It’s been another hectic week for the industry, here is what has caught our eye.

First: Tough week?

It’s been a tough week for Purplebricks.

Its share price tumbled following a negative review from City analysts Jefferies on Monday and then it ended the week with revelations that there had been a rush to get its local property experts registered with a redress scheme.

EYE readers were particularly intrigued.

Addressing the City analyst report, NeilKMorgan32 said: “Don’t be too quick to write off the share price. There are plenty of people who don’t understand the market who will buy these shares.  Facebook and Twitter’s numbers didn’t add up but that didn’t stop their shares going through the roof. If Purplebricks keep up the marketing spend and retaining first mover status people will back them based on a bigger fool buying them.”

Responding to the news that Purplebricks LPEs hadn’t registered with redress schemes, nextchapter pondered: “Tell me if I’m wrong, but if they are all self-employed, they all have to individually become members of the property ombudsman, then surely they must individually have their own Rightmove memberships.

“This whole scenario really needs to be followed up and looked into and it will be really testing for TPO and Rightmove etc, as it how seriously they actually take this stuff.”

 Second: 24/7

That is the frequency at which online agent Hatched plans to offer viewings.

The firm’s founder Adam Day told EYE, “24/7 viewings is something we are trialling at the moment in order to better service our customers.

“It’s very early days in the trial, so only a fraction of clients have added this service to their listing at this moment in time, but we expect uptake to increase over the coming weeks.

“We think we’re the first agent, online or otherwise, to be able to offer customers a genuine 24/7 accompanied viewings service, if they want it – it’s just one of a number of innovative products and services that we’re currently looking at.”

GlennAckroyd was quick to point out that he has done this for years,

He said: “However no-one wants to visit a house to view at 3 am in the morning strangely enough. Most of our ‘out of hours’ viewings range from around 7am – 9pm, including weekends.

“48% of online chat and 39% of our phone calls to book viewings are out of hours including through the night but there is a big drop off in calls between 11pm and 7am as you’d expect.

IndAgent quipped: “Gosh. Imagine a no show at 3am.”

Third: Conveyancing process

A long running debate over who is responsible for hold ups in the buying process has been reignited on The Arena forums,

One post from Emmersons46, who appears to be from a solicitor, said: “In essence the issue is resolved through empathy. Estate agents need to understand the regulatory framework surrounding-some might say, choking, solicitors and develop other techniques to establish the state of play which don’t involve daily or even thrice daily requests for information which their client already knows.

“Start with the client-and if the client isn’t being kept informed, tell the client to raise merry hell with the solicitor and if dissatisfied at the response or continued failure, to make a complaint to the Legal Ombudsman.

“Just because you are acting for a mutual client places no obligation on a solicitor to communicate with you and indeed there are rules which we say the solicitor must not.

Smileplease replied: “If we just ‘left it to the solicitors’ as requested the process would take far longer than the already ridiculous 12 weeks as standard.

“For conveyancers not to even acknowledge the industry has a problem is in itself the biggest problem.

“Given that conveyancers can (and often in my experience) receive inquiries or need to reply to enquirers and can sit on the desk of said conveyancer for a week upwards without being looked at, this is why we need to chase conveyancers to make sure the chain remains firm.”