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Tomorrow we will see if the poor investigative journalism by Watchdog has had any affect on the number of listings in the 24 hours since the broadcast. Shares prices go up and down but it's the future of the business that is crucial unless you're investing for the short term or a day trader. PB have issued a statement https://pbprodcms.azureedge.net/media/1880/draft-bbc-statement-v1-170802-final.pdf

See how you avoided the question there :)

I signed up with PurpleBricks and it was quite clear you could either pay up front or you deferred payment for a maximum of 10 months on the condition that you use a certain conveyancer. It was also clear that PurpleBricks were paid immediately and that you had to pay a third party. I don't remember seeing that company being named but as soon as I saw I would be tied to a particular conveyancer I opted to pay immediately so I didn't read all the details. The signup process is interactive. i.e. you make a choice and you are taken to the next step based on that choice. You are far more likely to understand what you are agreeing to than if you are presented with a written contract like Estate Agents do whilst they're sitting there waiting for you to sign. Just read this on EstateAgent Today. "The Property Ombudsman has told Estate Agent Today that it is happy with the controversial deferred payment scheme operated on behalf of Purplebricks, which was the subject of a BBC Watchdog investigation." I was reading the other week about an elderly lady who was charged £4000 by her Agent who had failed to sell her property in 18 months. She then sold it to her son and was charged £4000 by the Agent. If she'd understood her agreement with them she could have simply written to them giving notice of termination. So if you've had more than 50,000 customers you're going to get people complaining about all sorts of things they claim they weren't told. I've sold 5 properties in my lifetime and no agent has ever achieved the valuation price. I'm very familiar with being told to reduce the asking price. Let's not kid ourselves unless it's an expensive property it really isn't in the Estate Agent's interest to risk losing an offer by trying to haggle over a couple of thousand. Better to forego the £30, get the "Sold" sign up and improve the "average time on market" stats. Did anybody notice when Mr. Bruce was insisting that all customers were made aware about the credit arrangement the interviewer didn't let him finish and changed the subject. So what else was there? An Estate Agent was found to be exaggerating. Mr. Bruce should have said "I've told them a thousand times not to exaggerate" :) Oh, and an email template that hadn't been updated. If you look at their current website you can actually enter a comparative commission rate (that's if you can get an Estate Agent to tell you what their typical commission rate is) and put the value of the property in, so you can see the saving you could make. So even Milly should be happy with that.

Hey Milly, anybody would think you hold a grudge or are green with envy :) I imagine we won't be hearing from you for a while if there isn't a sell off.

Milly, If I was quoted £400 to fix my car but somebody said to me I can fix 2 out of 3 cars for £100 I'd probably risk the £100. 66% chance of saving £300, 33% chance of paying £100 too much. You know it makes sense :)

Most of them think that if the share price drops the company will fail :)

What will the public's reaction be? I tend to think it won't make any difference. Who trusts Estate Agents anyway?

Didn't read it all but I don't agree with this statement "The Brexiteers convinced enough of the electorate that we needed only to be set free from Europe, with its tiresome regulations, restrictions and pesky immigrants, to become a proud, swashbuckling, dominant and richer country again." For me a significant proportion of the leave vote was one of protest about that persons own circumstances and their views (correct or not) on how allowing immigration could be beneficial or not to them. Nothing to do with becoming a dominant and richer country.

https://youtu.be/2D9Bieh6PVY

They must be confident of the outlook and so must the UK and US investors lending the funds.

Thanks.

Ionic, Who do you use for your sell short orders? I was in the process of setting up an account (corporate) with IG Index a while back but didn't fancy sending my passport & company documentation abroad. I think it was Singapore where they wanted me to send it. Are there any other companies who you can sell PB short with? UK based ones preferably.

Interesting bulletin from NatWest. 10 times average earnings in London compared to 7 times in 2007! This is skewing the national figure which is close to the 2007 ratio but most areas outside London are actually quite a bit lower than the 2007 ratio for that area. In 2007 the affordability for the West Midlands was about 70% of the London figure. Now it's about 50%. I'm not sure this necessarily means that prices will continue to rise outside London though. My own experience based on house price movement locally (North West) over the years is that prices lag London when they are rising but don't appear to when they are not rising in London. If a significant number of jobs do leave London then this could affect the average earnings and the ratio could go even higher even if prices don't rise.

Ionic, like you said earlier a small float and a steady stream of positive news and good marketing of the brand seem to be driving the share price. Timing the correction is the tricky bit. When will the momentum stop? When will there be bad news?

James, I appreciate that TEF & PB are at opposite ends of the spectrum. After I posted I realised that it's probably too early to be talking about the Greystar deal because it's dependent on planning permission. Just some guidance for 2020 would be of interest though.

Getting a bit fed up hearing about 2018 & 2019. They've been talking about these years forever. How about some guidance for 2020? How about a trading update related to the huge deal they pulled off recently? I'm sorry for being impatient, I've been spoiled by watching PurpleBricks. Every time they have a press announcement (even when it's just repeating something from the annual statement a couple of weeks earlier) their shares rise 5% :)

https://www.estateagenttoday.co.uk/breaking-news/2017/7/fees-agencys-complaint-about-purplebricks-upheld-by-watchdog It will be interesting to see how the market reacts to this decision. There are likely to be more decisions in the pipeline too as Estate Agents are pretty upset by PB's adverts and are always claiming wrongdoing. CIELA were saying the other day that they were receiving weekly updates from the ASA in regard to their complaint about the "commissery" TV adverts https://thenegotiator.co.uk/ciela-purplebricks-asa/. Given the reasoning from ASA for upholding the complaint against PB I would imagine they will also uphold the one from CIELA. Whilst the ASA don't have any real power (https://www.theguardian.com/media/2009/oct/26/which-advertising-lucy-barrett) the potential problems are damage to the image and that Trading Standards may get involved. I'm not convinced that a sleazy image would be too much of a problem as I think the Public have always thought that Estate Agents are sleazy. I think the public would just prefer to pay £850 rather than £4000. I don't think the public are as stupid as traditional Estate Agents try and make out. I suppose a lot depends on how the mainstream media reacts.

>Dont think any profession takes the moral high ground here True but the way some Estate Agents talk about PB clients having to pay when they don't sell you'd think that the clients don't sign a contract. In fact when i signed the contract with PB it was easier to read than the ones I've seen from Estate Agents and you actively have to select choices whereas the contracts I've signed with Estate Agents have always been in tiny print. In the case presented you don't know whether the solicitor knew there was a contract with an Agent when the old lady sold to her son. Perhaps the solicitor only got told later on that the property had been on the market when asked to transfer title.

Yes I noticed the lower than usual listing numbers. I see some areas of the country being a problem and PB need to decide whether to service those areas or not because poor reviews is not what they need. I was just reading the case of an old lady charged £4000 by her agent when after 18 months of no sale she sold the property to her son. http://www.propertyindustryeye.com/elderly-woman-charged-agents-commission-after-property-failed-to-sell-allegation/

Sain, You are right, there will be some areas of the country where it just won't work for the LPE unless it is perhaps somebody who is happy with a few instructions per month which isn't out of the question. On the other hand there are still areas like where I am where the LPEs are having to cover a too large area and are taking on new recruits which makes their own lives easier. They are dividing up based on postcode and are not competing with each other. I think (but am not sure) it is an LPE's own choice whether they allocate any of their territory to somebody else. I read the other day that PB have increased their training to cater for 100 new LPE's a month and that they have a lot of candidates. They have increased their guidance for 2018 UK revenue to £80M. My main concern is that the forecast returns per LPE has not been achieved with the current results and once the optimal number of LPEs (from a business perspective) for the country is reached the actual revenue and profits will also be less than forecast and growth from that point will be hard won and not come mainly from adding LPEs but solely from taking business off traditional Estate Agents. PB have said themselves that their recruitment is well ahead of projections but income was lower and also marketing costs were higher. If you look at Hardman's estimates they were predicting 41000 instructions from an average of 275 LPEs for 2017. For 2020 they were predicting 100000 instructions from an average of 590 LPEs with turnover of £115M. EPS was estimated at 15.6p but that included a healthy turnover of £35.5M from Oz. Well we're already at 584 LPEs and look as though they're ramping up recruitment and the guidance from the company is £80M for 2018. Hardman's valuation of the UK & OZ businesses was £2.00 per share rising to £4 after 2-3 years of ticking boxes along the way. It looks to me that although the business is racing ahead in terms of value and fundamentals you have to be a bit concerned as the UK business might get to where it's going quicker but it might not be as high as originally hoped.