' issue…
Could I suggest that the eye look seriously at individuals who seem to use the forum (often in conjunction with a press release) to promote their company launch / service ,often by quoting incorrect, over inflated figures which could prove very misleading to would be investors, customers, and general public-at best it's unethical. If an individual makes claims about his/her company(whilst trying to promote it's merits) that turn out to be false then consideration should be given as to whether the Eye want to continue to let them post as it would be apparent that their use of the forum is not debate or discussion, but only over inflated free company promotion, to the detriment of the industry that the Eye strives to serve.
Please can you advise the best way to deal with someone who just makes stuff up and posts it on the internet as unsubstantiated fact? Someone who then claims they have every right not to reply to reasonable questioning. What is the modern word for someone whose interpretation of the truth is somewhat distorted and inconsistent?
No-one needs to call Chris Welch a liar or defame his character in any way. His posts and disregard for site etiquette along with the shameful, crass and transparently cliché launch along with the language and sentiment is now a written in stone, quotable examples of what their prospective customers are dealing with. There is a customer base for this sort of internet listing service, most Agents will be actually very pleased someone is offering them the sort of service they deserve and are willing to pay for.
Anyone fancy joining me in reporting easyproperty to the authorities for non compliance. Easyproperty are discriminating against certain groups by allowing their site to exclude certain groups of tenants. Easyproperty also appear to be non compliant by not stating, in their portal adverts the epc readings. Having done a quick add up, the potential fines from the authorities would be more than their income so far.I don't mind completion but non compliance? No company is above the law.
Completion should read competition
That pre-supposes that the authorities would actually do anything about it.
Don't forget the cookie policy. I have also found quite a few attack vectors in their website too that could lead to data exploitation which carries heavy fines from the ICO if I recall correctly.
Maybe I'm one of the dinosaurs but I still don't see what easyproperty says is the way forward. Vendors have always had the opportunity to do it themselves and buy in what services they want but the fact remains that most don't want to; they want someone else to do if for them in the same way that they want a baker to bake their bread; a mechanic to fix their car; a dentist to pull their teeth; a shop to buy their clothes in.
Yes, there will be a percentage of people out there who want to save money by doing it themselves but enough to warrant the sort of investment these people have taken? I don't think so. Their offering just isn't different enough to make people jump from traditional to not quite traditional especially when there isn't a significant saving by time you've added up the cost of all the bells and whistles.
Its a bit like the chairman of Scunthorpe FC doing a press conference saying his team will win the premiership in a few years, followed by the champions league the following year, even though they only have a handful of points in the 4th division at present…He would then go on to say that he will be able to do it because the likes of Man Utd, Barcelona,Real Madrid, Chelsea…plus 100s more sides are simply useless…..!!!
Chris ….can you name a successful company that has launched by slagging off the competition, and who's entire foundation is built on slagging off the opposition, whilst only having raised (at launch) about couple of grand (at best) in turnover? No…..this is where your nightmare career starts….and it WILL end very very soon with your bad attitude, chris at easyproperty.
Hope you didn't poison anyone last night with the sandwiches, easyChris… seems like your boss managed that all on his own with the opening line. Thing is, Chris, the dinosaurs weren't given a fighting chance. A flaming object the size of a city dropped out of the sky at several thousand miles per hour and wiped most of them out – along with 80% or more of all life-forms on the planet. But easyPlop ISN'T a body capable of global extinction – you are NOT, and never will be, a planet-killer. You won't even cause a wobble in the rotational axis. And had the dinosaurs been given a fighting chance then it was quite possible that it would have been THEM standing around yesterday looking down at the @r$£hole of Estate Agents…
ps – I don't suppose there's a teensy weensy chance of receiving a reply to my now dust-gathering question, is there…
Some of the reporters make some valid points. Traditional agents (for the most part) have failed to evolve which in turn has not allowed price cuts so – right or wrong – people are looking for a cheaper deal. The argument of service over cost is at this point not relevant as the traditional model and it's service is being heavily out shined by a cheaper solution. Whether that cheaper solution is comparable is contextual; for some it is and others it is not.
I can't agree with this. There have been MANY attempts to 'evolve' going back more than 30 years. I tried introducing upfront fees for 'self-service' estate agency in the mid 1980's and I was by no means the first. I ran this service alongside the traditional no-sale, no-fee model for four years and sellers had the option of buying only what they wanted – sale board, viewings, weekly newspaper ad etc etc. There was practically no take-up then, and there will be practically no take-up now, unless sellers want to risk their OWN money with no guarantee of a sale. There are many parts of the country outside the south-east where property sales are still sluggish – I can show you many many houses which have been advertised for over a year and still not sold. Who is bearing the cost of the advertising? Yes – the no-sale, no-fee agent. These owners would have spent £100s if not £1000s by now on advertising through on-line agency but the traditional agent has to swallow the loss. Until this model changes, the price of selling houses will have to stay at a level which covers the cost of advertising them indefinitely until they sell.
You as agents choose to pay those advertising costs though. You fed the beast(s) that are Rightmove and Zoopla then moan when they continually raise costs which has an ADVERSE effect on your business model. The costs associated with selling or letting a property are NOT the fault of the consumer and shouldn't be passed on as such. You can all try to convince me as much as you like, it just goes right in one ear and out the other because it's not me you have to convince… it's the consumer. If your services are as amazing as you claim them to be then why do the consumers flock to a cheaper service? Time and time again we have this debate; if you brand your services correctly and market your product(s) in a more up to date way then your message will be heard. Doing what you're currently doing is evidently not working as well as it should else you wouldn't all be on here on your little soapboxes trying to tell us how it should and shouldn't be. Instead of ripping apart other models because they do 'this' or don't do 'that', why not look at how you can evolve your own business, not just the services you offer but how you market those services, then, perhaps a more efficient business might lead to a greater dominance of your immediate domain.
I think its pretty naive of you to say that the costs associated with running a business should not be passed onto the consumer. I can't think of many business models where that doesn't happen, why should this industry be any different? Like it or not Rightmove and Zoopla are the 'go to' websites for tenants, knocking them off that perch is a lot more complicated than just telling agents to market their services correctly.
@ray I think you misread my intent. Legitimate costs are a factor in pricing but charging the EXTRA consumer because a better deal could not be negotiated on the portals is just wrong. I get told daily how agents are the best negotiators yet they can't negotiate better rates on portals? You can't have your cake and eat it, agents either are aor are not good negotiators. And I know exactly how to 'knock them (portals) off the perch' as you put it and I agree it's more complicated than just marketing correctly. Tenants and home hunters are fickle, they don't care where they find the property, facebook, twitter, rightmove, zoopla, for sale boards the list goes on and when they feel they have found their ideal property they will stop the hunt plain and simple. This evidently means that the property will be found if marketed correctly whether or not it's on OnTheMarket, Rightmove, Zoopla or any other portal for that matter. Somebody I know even paid for a survey to be done to prove this and the numbers back this up.
Portal "Traditional agents (for the most part) have failed to evolve which in turn has not allowed price cuts" Tell me….how do you know this? Last time you said that you believed that agents charged 3% which was way off the mark!
wilko, the 3% I was quoting was from the DIRECT reply from a "Traditional" agent above me in the thread…. wtf?
So you base your whole opinion on what 1 agent has told you? Also you didn't answer "how do yo know that most agents have failed to evolve which in turn has not allowed price cuts" Like I said I am keen to hear how you actually know this?
wilko. I based it on his figure because I could not be bothered to go and find out the up to the minute current fee. 3%, 1.5% it's all irrelevant because it's still at best DOUBLE what other services charge. I'm surprised that with your nit-picking this was not obvious to you. With regards to not evolving. I only have to go and browse the websites, social media pages, look at logo's and glance at the branding of agents to know the last time they "evolved". I can see their property feeds on Rightmove and Zoopla so I know they still rely on them for leads which reenforces my position on evolving. Lets not forget that agents call evolving moving from fax to email where the rest of the world through their faxes out 15 years ago. My point is that as cool and hip as agents may think they are through adopting some new fad, they're still eon's behind the rest of the world and the rest of the world is what they get compared to by home hunters when visiting their above mentioned media outlets. Consumers are used to a much higher level of technology and marketing in other industries than the property industry currently allows. This is a fact plain, pure and simple. This is based on many many many years of working in both property industry technology and other industry technologies. AT the highest scale and on the forefront of it.
portal…"I based it on his figure because I could not be bothered to go and find out the up to the minute current fee. 3%, 1.5% it's all irrelevant because it's still at best DOUBLE what other services charge." I can understand that….but in the areas where my branches are there are many high street agents that charge between a half and 1%. Many agents have reduced there fees and the fact you cant be bothered to find that info out does not make your assumption that we all charge between 1.5 and 3%…because we don't. It is also apparent with a lot of the online providers that the customer pays for individual items up front….often these individual items add up to a similar cost to a high street operative. You may well have a point with regard to technical innovation but remember the laws associated with the moving/letting process mean that we don't need to evolve as eg private treaty process means that we do a similar job now as we did years ago. But then, you don't associate selling a house with conveyancing or chain management, just the tech side.
@ Paul H
Well said. Techies dont really understand daily agency. But again many industry leaders don't understand tech that the industry needs.
Fair point Trevor although techies appear to have come in to the industry from the wrong angle. They should be trying to help agents by helping to implement change into their businesses instead of pretending to be estate agents.
What does easyProperty's success have to do with as you call them techies? .. it's success will be determined by the public who use their service not whether the website designer knows how to be an agent or not. This common misconception needs to be addressed and accepted. Aside the legal paperwork stuff which you can teach a monkey to do isn't being an estate agent a selling job?. You're matching a buyer and a seller together for both parties to come away with more or less what they're after… You don't hear car salesmen boasting that private sellers on auto trader "don't know what they're doing because they have not been selling cars for years and years" now do you? Lose the arrogance people, if being an agent is so hard how come there are there are so many in the UK and of those how come so many of them are bad, or thiefs, or fraudsters, or {insert tomorrows shocking agent headline in here}? As it stands I maintain my original position that the easyProperty website is a pile of **** but so was Rightmove and Zoopla once upon a time and now look at them.
You've summed it up perfectly with…."Aside the legal paper work that you can teach a monkey to do"…you and your like have zero respect for estate agents nor do you have any real understanding of what the job involves. If you want to change the industry and help the consumer then help agents to implement change, come up with cost saving solutions(that can be passed on) that makes the process more efficient, instead of just setting up a website and telling everyone that your being ripped off and only need to be on Rightmove and zoopla to sell a property.
Haha you sound just like someone on LinkedIn I have been watching ranting and raving recently….. Why on earth should I do your job for you? I have many many proven cost saving solutions that have been tested and proven to get more leads and higher quality leads than the current industry norm. The trouble is that your beloved industry is not ready to evolve technically to embrace the change that will allow self sufficiency and a greater yield for your outlay. I do not wish to come out of retirement just to help one agency – what would be the fun in that? No, changing how agencies market themselves and their services and fundamentally changing the systemic flaws that your beloved industry has come to accept on a larger scale would be more interesting.
"People are always open to new ideas"……"just as long as they are the same as old ones"!
Alright, @easychris has had it a bit tough on here, ive said before he does make me miss the good old days when Hatched and Emoov were dinging press releases out every day and its definitely fair to say that Chris likes to duck a question from time to time……….so, lets all agree that we will meet here again in 1 year and see how its all going for them, we can also have a look at the boys at purple bricks (they've gone all quiet) – based on what the 'dinosaurs' say it will be a lemon and one that showed us how not to present a listing and burned through money at a stunning rate with little return or we will all be dead. See you on this topic 18/09/2015 – Jonnie
Yep – that's in my diary.
Big words are EASY. Big funds will help them trade without doing any real trade. The best thing is that this brand will take down many of the other budget paracites until its vc's pull the plug 18/24 monghs down the line.
Well done to Mark Heyward for sticking up for our industry and all the professional and ethical agents across the country who are not what this company say we are. I've had enough of tech companies with zero knowledge of the industry turning up to just slag us off in an attempt to make a quick buck.
Hmmm… wonder when Mr Hayward will start sticking up for "all the professional and ethical agents across the country" – Members & Fellows of the NAEA – who by virtue that they are not "High Street Agents" will not be allowed Membership of a certain NAEA-endorsed portal…?
I'm not sure what they are spending their money on, but this online agent has not even booked easyproperty.co.uk/
And they are operating in the UK.
Seems to me what we have here is just yet another so-called online letting agent, to add to the many; the only difference being the propaganda and hype. I would wish them well were they not so arrogant and, frankly, rude towards the so-called traditional letting agents, many of whom are very well established and provide very ethical, professional services. From what I have seen over the last few years, the majority of properties listed with these onliners tend to be from greedy landlords, intent on maximising every possible penny of profit, many of whom have very little experience or knowledge of the lettings industry. Not a very attractive proposition for tenants.
Chris, I wonder if you are able to expand on the claim "“This is the end of the estate agency world as we know it.” There is change on the horizon but I just want to be clear what you are referring too. Perhaps that was a bit of Brut influenced rhetoric or whether you have done scientific analysis to forecast change, for the sake of clarity it would be good for you to provide the detail that has so far been absent from your posts on here.
It will be too easy in a few year time to shout I told you so but unless you tell us and the world exactly what you are predicting it will be hard to know if you were right.
Well it just goes to show what there real motive is, very narrow minded and as anyone who knows this business can see haven't a clue about estate agency and in this game if you don't know your job, you are just a little ripple until you reach the plug hole. It will be interesting to see how they cope with the OFT because if anything like their existing adventures, their customer service is %$£**. I bet the ombudsman is going to have to recruit more staff to cope with the workload.
easyProperty is going to be about as successful as easyPizza
Extraordinary claims from a company which is entirely dependent on the internet – is everyone really going to switch all their activities on-line in the future? God help us all if their vision of the future comes true. There is definitely a market for sellers and landlords who want to 'do it themselves' but buying and renting property in the UK is so bound up with legislation and offers so many ways to get it badly wrong I just hope all their customers have access to enough information and advice. This does't appear to be one of easyasaurus' priorities.
"we are looking at the ******* of estate agents" That was classy, frankly @easyChris, if you are responsible for marketing you should be ashamed of that comment. Pathetic.
And if I was an investor I would be very worried investing in easyproperty when they spend such a large amount on crass, rude, ridiculous, and most importantly irrelevant set of actions at their launch.
"We are looking at the ******** of agents.” Really…is that their opening gambit? If they don't even have the professionalism to approach the launch of their new venture seriously they do not deserve to succeed. As usual, it seems the only method of marketing these firms chose to adopt is one of trying to demonise Existing Estate Agents.
zzzzzz…………..
If you're so bored, Surrey, I suggest you read the story above this one.
They should spend some of that £1m on a new camera, looks like they are using iphones.
Sounds like a fun way to continue burning the investors cash.