eMoov's expert reaction to house prices - before the prices are even known

Journalists often get quick reactions to events from spin doctors helping put out their clients’ messages - and that applies to PR-minded estate agents as much as anyone else.

But eMoov’s reaction to yesterday’s Halifax house price index set something of a record. That’s because the expert reaction arrived before eMoov even knew the figures.

An email from the online agency reached journalists shortly after 8am with a quote from eMoov chief executive Russell Quirk in reaction to the June house price index.

The email claimed the new figures had been “released this morning” and included a link to the data on the Halifax website.

The only problem was, the figures on that link when the email was sent out referred to a month earlier. When the apparently expert reaction was sent to journalists, the June figures were not known.

Even so, the quote talked up the strength of the market based on “today’s figures” and had a now-familiar swipe at “a media [sic] hungry for bad news.” 

Yet in reality the June figures were not released until 8.30am - some 24 minutes after eMoov’s ‘reaction’ reached Estate Agent Today. 

The Halifax has told EAT it would “100 per cent never ever” give eMoov any advance information about the index. 

EAT contacted Russell Quirk who put the advance reaction down to “intuition.”

However, now that his agency appears to know house price figures in advance, perhaps it ought to tip us off about lottery numbers ahead of Saturday evening...