Member Info for cyberduck

Thanks Dave789,

Where I live there was a TO and 2 LPEs under him. The LPE I dealt with was under the TO but around the time I completed on my sale my LPE told me he was getting two more under him and after that the other LPE directly under the TO would be getting two more under him. Not exactly a pyramid scheme where share of the money flows to the top but an incentive to divide the area up.

Dave789,

Thanks.

I know when I asked my LPE he said the amount varies and that each LPE could have two under them and they got a cut of the commission from these two.

What is the "viewing package"? I've never heard of that.

Dave789,

£150 seems awfully low from an average revenue per instruction of £1168 in the 2018 FY.

What's your source for the £150 figure?

This guy reckons they earned £42K a year on average in July 2017.

https://www.estateagenttoday.co.uk/breaking-news/2017/7/up-and-up-purplebricks-share-price-soars-despite-bruising-events

pepeM17,

For the UK, PB reported 64,376 listings for the FY 2018 and have just reported double digit growth of instructions resulting in 20% growth of revenue.

My proxy suggests a 13.7% growth in instructions over H1 2018 so I'll work with that seeing as we don't have the actual figure.

LPEs currently stand at 643 and the last time I checked 60 of these were lettings agents. So 583 sales agents.

So if you assume 13.7% growth for the year you end up with 73195 instructions for the year and if you divide this equally this suggests 125 instructions a year per sales LPE. I think the LPEs get something like £250 per instruction but also earn from viewing fees and commission from other products.

Looks to be quite a lot more on average than £20K. Perhaps £35K? I don't know how this compares with valuers at traditional agents though.

"Purplebricks leads the UK market in brand awareness with aided awareness of 97% and unaided awareness of 48%."

So this suggests that if you ask somebody if they've ever heard of "PurpleBricks". 97% say "yes".

Unaided brand awareness is more important though as when somebody is thinking about which Estate Agent to list with, 52% of them will probably not think of PurpleBricks.

PupleBricks have permeated into the Public's consciousness but still some way to go before they are considered as a potential Agent. So still plenty of market to chase. Something that should increase as market share increases and more "For Sale" signs appear and other types of advertising continue. The implication is that as marketing goes on it could lead to twice as many considerations.

Then of course, on top of that growth, there will/should/may be growth over time as a greater percentage of people are prepared to use an online agent.

Low in detail but it was last year too.

UK growth 20% in revenue may not be good in the context of their growth up until this point but they were showing a profit in the UK in FY18 which shows they are a different animal to the likes of Hatched & eMoov. eMoov currently looking for a buyer because their investors have drawn a line under the losses they have been experiencing and will not put any more money in.

"The challenging UK housing market is driving a shakeout in the industry, highlighting weaknesses in both some traditional and online agents business models. Against this backdrop Purplebricks continues to grow and win market share. Longer term with the best known brand in the sector, our flexible business model and the strong balance sheet, Purplebricks is well placed to further strengthen its leading UK position and replicate this success overseas."

Sain,

PB do seem to have got themselves into a pretty strong position here in the UK. Years of heavy investment, enough to pay for expensive TV advertising campaigns, have got them into a big lead on their online/hybrid competitors.

Now it looks like the competitors may be going out of business because the spoils aren't worth fighting for when they're so far behind and growth is slowing.

Meanwhile PurpleBricks, no longer in need of further investment for UK operations, can keep chipping away at the High Street competition. Maybe even putting their prices up a couple of hundred quid at some point which will all go to profit.

https://www.propertychronicle.com/broken-estate-agency-market/ makes interesting reading. An ex-director of traditional agent Connells who doesn't just slag of the online/hybrid world. One that actually seems very qualified to pass comment.

Thanks JVSOZ

Never even knew Emoov existed when I used PurpleBricks back in January 2017. I still wouldn't have known who they were if I hadn't started reading PIE articles.

As a homebuyer I plumped for PurpleBricks because of the savings of thousands of pounds on my house sale. I don't know what Emoov were charging but for the sake of a couple of hundred perhaps I was not going to even bother looking around for a cheaper option.

As a punter, PurpleBricks' TV campaign told me they were serious. All these others, playing around with PPC advertising and Search Engine Optimisation with perhaps the occasional token gesture TV advert didn't put them in the same league.

That's not a recommendation to buy. I don't own any shares but still watch with interest. At these prices, the USA needs to be a success for me. If the USA is a success then at this price they are extremely cheap. More like gambling than investing.

Hi JVSOZ,

Sounds like a tough market.

Have you experienced a market like it is now (or worse) before? Proportionally speaking, how often are markets like they are now in Oz (or worse).

I'm looking at PB's progress here in the UK after the same period of time and they just carried on growing LPEs and the number of instructions. You couldn't really describe the market over here in that time as good but it doesn't seem as bad as in Oz.

I'm trying to work out why it's been so different in Oz. Can the UK expect the same for PBUK in a worse market than we have now? Or are there other factors at large in Oz? I know there have been a few UK companies that have tried their hand overseas and failed.

Hi JVSOZ,

Interesting points.

Why do you think it was so difficult getting 3 out of 9 of your appointments to sign up? Did you find that other agents were overvaluing to win the instruction? Or had other agents been misleading the homeowners about PurpleBricks? I imagine there's a fair bit of this going on here in the UK.

>It's a tough market for sure, but the way they operate is flawed on so many levels.

Hi JVSOZ,

PB certainly seem to be struggling to find a model that works in Oz but that's not for the want of trying. I think they've changed their pricing twice and recently changed to part up front and part on completion.

You never know, if and when you prove your own model then perhaps they will copy that :)

This morning I was comparing the current list of LPEs for Oz with the ones back on 11th March. Only 58 of the 101 remain. I notice you've got a few other ex-PB LPEs working with you.

Certainly interesting times.

Paulislong, it appears as though PB are growing market share in the UK, albeit slowly. Do you dispute this? If not then why do you think they won't be around much longer?

Steve Morgan “there is no doubt that clarity over Brexit and the future of Help to Buy would improve market sentiment. Given that clarity, we will continue to deliver”

They now know where they stand with Help to Buy and enough certainty over Brexit can't be too far off.

>SDLT rate is typically fixed as at the date that contracts are exchanged

Thanks James. I hadn't appreciated that.

>The Government also said it will publish a consultation in January on a Stamp Duty surcharge of 1% for non-residents buying residential property in England and Northern Ireland.

This isn't good for TEF.

An article in the Independent back in September suggested the 1% could rise to 3%. See https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/conservative-conference-stamp-duty-foreign-uk-home-buyers-theresa-may-housing-crisis-a8561136.html

You aren't going to want to buy off plan if you think there might be an extra 3% on the price when you complete in 3 years time. The uncertainty of it all is not good.

>So numbers are up, and the current recruitment is not really fresh.

Thanks.

Back up to 100 in Oz.

653 in the UK.

I think the main impact for TEF is homebuyers being put off by all the news coverage. The 24 hour news providers love a story they can hammer to death but I'm hoping once an initial agreement is reached the public get fed up and return to normal. After all how long can you keep predicting the end of the world and then giving new deadlines?

Also, CRST Executive Chairman bought £450K of shares at £3.029p each yesterday.