Property classifieds and services website The House Shop has already raised more than half of its crowdfunding target as it put its campaign live to the wider public yesterday.
It is looking to give away 4.76% of equity in its business and gives itself a controversial valuation of £10m.
The campaign was first launched privately among pre-selected investors last week and has now raised £254,450 as a 30-day public campaign began yesterday
The site – founded by Nick Marr and Sebastien Goldenberg in 2016 – lets landlords, agents and private sellers list for free and offers extra services such as tenant referencing and property maintenance.
The House Shop’s pitch says it has added 3.3m properties since launch, has more than 20,000 landlords and is the UK’s fourth biggest property website.
It said: “Our ambition is to be the natural choice for every player in the residential property market throughout the UK and beyond.
“Our model is built to complement existing titans like Rightmove and Zoopla, providing a free to use, easy to navigate, secure and trusted choice for everyone.”
Crowdcube users had already queried its valuation though, with one post asking: “Can you please explain, you have placed a £10m valuation on a business that has a turnover of £180,000 in 2017/8 and created a loss of £700,000.
“That is 55x turnover, which seems very optimistic. On forecast 2018/9 revenue of £240,000, that is a 41x turnover multiple, still quite high.”
The House Shop replied: “After consulting with our investors and advisors we decided that a £10m pre-funding valuation was both accurate and fair.
“The figure is based on the size of the addressable market, the potential return on investment, the products already deployed, the website traffic, our search engine optimisation which puts us on first page of Google for more than 4m search terms and the scope of the platform we have already created.”
Meanwhile online agent 99home is into the final nine days of its Crowdcube campaign and is already over its £295,000 target, having raised £348,670 from 175 investors.
https://www.crowdcube.com/companies/thehouseshop/pitches/bdYMmq#_=_
https://www.crowdcube.com/companies/99home-co-uk/pitches/qDmePl
“That is 55x turnover, which seems very optimistic. On forecast 2018/9 revenue of £240,000, that is a 41x turnover multiple, still quite high.”
How much could you raise if you turnover £4m and make a profit of £750k.? I think you would be lucky to get £3.5m for it in the current market. Add some potential for growth you might be really lucky and get 10x profit, which is not quite 2x turnover. So yes 41x is still quite high!! When does reality kicks in? when the investors realise they have been conned. the worrying thing is it all seems legal.
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Have just put my cats bottom on crowdfund R’ us
Have raised £1m in five minutes!
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These crowdfunds should come with a Gov’t Health Warning.
It was only a few months ago that the request for funding on Crowdcube by Emoov which was enthusiastically received by investors was oversubscribed.
It was only in August that Quirk said
“Scaling us up to number two made us more investible and our competitors less investible … and there were an awful lot of synergies between us and Tepilo. … They didn’t have a complete senior management team, which we did”
“”Quirk says the merged company now wins around 1,000 listings per month “but we see that very much as Ground Zero … we think that will double over the next 12 months or so.”
Neither of these statements have proved to be true as it failed to gain traction
99 Home Ltd
Latest accounts only recently arrived at Companies House shows shareholders funds as a negative balance https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/10469887/filing-history No disrespect to the co-founder who has 10 years in the game and has recently announced enthusiastically in their usual literary style his NAEA accreditation but most agents do that first not as an afterthought !
“Dear all, I am pleased to inform you, Sachin Gupta, one of 99home co-founder has passed NAEA qualification. After tenant fees ban, education for estate agents may be the second point big point where a non- qualified agent won’t be able to practice.
We know the importance of qualified estate agents hence we are now in process of obtaining the NAEA (National Association of Estate Agents) as our co-founder/director Mr Sachin Gupta is fully qualified for it. With so many online estate agents to choose from, it can be a complicated challenge knowing who to choose.
There are many points to consider when looking for an estate agent for selling your property, but there is a simple way of finding an estate agent whom you can trust. Knowing that NAEA agents are qualified & follow the right code of practice becomes an easier choice. It is always good to find an agent that is a member of a professional body and this is why NAEA is so important when you need to find your ideal agent.”
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It beggars belief people can be so stupid/blind. It only takes a look back at Purplebricks share journey this year to see that on-line is not a business that can make a profit to give a return, UNLESS they hike their fees at which point, there is no point
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Given that Emoov paid £3m for Urban which was doing £40k per month it must be worth £100m!
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I did a search for my area = 4 properties …. not a single advert was compliant with legislation, 2 were for a lodger, one looked like a bogus listing as it only linked back to home page and the fourth was asking gross and I mean gross over valued … no wonder it is available. The quality of the listings .. well, shall we say limited quality?
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Has anyone actually looked at the site?? What an absolute load of cr*p. The ads just redirect you through to another portal. Is it just me or this site completely pointless???
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They’ve scraped some of our properties without permission and I have asked for them to be removed immediately. Why would I want to support a portal that encourages FSBO? I suggest everyone check and do the same.
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It looks like most properties are being scraped from home[dot]co[dot]uk – perhaps they have some agreement with them?
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I’m not sure that means they have an agreement with me!
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They don’t !
Either they have scraped the Home website or they have a feed from it ?
I think Home scrape agent’s websites daily or several times a week.
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It is looking to give away 4.76% of equity in its business and gives itself a controversial valuation of £10m.
https://scdownloader.io
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