The lights go back on at Emoov as the real purchasers of online agency are revealed

| Rosalind Renshaw

Emoov expects to be back in business at the end of this month.

Yesterday, it posted up a news item on its website under the headline ‘The lights go back on at Emoov’.

It was the first time it had posted since the end of November.

The news story says that it has been acquired by a firm called Mashroom and that Emoov will relaunch under new management.

Mashroom has acquired the name, branding and the platform from the administrators for an undisclosed sum.

Yesterday, EYE reported on a story in Property Week which said that Emoov’s chief technology officer Ivan Ramirez had bought Emoov out of administration, backed by Russian venture capitalists named as Kite Ventures.

However, yesterday afternoon a spokesperson for Mashroom said: “Ivan Ramirez is not involved in the transaction or in Mashroom.

“Also incorrect is that it is backed by Kite Ventures. Kite Ventures has zero involvement.

“Also incorrect is that there are Russian venture capitalists involved, or that it is Russian-backed.”

The spokesperson said that Emoov founder Russell Quirk has no involvement in the relaunched business.

Mashroom describes itself as a “peer to peer lettings platform” which will launch in March.

Mashroom will handle rentals, and Emoov and Tepilo – which will remain separate brands – will cover sales.

The story says:

“Emoov will go back online in late January 2019 under the ownership and guidance of the Mashroom team and its founder, proptech entrepreneur Stepan Dobrovolskiy.

“Mashroom acquired the branding and platform, in what is a show of confidence for the online property industry in a tough UK property market which has taken a hit across all sectors over the last couple of years.

“Stepan believes the Emoov name still carries plenty of weight. He said: “The team and I are very excited to be able to put Emoov back online. Emoov has an impressive eight-year history and is one of the first and largest hybrid estate agencies in the UK.”

“This is the start of a new chapter for the company and the industry. I believe an unencumbered, wiser and innovative Emoov is in the perfect position to develop a sustainable business model for the industry. The future of the property market is digital, and it is in the hands of empowered customers connected by community and data.”

“Emoov’s quick sale and reopening should boost confidence in the online estate agency world.

“Mashroom’s COO Naveen Jaspal will extend her role to COO of Emoov.

“According to Naveen, “Hybrid estate agents are rapidly gaining trust and market share. Proptech companies are exceeding expectations in terms of customer growth as the consumer shifts their mindset to a faster, digital solution that offers them transparency and control.”

Jaspal said: “Our priority is to get the Emoov business back up and running to provide a transparent and flexible service which is deeply customer-focused, champions community and enables customers to sell their properties more efficiently. We look forward to working with previous Emoov customers to get their property re-listed.”

“Emoov will continue as a hybrid agency based on a branch-free, fixed fee model with self-employed agents and will seek to regain the digital platforms’ former position as the UK’s best online estate agent.

“PREVIOUS EMOOV CUSTOMERS CAN CONTACT US AT welcomeback@emoov.co.uk”

 

* According to Companies House, Mashroom was incorporated last June. It has one director, Spartak Zuy, a Russian. Stepan Dobrovolskiy was a director, but has since resigned; he is also Russian.

Companies House also reveals that a company called EMASH was incorporated on December 20, with Spartak Zuy a director.

According to his LinkedIn profile Stepan Dobrovolskiy has been chairman of Mashroom since last February, and was managing partner for Europe and Asia at Kite Ventures until last June. https://www.linkedin.com/in/stepan-dobrovolskiy-93113031/?originalSubdomain=uk

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33 Comments

  1. GPL
    January 17, 2019 at 06:48

     
    Really?
     
    Doh!
     
    Next.
     
     

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  2. AgencyInsider
    January 17, 2019 at 06:56

    ‘The future of the property market is digital…’

    Oh dear.

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  3. Light
    January 17, 2019 at 07:07

    “Stepan believes the Emoov name still carries plenty of weight”… you’re damn right it does.  

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    1. Woodentop
      January 17, 2019 at 10:54

      A lead one, cast out in a vast sea with the other sharks.

      Report
  4. Hillofwad71
    January 17, 2019 at 07:08

    All very shadowy! “Emoov has an impressive eight-year history”
    Maybe he has got this lost in translation and meant Ewemove
    “Also incorrect is that it is backed by Kite Ventures. Kite Ventures has zero involvement.”
    Albeit He was Kite’s managing partner until last summer
    https://www.linkedin.com/in/stepan-dobrovolskiy-93113031/?originalSubdomain=uk
    Naveen
    https://www.linkedin.com/in/naveen-jaspal-71a30097/?originalSubdomain=uk
    She has certainly done the rounds of the onliners Yopa and Bricks with Countrywide to boot . Wonder if any of the experts who have migrated to House simple will come back !  
    https://mashroom.com/
     
    Is this for real? Existing tenants are the new letting agents?
     

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    1. FlyingSheep54
      January 17, 2019 at 08:31

      Perhaps the impressive 8 year history he is referring to is its record of raising funds from less than savvy investors.

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  5. Shaun77
    January 17, 2019 at 07:50

    “Hybrid estate agents are rapidly gaining trust and market share”

    Absolute nonsense and fabrication. In fact, the complete opposite is true.

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  6. Chris Wood
    January 17, 2019 at 08:09

    Not a good day to be announcing this in light of other news? “Low fees less important than transparency to sellers when they are choosing agents” https://www.propertyindustryeye.com/low-fees-less-important-than-transparency-to-sellers-when-they-are-choosing-agents/

     

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  7. AgentQ73
    January 17, 2019 at 08:43

    The lights may be on but I suspect nobody is at home.

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  8. Property Poke In The Eye
    January 17, 2019 at 08:45

    I wouldn’t mind smoking what they are and also go into zone cuckoo….;)

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  9. gardenflat
    January 17, 2019 at 09:34

    Two bad moves IMO.
     
    1. Putting an outgoing and an ingoing tenant in touch, really? God forbid anything went wrong during the outgoing tenants stay.
     
    2. Paying any sort of sum for the brand name emoov.

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  10. smile please
    January 17, 2019 at 09:37

    Ahhhh yes no doubt the likes of Quirk will have us down as ‘Sofa Snippers’ as mentioned in his latest PR stunt … Sorry i mean interview.

    Strange that he and others (Pryor, Mal, Rocky and numerous others) say we like shooting people down without any insight, yet in the majority we are always right and they are wrong.

    As many others already predicted, This reincarnation of a company will crash and burn.

    * Oh and the reason a number of us are ‘Anonymous’ is because we do not crave attention and not looking to sell anything on here to anyone.

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    1. PeeBee
      January 17, 2019 at 09:53

      smile please

      I’ve said it ad nauseum to those that crave to know the identity of particular posters – but I’ll repeat it for the record.

      It’s not who says what that matters – it’s what is said.

      Report
      1. Lil Bandit
        January 17, 2019 at 10:06

        PeeBee, you are irrelevant. All you do is provoke, grow up.

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        1. wardy
          January 17, 2019 at 10:15

          Yeah PeeBee!  Coming on here with your reasoned debates and facts based on years of experience within the industry. Where do you get off?

          Report
        2. PeeBee
          January 17, 2019 at 10:48

          Lil Bandit
           
          1.  We are all irrelevant.
           
          2.  “Provoking” isn’t all I do by a long chalk – but it’s one cap that fits I guess.  YOU, on the other hand…
           
          3.  I’ll grow up the week after you (there’s no ‘sticks fingers in ears and pokes tongue out’ emoji feature – use your imagination…)

          Report
          1. Lil Bandit
            January 17, 2019 at 11:51

            You are sad little man PeeBee. Get a life

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            1. Property Pundit
              January 17, 2019 at 13:31

              Why so triggered Lil Bandit?

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              1. Hillofwad71
                January 17, 2019 at 13:49

                No doubt one of those who  considers that investors,the public ,former staff,estate agent’s reputation and  customers were all”irrelevant “in Quirk’s vanity project

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            2. PeeBee
              January 17, 2019 at 16:25

              Sorry, Lil Bandit – one thing I can never be accused of is being “little”.

              The rest is opinion – and, like an @r$ehole, you clearly have one.

              It’s fascinating how connected they are.

              Report
  11. KC54
    January 17, 2019 at 10:15

    So who actually meets the incoming tenant to perform the right to rent check?

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  12. Woodentop
    January 17, 2019 at 10:57

    Ha ha ha. The Russians are coming to town! They haven’t a clue and I’m sure we will be hearing more about their little venture over the year.

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    1. PeeBee
      January 17, 2019 at 10:59

      I wonder if they’ll be Russian out when they see what they’ve bought themselves into…?

      Report
  13. GPL
    January 17, 2019 at 14:13

     

    Who knows….. Emoov? …..a form of Russian Laundrette.

     

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  14. cyberduck46
    January 17, 2019 at 14:21

    I would have thought another established online agent would have been better buying Emoov.  
     
    They are still #1 in Google for the term “online estate agents”. According to Russell Quirk they are also top 10 for 600 other terms. Each click being worth about £15 in terms of turnover. Just from the term “online estate agents” they received 6600 website visitors a month. So £99,000 in revenue from the one term.  
     
    This would be quite valuable to a company whose costs are already established. Of course Google positions come and go and require efforts to maintain but clearly some value there and at the right price worth buying.    

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    1. smile please
      January 17, 2019 at 14:53

      You chose your data very selectively.

      To get to number one spot on Google they have been pumping circa 500k a month into PR and website advertising!

      I bet the new owners will not pump even 5% of that figure into it. And as with every SEO arms race they will drop down the pecking order on Google.

      And as Quirk himself said (which we have pointed out numerous times over the last 5 years) it is not sustainable which is why they went pop!

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      1. cyberduck46
        January 17, 2019 at 15:36

        They went pop because their costs exceeded their revenues and investors refused to pump more in because it didn’t look like growth at the current rates would produce profits any time soon. 
         
        In terms of PR I understand they did it in house at the end. £500K a month seems high, where do you get your figures from?
         
        In terms of SEO, eMoov have a very valuable commodity, backlinks of age with relevant anchor text and a domain that’s older than most of their rivals. I’m not sure when they started receiving relevant backlinks but their domain was first registered on 14th November 2009. How many of their rivals can ever compete with that? So in terms of SEO they’re starting from a point of authority before you consider total links and new links.
         
        You’d expect an already established company to be doing PR anyway and happy to increase it to try to maintain positions. I can assure you from experience it’s a lot harder and expensive trying to catch up with established companies when you started after them.
         
         
         

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        1. smile please
          January 17, 2019 at 15:57

          The figures have come from his ‘Interviews’ on youtube with Christopher Watkin.
          As a seller, would you sell you property with either emoov or tepilo after they have already gone out of business once and left sellers stranded?

          Report
          1. cyberduck46
            January 17, 2019 at 16:12

            Off to see if I can find where they say their PR costs were £500K a month. 
             
            >As a seller, would you sell you property with either emoov or tepilo after they have already gone out of business once and left sellers stranded?
             
            No but I might put my property on with the company that bought them depending on how well financed they are. And you’re asking me, somebody who knows they went bust. There will be many people who don’t even know eMoov & Tepilo went bust. I’m sure there are plenty of people who’ve never even heard of eMoov but when they search for “online estate agents” they are there in top position and top position gets most of the clicks.   
             

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          2. cyberduck46
            January 17, 2019 at 16:30

            OK found something with Christopher Watkin. Are you sure you’re not confusing PR with marketing or more likely their total outgoings per month? There was no mention of £500K a month in the interview I saw.   
             
            “PR takes no time at all”. “Most of the Radio stuff I do is on the phone for 5 minutes or chatting to Julia Hartley Brewer at 6 o’clock in the morning”.  
             
            PR was him and one person. They’d write the content and distribute it and ended up with between 1800 and 2000 pieces of coverage on an annual basis.   
             
            No suggestion whatsoever that PR was expensive. Quite the opposite in fact.
                   

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            1. Woodentop
              January 17, 2019 at 18:37

              Oh, oh so wrong Ducky: Each click being worth about £15 in terms of turnover.
               
              From the horses mouth:   Quirk reveals that investors’ need for rapid expansion, eye watering staff costs, huge digital marketing bills – that saw the company burn through £800,000 a month – and also being out-spent by Purplebricks. 
               
              Quirk also reveals that Emoov spent £29 million of investor cash during its eight years, raised primarily from nine rounds of funding during the final four years of trading before going into administration just before Xmas.  
               
              Quirk has expanded on this elsewhere, explaining in a blog on Friday that the cost of gaining instructions from vendors via Google and Facebook cost the company a fortune. “In the first days of Emoov, the cost per click of the term ‘online estate agents’ was between £2 and £3,” he says. “Now, it’s around £50 and with many, many more companies slicing the pie. “Google Adwords went from returning us £2 for every £1 we spent in 2011 to a negative ROI of 30p returned for every £1 spent in 2018.”

              Report
            2. Woodentop
              January 18, 2019 at 10:12

              Silence Ducky speaks volumes, jumped in with your two big feet as usual, anti-agent clap trap and found wanting. You don’t know what you are talking about, so don’t try and tell the experts what they know about their own industry.

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              1. Ostrich17
                January 18, 2019 at 14:20

                The webfooted one has yet to share his LPE knowledge on today’s main story – “Ban on referral fees paid to agents is on the cards if ‘transparency’ cannot be achieved”  
                 
                How will his precious PB ever make a profit? 🙂

                Report
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