Purplebricks price reductions: anonymous blog makes new allegations

An anonymous estate agent has renewed his attack on Purplebricks after an article in The Times at the weekend.

Estate Agent Today covered the original article here on Saturday; it alleged ‘fake’ price reductions. But now the agent has published what he calls ‘Purplebricks Part Two’.

The anonymous blog gives several examples of what it alleges are price changes on Purplebricks listings across the UK.

The blog also says: “As one of the countries [sic] leading agents it would be good to see PB taking a lead in combating this activity. As far as I am aware the Purplebricks lettings and sales operate a different model. For lettings PB list the property in a similar way to a traditional agency whereas for sales the listing is controlled by the owners of the property. I also found some examples of Sales properties where the price changes are likely to mislead.”

It goes on to say: “These examples show how misleading the reduced price can be on Rightmove. It would be better for Rightmove to show the pricing history so it is clear to the consumer if price reductions are genuine. If Zoopla can do it then Rightmove should be able to implement this. Whilst this data is not shown it is possible for buyers to be mislead either unintentionally or intentionally by unscrupulous agents.”

You can read the anonymous blog for yourself here.

Purplebricks has told EAT it has no comment on the latest story but at the end of last week, in a response to the original Times article, the agency said it did not approve of price changes of this kind, which it said happened in only a small minority of cases. 

Rightmove has also been asked for its comments.