Online market share revealed - with Purplebricks way ahead

Why don’t you write a decent story about how many properties are actually sold as anyone from a child to a pensioner can set up a so called online agency and promote properties. It’s all about transactions not a beauty parade, but not one writer seems to ever report on this!!! Wonder why???

• Property Pundit
• 07 October 2020 09:12 AM

And include the figure that represents the amount spent by people for no result (often having to move on to a proper estate agent and paying twice).

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Probably only me, but as an agent for offer 30-years, a vital part of any index is the sstc component or even the exchanged component, as to be the largest listing site in the UK as an onliner might sound great, but the end user, how many of those properties get to exchange?

With many 'traditional agencies' trading majoritively from home, you could also argue that now large swathes of these agents are increasingly an online offering, backed by sales teams that may have over a century or more of local knowledge spread through a small sales team that has worked a specific area for decades, delivering a very different service to the 'on liners'.

Deep local knowledge, personal service and after sales service, the most vital element as thousands of sales are now bottlenecked in the SDLT holiday rush.

Wow that has come down a lot! PB had just over 70% of the online market share at one point, dropping by 20% is moving in the wrong direction for sure.

On the flipside more than 90% of the market is still served by a 'traditional' estate agency model. This shows that buyers and sellers still want it and it continues to flourish despite an expectation that online would become dominant. Either way the conveyancing process needs improvement as neither model can avoid backlogs in the system caused by the current set of quite unique market pressures.

• Algarve Investor
• 07 October 2020 09:46 AM

You could argue the online model is now becoming dominant, because of coronavirus, but it's the traditional estate agency model which is leading the way on this. Because of Covid, all agents will have to become hybrids, whether they like it or not. And much of the conveyancing process will start to go that way, too, as life becomes ever more remote-based, cashless and paperless.

There has already been a shift by some high-profile agents to a hub model - how many more will follow? Will there still be a need and demand for agent branches? Is it worth the overheads and costs?

At the same time, people still prefer - nearly exclusively - to use traditional agents from their local area, but it's just likely this will continue to be done via Zoom, WhatsApp, virtual viewing technology and other PropTech in the future.

The days of regular face-to-face contact, newspaper advertising, leaflet drops and big presences on high streets will soon be long gone, in my opinion, replaced with something much more dynamic and flexible. But some elements of traditional agency - the For Sale and To Let board, the in-person viewing experience (albeit Covid-safe) and a presence in the local community will remain.

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This is market share by volume. By value they are insignificant. We charge less than 1% but still make £4,000 on average for every sale, not the £995 PB do. The high end agents are making way more per deal. If you pay peanuts you get......

Just thank your lucky stars, traditional estate agents, that the online crew have zero understanding of how to inspire Homeowners, or how to build relationships that endure. Online anything is about using words to create emotions and actions - "cheaper than, the same as, better than, full service, saving money, fair fixed fees (ffs), dedicated local experts" are about as inspiring as an invitation to lunch with Jeremy Corbyn.

Bearing in mind the ££millions and ££millions spent on PB advertising it'd not surprising they are still top. ZZZZZZZ aND mR a

And Mr Algarve investor, you need to house your staff somewhere so the cheap High St (compared to wages) is the place to be seen with a great big free advert across your fascia. Online only morons.

Hybrid not Online Estate Agents…
“ Big brand names such as Purplebricks, Yopa, Housesimple (Strike) and Emoov and others continue to chase the perfect formula for lower cost, higher volume, technology driven, non-traditional, work from home estate agency success.
These newer businesses are often described as ‘Online’ or ‘Internet’ Estate Agents which they are not. They are a group of individual, genuine estate agents provided with software, marketing and support services to run their local businesses without retail premises. Individual estate agents using technology and an altered business model to be an adapted form of the traditional estate agent.
This is still a common confusion and misunderstanding in the estate agency industry press, in traditional estate agents, for the house selling public and the wider investment markets as to how a ‘hybrid’ estate agent works and why it’s better.
Some of this confusion comes from the ‘Online’ or ‘Internet’ estate agents who were around in the early 2000s where vendor clients uploaded their own usually awful property photos to their internet site and only dealt with a distant call centre without any local estate agent help. Most of these failed due to the terrible property photos and no local agents to sell the service or to help support home selling customers.
The next generation of evolved / hybrid agent works from their home office, uses technology to receive enquiries for property viewings and buyer offers, embraces social media for marketing, charges a fraction of the usual agent fee and is much closer to their clients. Evolved from a traditional estate agency ‘no longer in its original form’
What the estate agency industry and trade press think about hybrid estate agency and how they see things couldn’t be further from the reality. There is a huge misunderstanding as to what a hybrid/technology based estate agent does and the potential and benefits this method of operating provides. Noise from trade media is very loud drowning out the new generation of estate agency within the industry.”
Extract from the book…
“No.1 B*stard Estate Agent. (someone no longer in their original form) How to Evolve in Property Selling”

When I sell a car I do so privately lusting for free.


When I sell a property I list for free and pay no fees to anyone.

I am confident to sell a vehicle privately and the same for a property.

Don't need or require any dealers or EA etc.

As more people become like me EA business will reduce.
It won't happen overnight.
Property is just a commodity that anyone can sell if they can list on the major web portals for free.

This is now possible.

So why would anyone wish to pay vast commissions when they can determine a price and list for free with the major web portals.

I advertise rental property for free.
I don't use LA or anyone that charges for rental property listing.
I save myself fortunes!!

I'm surely not the only one that can work out free works!!

Paul Barrett, you are wrong. We’ve just taken a property off an online agent that they couldn’t sell. They had it on at £500k and we sold it for £517,000. Another that the vendors had previously agreed a sale at £150,000 via Facebook, we got £156,000. The skills of local agents have a value, not just the negotiating but the local knowledge, the database of buyers etc. We build this value into our service which more than covers the fee we charge.
Additionally if you sell via us we help you with the negotiating on your onward purchase providing this is not one of our properties. My client recently was looking at a £550k property that he was going to bid £530K but I did it instead and bought it for £502k. That’s real value from us. Yes, you can save a few quid by doing it yourself but HOW MUCH DOES THIS COST YOU.??

• Hybrid Agent
• 08 October 2020 09:44 AM

Local agents can have a technology platform that enables them to operate in a lower cost way. The skills of the local agents can be harnessed and provided to consumers in a much more effective way with the correct technology. Not 'Do it yourself' like the first generation of 'online'/'internet' agency but a skilled and experienced local agent operating on a Hybrid basis without shops to give the client exactly what they require to sell and move. Negotiations still take place as you suggest in the Hybrid model but often at a more appropriate fee. It's the confusion as to what these newer operations actually are and how they work that promotes this huge misunderstanding in articles like this.

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