Three senior employees at Purplebricks who exercised their options to acquire shares in the company two days ago have now sold them.
David Kavanagh, chief technology officer, David Shepherd, chief information officer, and Matthew Farrow, finance director, have sold 101,502 shares, 84,589 shares and 600,016 shares, respectively.
The announcement was made at noon yesterday.
All three sold at £1.48 per share.
Farrow’s sale will have raised him some £880,000.
Shares in Purplebricks slipped 5p by the close of trading yesterday.
I think they can see a burning ship.
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Looks a racing certainty !!
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According to the London stock exchange figures Purplebricks cumulative losses to the end of the 2016 trading year were £19.89m
Despite turning over £18.6m in YE 2016 they lost £11.9m, the turnover has increased every year but so have the losses.
Please can someone explain to me how a firm whose losses increase with increased turnover is worth anything at all?
(n.b.) this is a question containing information published by the tock exchange if you don’t like my question take it up with the stock exchange and the people who taught me that in a sound business profits rise with turnover not decrease and a business with increasing losses is not a sound investment, they’re the ones to blame for my ignorance not Property Industry Eye.
On a personal note if my FD was guiding my business to losses that have increased at such an alarming rate (-0.52m, -2.07m, -5.44m -11.9m) I would seriously be considering his future and would regard him trousering a serious wad of cash as a serious embarrassment to the other staff within the firm who are working just as hard but not reaping anything like that level of reward.
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Nice.!! Farrow also managed to ship out some original stock on top of the options he exercised too. He is the Finance Director ?Perhaps he has calculated the likely cash burn in December .They embark on a new expensive TV advertsing campaign on Boxing day.
The instructions for December unlikley to cross 1,500 and so revenue more than likley to dip below £1.5 for the month .It wont touch the sides Amazing that they have rewarded themselves cheap options so early in the fairy tale,.I mean journey Certainly long before shareholders are likely to see any rewards with a maiden dividend
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Hillofwad71,
Would you be able to help us with something to do with your favourite subject?
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Yes why not .A bit like pro bono work! it might be a break from tabulating the daily sales Let me have an email address!!
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Hiphip@agentv.co.uk
many thanks
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Tick tock, tick tock.
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A quick question (possibly something that EYE might take up?) Chris off this subject but of most importance to readers, was a reference made earlier this year over local government being wrapped for miss-use of Health & Safety enforcements by central government? I seem to recall you may know something about this and point me and others in the right direction to learn more?
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It’s ringing vague bells but not loud ones (it’s been an eventful year). Perhaps someone else can remind me?
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Hmmmmm…..guess they all know something the market isn’t going to find out until 6 months time!
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And timely for the share price, that statement recently about making a profit under EBIDTA rules or whatever it was, wasn’t it!!!
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Rats…..
Sinking…..
ship……
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Cashing in so soon?
Seems odd if they be lived in the company.
Maybe they have got wind of something that will devalue share price?
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Possibly the truth?
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SIRS, PHONE YOUR STOCKBROKERS AND HARD A STARBOARD, I CAN SEE AN ICEBERG DIRECTLY AHEAD ?
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The end of the beginning or the beginning of the end ?
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the second one.
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PB are raising money because they are buying market share and building a brand. A lot of people are talking about them including you. It’s expensive trying to penetrate different markets, especially overseas markets like Australia. Did you factor in these costs?
A few years ago a couple of guys founded a company called Hassle (Hassle.com). They were burning cash as well but they were building market share and doing really well. They were making losses. They sold the company last year for £25 million (off the top of my head). So the owners made money. That’s what they set out to do I suppose. That also answers all of your questions.
They were bought by a German company called Helpling – probably because they were the market leader in Germany and they wanted to expand into the UK (and probably were worried about Hassle entering the German market.
Hassle has since expanded into many countries and is doing really well. It has recently raised £100m (again off the top of my head) to expand even further. But my point is the owners have already sold and made money.
People buy shares because they see potential. It doesn’t always work out but it does make some people (shareholders and founders) sometimes. Investments are gambles.
Conventional business is slightly different from online business. Having said that even high street agents either start up with some debt or manage debt as part of their expansion strategy. It’s how Robert Nichols the owner of Portico has expanded his office count recently.
PB won’t always have to go so hard with their TV and Adwords campaigns. You do not know their total marketing spend. I was told a few years back that Pimlico Plumbers Adword spend was £200,000 a month. If a London based plumbing company that already ranks well organically can spend £2.4m then I am sure PB are spending triple/quadruple that easily. Estate agency is almost as competitive as plumbing.
JustEat for example spend less than they used to when they first started out. They do not have to set up the infrastructure, don’t have to do site visits to install the machines, they have less teething problems to deal with. It’s making profits now after billions of pounds investment. So you could have made the same post about them a few years ago. They would have seen share prices rise, big yearly losses, exercise of share options etc etc..
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Apologies, that reply should be to Robert May’s post above.
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London R80
I like wot you written and it makes a lot of sense, when you are talking about burning cash to get market share and Just Eat have done just so.
However I disagree with other points you make in particular the fact that PB have to continuously visit clients and maintain them in some degree, so they will have a two fold spend.
A: Constantly marketing themselves to a new user market
B: Client visit with constant account management.
These are two expensive operations they have to manage and they cant reduce their marketing spend because guess what? There are thousands of estate agents who collectively spend many times more every year with no upfront payment and superb client/account management.
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There is an alarming focus placed on funds raised/invested in companies at present- whether we are talking agents, online or proptech. Successful funding rounds are celebrated like a company has acheived success when, in actual fact, that company has actually placed itself under intense scrutiny and pressure at a very early stage. The ‘figure heads’ are heralded as titans when, the actual truth is, they have often given away vast swathes of their company (with most capiltal pledged in to expending the business) and it is therefore only the big money men and VCs that usually cash in at a later stage.
I think what so many of us are concerned about is that many of us are working tirelessly to change the way agents operate and, in turn, are perceived. My main concern with the media’s love affair with funding is that the general public often dont really understand exactly what this means- they perceive it as success and blindly follow suit. We all just hope that, if things do go wrong, the fallout isnt so epic that it buries us at the bottom of the respect pile again. With online being so aggressive in their attitude towards high st agents (and the media so happy to herald them as the conquerors) wait and see how we are blamed for their failings when it goes wrong.
Also very surprising to see PB allow this. Most companies raising the amount of funds they have usually have a lock-out with senior staff/members selling up of at least 3 years. For the very reason seen here- it’s perceived as a sign that now may well be a good time to sell up and walk away before the emperor realises he’s naked!
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Good post . The AIM is littered with pump and dump wreckage For Bricks.there was a 12 months hardlock for the shareholders from the date of the listing last year. The 3 senior manger / directors must have been standing by the clock It was their own personal Auld Lang Syne. Not only that adding further insult to injury exercising cheap options just before and immediately flipped them making a personal profit at shareholders expense of which the company could only currently dream of .
Lets hopethey dont treat the comapny customers in the same fashion! Suspect there will be a few more cashing in too
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The forecast accompanying the listing was to hit 43,000 instructions by April 2017 .H I saw 18,000 so they have to increase by nearly 40% in H2 ie over 4,000pcm to get back on track . They certainly didnt do this in October and November.December looking like about 1500 and cant see them playing catch up in January or February either They are going to need a bumper March to even get remotely close .Certainly some of the mangers must be contemplating hedging heir bets and cash a few shares in
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??? the original yattering on about this lot it was 85,413 listings for 2015 then 10 % of all transactions for 2016, 100,849!
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LondonR90 – above you state
‘Agents can get together and fight not only PB but all other agents that do not join together to fight. I made a long post on this but didn’t get a single response even though it costs absolutely nothing. It was late in the day, but still, a sad moment for me personally.’
I’m not sure I know which post you are referring to.
How about you copy’n’paste it at the bottom of this article thread? Give the readership a second chance to respond…
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PeeBee,
I don’t know how you got 1,800 listed properties in London for Purplebricks? On their own site the number is just 482. I searched a 10 mile radius of Chelsea and that should cover more than just London.
My post was in reply to AgentV. It’s a very simple idea. See below:
AgentV
DECEMBER 20, 2016 AT 10:24 AM
LondonR90,
Thanks for that. You seem to be outward thinking. Did you put forward an idea volunteering to develop some portal software a few weeks back…or was that someone else? Can you be contacted somewhere?
Leave a Reply
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LondonR90
DECEMBER 20, 2016 AT 2:58 PM
You already have my contact details and we swapped a few emails. My name is AJ.
I have never approached agents about this idea because I do not feel they will go for it. I have done it in other business sectors and it works because those businesses are already involved in some form of SEO. They understand it. Most estate agents are either not involved or really do not know what they are doing.
My idea is simple, get together at least 300 agents in different areas and harness the power of their websites.
Benefit number 1 – free leads. We would build a very simple lead generation website and agents would be forwarded leads that from customers in their area. It would rank for general search terms on Google such as ‘houses for sale’ and ‘how to sell your house’ etc etc, there’s literally thousands of keywords with searches more than 1,000 per month. I think we could even rank for ‘estate agents’. We could literally cut Rightmoves traffic by a huge percentage.
Benefit 2 – local ranking. Each agent would help all other agents rank for local searches such as ‘estate agents liverpool’ and ‘birmingham estate agents’ etc etc, there’s a lot of keywords right there. So all member agents would start ranking very quickly and they would not even compete with each other.
Each agent would help the other non-competing agent to not only rank themselves but also rank the main national website.
It’s important to note that OTM look like they have not even built a single backlink. This means they are not doing anything to rank organically on Google, except for setting up pages with correct tags, titles etc. They have not built any links. The links they have built come from 1,700 domains. Some of those are member agents linking to them (sometimes not even from the homepage – which doesn’t make sense but I digress) and some of them are from newspapers and other blogs reporting on stories on it’s emergence and growth or just linking to interesting properties on the site. An example is PIE linking to it more than a few times. My point in OTM have done nothing except open an Adwords account and target a lot of expensive keywords. Their organic ranking has all been done by members linking to them pushing them up on Google for various competitive search terms.
300 agents could get together, harness their collective power and do a similar but better job for zero cost. All they will have to do is link to the new website the same as they link to Rightmove, Zoopla, OTM, allAgents, TPOS, Gas Safe Register etc etc etc. They’ll also have to publish a fair few articles (written by me) on their blog. That’s it.
It’s free apart from a decent server. It does not need time. It does not involve risk. They would rank locally for every keyword they can think of. They would gain free leads from the main website and never compete with anyone else.
About me:
I am an internet marketer and content writer. I worked in SEO in the ultra competitive flower delivery niche ranking websites along side more famous brands such as Interflora, Debenhams M&S, MoonPig and more. I have just recently gone solo setting up an estate agents in central London after doing my exams, getting registered etc etc. I would work on this if I was given all the London leads. Otherwise I am OK on my own.
No single internet marketer or company has gone into the estate agency field in a big way – it’s a very weak area and that’s why I chose it. Even the biggest London agents have weak online presence. Even the online agents cannot get it right. Internet marketers concentrate on niches such as loans, skip hire, flowers. That is, anything they don’t have to pick, package and post. So it’s their for the picking.
Will anyone go for this? Does it have any traction? Will there be suspicion because it’s free? I do not know. Let’s see. If there is enough interest then I will set up a site where we can go and register interest for others to see – a sure way to get more agents involved.
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LondonR90
DECEMBER 20, 2016 AT 3:05 PM
Forgot to add:
The closest example of the kind of website we would be looking to build is hoa.org.uk. It’s very clever but not quite perfect. It does really well but 300 agents can do better.
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LondonR90 – thanks for the repost. I need to get my head round what you posted – which I will do – and I will respond.
In the meantime, you asked how I came up with the 1800 figure. Simples. really – according to Rightmove, the London “branch” of Purplebricks had (as of yesterday) a total of 1839 properties listed thereon. I’m not saying that is accurate; I’m not saying that all of those properties are actually in London – but it’s there to be seen and challenged if someone so wishes.
Or perhaps someone from the subject company would be so kind as to confirm the actual numbers…
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LondonR80
Okay… I’ve read and digested the bits I understand from your post – so let’s go from here.
Firstly – I admire your wanting to take on ‘the establishment’, especially as you are a self-confessed new kid on the block in terms of our industry.
Maybe that’s why you are displaying such cojones – you haven’t had them trampled on anywhere near enough times yet!
I don’t want to dampen your enthusiasm and will be watching carefully for signs of your progress – but I’m going to pick out the one sentence in your post which, I believe, does your argument most damage:
“We could literally cut Rightmoves traffic by a huge percentage.”
Could you? 300 Agents out of somewhere around 15,000 – that’s TWO PERCENT of the total that you are aiming to cut down. And of the 300, how many of them are going to drop RM like a stone? My guess is a far smaller percentage less than those that did it when joining OTM and adopting (OF THEIR OWN FREE WILL, it must be reiterated for those that now pathetically claim to have been bullied or otherwise into the action…) – which came in at around 20% – meaning that you will be potentially taking 0.4% of Rightmove’s traffic.
And for those Agents who make the brave step – what will they be thinking? Will they be rejoicing over the monthly savings? Or will they be worrying about how many potential leads they are missing? Will they be watching RM every few hours for new instructions (real ones – not Mickey Mouse #portaljuggles) and wondering either
a) why they didn’t get the instruction? or
b) why weren’t they even invited out for an appraisal?
because, believe me – that’s what will almost inevitably happen.
And I haven’t even touched on the age-old issue that three Estate Agents in the same room will have four differing opinions on anything and everything – and laugh maniacally at the other five!
But here’s what I want you to do: PROVE ME WRONG.
Suggest what you need to do is look here in the archives (and, if you can find them, of those down the other pub – searching via Robert’s Rummage4.it will honestly give you the best chance…) and look at the build-up to the launch of OTM. Read what was being said – and learn from it.
That out of the way – as said above I know pretty much squat about t’interweb (other than in our industry it has given poor Agents a push up a ladder they couldn’t have got a toe onto the first rung of under normal circumstances), but from what someone ‘in the know’ tells me, backlinks are pretty much pre-decimal these days and certainly not to be relied on as ‘the future’. I guess there will be arguments both ways in that respect – but you won’t get any from me!
Finally – your choice of ‘template’ for your proposed site intrigues me… not in a good way, I hasten to state. You obviously have your reasons for picking that one – which I for one would be extremely interested to read.
Sorry to seem like the entire winners’ rostrum at a ‘Negative Norman’ contest – but what you see with me is what you get.
I look forward to continued debate in this respect and will always give you an opinion if you ask for one.
It’s whether you like the opinion given that is the issue At the minute I think that you and others are looking to sew a button on a f@rt.
Trust me – you’re gonna need some pretty good thread for that…
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Has anyone calculated how much less 786107 shares would have been worth if that EBITDA ‘profit’ hadn’t ridden over the horizon when the shares had tumbled backwards to near £1?
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Robert. please clarify, it appears to me that PB’s recently quoted £30 million cash reserve or thereabouts remains similar to last year before their £10 million expansion into OZ and a very large increase in expenditure since ?
How can this be?
Does EBITDA not take into account capital expenditure drawn from reserves if PB does not wish to deduct such expenses?
See part of an article by Ted Gavin entitled ‘why EBITDA is a great big lie’below.
EBITDA doesn’t provide any consistency check for a company’s accounting practices as to how it arrives at its cash flow reporting.
For example, I worked as a restructuring advisor on a case about 10 years ago where some of the related warehousing operations (who were not my client) reported EBITDAR (Earnings Before Interest, Taxes, Depreciation, Amortization and Rent). We joked that, when you’re running an operation which is primarily real estate, the one thing that you have in abundance is Rent. So why exclude one of your principal operating expenses? I’ve seen this used often in retail operations as well – take a large, undeniable expense category and turn it into a positive, by choosing to report it in a manner that artificially inflates cash. What’s next – EBITDARE (EBITDAR, plus all other Expenses)? I’m sure if we go through the exercise, we’ll find that even the most under performing company will look great on EBITDA once we add back all of its expenses.
Have PB gone the EBITDAM route…Earnings before interest, Taxes, Depreciation, Amortization and £10 million plus of TV and other Marketing?
S. Keyser previous postings may agree?
The full article spotted by PeeBee above is linked below:
http://www.forbes.com/sites/tedgavin/2011/12/28/top-five-reasons-why-ebitda-is-a-great-big-lie/2/#4cf82647beb2
Yet another good spot PeeBee.
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I don’t know about their cash reserves, that’s for the accountants to comment on. I count numbers, I count the number of properties put on, I count the numbers sold and the numbers withdrawn. I then compare them against what investors were told to encourage them to invest.
“We will list 85413 properties in the financial year ending in 2015 and 100,849 in 2016”. Because of the number of properties that keep reappearing and disappearing it is hard to keep track of what is being listed, what is being sold and what is being withdrawn
Purplebricks get paid once to list properties, they don’t as far as I know get a new fee each time it is listed again having been withdrawn or marked as sold.
From what I can see they currently have about 6500 unique listings and about 10% of listings have been withdrawn in the past month. Since Mr Bruce claimed he is listing 3000 a month (“the point at which Purplebricks will make a profit”) I have been watching the numbers extra closely to see the new unique listings each month to see if they are listing 3000 each month.
Since Mr Briuce claimed he is selling 88% of what he is listing ( on Radio 4) I have been trying to find out if that is true.
“Is Purplebricks selling 88% of 3000 listings each month” is the question I am desperate to find out the answer to.
The UK average property transaction price is £279,205. 2640 sales per month for 6 months is 15,840, sales that would total about £4.42 billion worth of property sold in 6 months yet when the financial statement came at the beginning of December we were told they only sold £2.6billion worth of property. That is only 56% of what is inferred by the various claims.
If we assume the 88% figure is correct (The CEO of a listed company isn’t allowed to say things that aren’t correct) If 88% = £2.5 billion worth of sales they listed £2.84 billion worth of property in the 6 month period that is roughly 10175 properties total, about 1700 per month. 1700 properties listed per month is 56% of the number of properties required to make a profit.
If the 88% figure was incorrect but the firm is listing 3000 properties a month (18,000 in 6 months) they are exchanging on 56.52% of properties listed.
Hopefully I can be forgiven for having a head that does numbers and can be forgiven for questioning numbers that are obviously contradictory or wrong.
Someone needs to audit, how many fee paying listings they have, how many properties are withdrawn (unsold by Purplebricks) and how many are sold by Purplebricks. At the moment all of the stories pushed out seem to contradict themselves and what is being claimed.
Having done the job long enough to get FNAEA I know current stock is rule of thumb 25% of the year total , 6500 x 4 is 26,000 listings for the year. That is a very long way short of the prospectus predictions of 85k for 2015, 101k for 2016. 26000 listings is 2166 average per month 72% of what is required to make a profit.
I might be massively out on my numbers but I have a right to question numbers that don’t appear to tally. If I were the CEO of a listed company who is briefing investors I would make sure my number are clear, concise and correct.
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Good Post .is almost like I have enough money to last me the rest of my life as long as I dont spend anything
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From what we know they spent £230,769 per week more than they earned in the financial year ending 2016.
They were spending give or take £1m per month too much in an attempt to get to their declared target for 2016 of “10% of all transactions”
They sold £2.7b worth of property last year, that is 1.07% of all transactions not 10% so they achieve just 10.7% of what they had hoped to do.
Perhaps I am not thinking straight someone needs to tell me why supposedly intelligent , high profile investors have any confidence this can be turned around, I can’t see it.
From my point of view I know estate agency and lettings, I know technology and was good enough at what I do to win a 43% whole of UK market share against the likes of Vebra, Expert Agent, Dezrez etc yet I would not attempt what Purplebricks or any of the other passive intermediary, looky likey estate agents are trying; The cost of buying business away from known, trusted local estate agents is far higher than the savings made by not having an office.
The numbers are flawed, the business model is flawed the investment unsound.
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As a stickler for detail Robert, your last paragraph is a great example of how the truth can be massaged. 43% of the whole UK market share is questionable but I cannot prove otherwise, however, you were NOT competing against the likes of Expert Agent, Dezrez (or even Vebra really) – they were not direct competitors of CFP given that they did not offer any lettings functionality other than a little marketing at the time that you were active. You were competing in a marketplace that had few competitors due to the complex nature of the systems required (kudos to you for this). And, no, Jupix does not count – you left there before you’d finished what could pass as proper accounting.
You are correct – numbers cannot lie, but words can and do.
Merry Christmas to all.
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43% was the audited market share assessed during due diligence process to acquire CFP in March 2008, it is a GMGPS figure not mine. Let it was GMWs product that failed to gain any traction after two launches, Vebra Premise was the nominal edger accounting system that attempted to do client cash accounting for Vebra, there was CARL and Eurolink, Universal, Dezrez had a tie in with LetMC there was Gemini and 53 other firms all trying to compete with CFPwinMan.
I left Jupix because Oliver Gleave described me as “too honest” after I refused to take play the “Pay me to recommend you” game with someone who should have known better.
That last paragraph isn’t massaged it is factual , accurate and evidenced. In respect of Jupix PM the analysis and development work to pass 6 months January- June assessment by Gary Winter of Martin and Co to demonstrate it able to replace CFPwinMan suggests I did what I needed to do. The letter of recommendation provided by Oliver Gleave at the end of the consultancy confirms it.
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Forgive the URL, the propertydrum report is now deleted but here’s some news showing the rise to 45% by 2011 http://onkitz.com/blog/cfp-software-for-letting-and-estate-agents/
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Hi PeeBee,
Thank you for your detailed reply and thank you for allowing me to say what I want to say.
“self-confessed new kid on the block in terms of our industry”
That’s true, I am new to the industry but I have been following property for about 4 years. I have been analysing London estate agents, analysing who I think will be my closest competitors and following every post of PIE. I know all about OTM from the beginning.
“We could literally cut Rightmove’s traffic by a huge percentage.”
“And of the 300, how many of them are going to drop RM like a stone?”
It’s much simpler than that. No one needs to drop RM, Z or OTM. Not yet anyway, but that could be a plan, a long, long way off.
When I say we need 300 agents in reality we just need 50 or so to begin. No money required and no time either. We just need to join forces and help each other. So we start backlinking to each others website and rank each other top for keywords that we think are money keywords. For example, an agent from Brighton joins, we rank them top for searches such as estate agents Brighton (RM are 1st), letting agents Brighton (RM are 4th), flats for sale Brighton (RM are 1st) etc etc. These are easy keywords and these are the kinds of long tail keywords that really cut into RM’s traffic – if we go for them on a very large scale. Every agent will rank top in their town for their given keywords and it wont cost them a penny.
We do it by creating useful articles to be posted on each others websites. These websites contain contextual backlinks with anchor text. It basically means a backlink pointing to another resource which acts like a vote. Votes are seen as ranking signals by Google and this is partly how their algorithm ranks one website over another. That, along with about 200 other factors. Backlinks and site speed are the main ranking factors. Content creation is also good because it shows you are an authority in your niche. Take a look at the websites that rank in your area. Put them into the ahrefs.com tool and see what their a) their domain rating is and b) how many referring domains they have (backlinks from).
Then tell me backlinks are not a ranking factor.
Even 50 or so agents getting together would work. Then more will join… because, why wouldn’t they?
Once a group is formed we could grow it bigger and bigger and in time rank above RM for every keywords except ‘Rightmove’ 🙂 – it really is that powerful. Everyone wins. We could exclude the not so good agents. We could rank for big money keywords. One day we could cut all ties with portals and host our own properties. That’s a long way off though.
‘Finally – your choice of ‘template’ for your proposed site intrigues me… not in a good way, I hasten to state. You obviously have your reasons for picking that one – which I for one would be extremely interested to read.’
HOA are extremely good at what they do. They rank extremely well with around 250,000 unique visitors per month. They offer a lot of good content backed up by a lot of powerful backlinks and they must surely capture a lot of leads. 300 agents could copy what they have done but do it even better and one an even grander scale.
What do you think?
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You people clearly have no understanding of why a person/ employee would buy/sell shares.
The whole POINT of owning shares is to sell them at a profit later down the line. Given PBs performance of their shares, it absolutely makes sense to sell shares right now. That not aindicatoror of the companies performance or trajectory AT ALL.
Elon Musk, for example, tells his employees when to sell shares and advises to sell them regularly over time to maximise profit for themselves. This is because shares are a perk to employees.
Of course this comment doesnt help your confirmation bias so will probably be downvoted.
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I absolutely LOVE this. PE if you made an award for the year of the best comment made, this would surely win.
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Chris,
My reply was directly aimed at Robert who questioned why they were valued so highly. It’s obvious to me. Especially with so many smaller ‘£1,000’ investors who want to have a stake in such a big company. It’s similar to why tiny little microbreweries generate so much interest when looking for funding – a lot of investors want to boast to their friends in their local pub that they part own a beer company. It’s similar with PB except some investors see returns. I think they will come.
A lot of startups like this encounter controversial issues. Airbnb and Uber to name a few. People want to go after them because they are the market leader, it’s natural.
I completely understand what you are saying on the way they operate, it’s seen by some as unethical. But that happens in big business. How many agents on here claim they are the leading agent in their area or claim to be the best? They are doing it but it’s magnified because of who they are. The customer can make their own mind up. I doubt anything will come of what you say. They do not need to answer your questions and do not need to reveal anything to future investors. It’s up to them.
PB are not having any impact in London at the moment but I’m sure it will have some impact in other areas in time. So some of these agents should watch out.
PB do not innovate in my opinion. They have built the business on the back of the hate the public have of estate agents. So much so that customers are now willing to pay upfront for an inferior service. But it is working. They will put up prices soon and turn over more. They will also raise more money off the back of it. Their share price will also rise.
Agents can get together and fight not only PB but all other agents that do not join together to fight. I made a long post on this but didn’t get a single response even though it costs absolutely nothing. It was late in the day, but still, a sad moment for me personally.
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Why thank you! ;o)
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No one needs to watch out winning £18million business to cover £30 million costs is a business that will struggle to be even noticed when the TV spend stops.
Winning about 1/4 of predicted instructions and being so woefully out on recruitment of listing reps shows up a business plan the was laughably optimistic.
The fact people are investing anything at all in this business just shows how stupid some people are and how naive the initial investors were.
Have you heard the story of the Tailors and the King? I’m the kid at the back shouting “I can see his winky!”
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“I completely understand what you are saying on the way they operate, it’s seen by some as unethical.”
Hi LondonR90 We are probably on the same page on many issues but I need to tread carefully – Unethical is a usually defined as carrying out an activity of which much of society disapproves but which is legal (gazumping for instance). It is another matter entirely if any activity is not legal (for instance – failing to be registered with a redress scheme, HMRC for money laundering or, with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) for data protection).
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LondonR90 – you state
“PB are not having any impact in London at the moment…”
Really? From what I can see, their London “branch” currently ‘lists’ some 1800 properties. I wouldn’t call that zero impact.
I suppose, based on yesterday’s story that the Capital has some 3,000 Agents operating within it that’s not even close to one property per branch – but it’s still 1800 lumps of business lost – assuming, that is,
a) those 1800 properties are all genuine listings and
b) they all sell without having to instruct a traditional Agent to get the job done.
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To my mind there are two types of investors
1. Bought stock with a view to long term growth of the business and future dividends
2. Buys stock they think will go up in price short term then sells when it does for a profit in days/weeks.
Type 2 are the ones that affect the share price and all they are interested in is the share price going to go up or down in the next week or two not will the company make money in the long term. You are looking at this from the point of view of 1 estate agent valuing another estate agency business. Most investors couldn’t care less, they are gambling on the share price going up. To be fair to Purple Bricks the one thing they are good at is managing their share price.
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