Online estate agent Yopa has reduced staff headcount, resulting in a total of 16 departures including that of its national sales director.
Kane Henessy spent over two and a half years with Yopa, joining from prominent midlands independent firm Newman, where he was branch partner.
Initially Yopa’s regional director for the west midlands, Henessy was swiftly promoted to national sales director in April 2017.
However, his departure has now been among those confirmed as the result of a review which has also led to some restructuring. A spokesperson for Yopa said: “Sixteen people have left the business as a result of these changes.”
Yesterday, Yopa chief executive Ben Poynter told EYE:
“Yopa is a young business that has grown very quickly to become one of the largest estate agents in the country.
“We have made a good start to 2019, achieving double digit listing growth in a market when many others are experiencing declines.
“As we continue to grow we regularly review our business, reshaping teams and investing in areas that help us deliver our goals – ensuring we are best placed to deliver an amazing home moving experience for our customers.
“As a result of a recent review, we have reduced headcount within certain teams while reshaping some teams’ roles and responsibilities.
“A consequence of these changes is that Kane Henessy has left the business.
“Kane has contributed a huge amount since he joined but, as we look to push forward to our next phase of growth, we’ve taken the decision to change the leadership in our sales function.
“We wish Kane all the best for the future.
“Nevertheless, it remains business as usual for most of our teams, and our customers will not be affected. We expect to have a similar average headcount in 2019 as we had in 2018.
“What’s more, we are fully committed to driving the business forward and we continuing to invest where we see opportunities for growth and to enhance our offering.”
It is not known what Yopa’s headcount was in 2018, but according to the last accounts for Yopa Property filed at Companies House, in 2017 it had 97 people on the payroll.
Yopa’s directors are Alistair and Andrew Barclay, Poynter, former CEO Daniel Attia who is now chairman of the company, Ian Crabb, the CEO of LSL, and Manuel De Carvalho, CEO of dmg ventures, the venture capital arm of the Daily Mail & General Trust.
Yopa’s backers include the owners of the Daily Mail, Savills and LSL. LSL recently wrote down its £20m investment in Yopa to £7.8m.
Comments (27)
I feel bad for 15 of those however, Kane Henessy is back stabbing that is why he lost his position, he does wear his heart on his sleeve but all for selfish reasons. Some agents didn’t have two pennies to rub together and he would brag about his new Ferrari or Lamborghini or how many women he meets from Instagram, or which house he was going to buy.
I wish everyone at Yopa well as most of them are brilliant.
I see TODAY PB share price is jumping up and down faster than a yoyo with no gains, below its opening price this morning. Oh dear it looks like no-one is wanting to play ….. confidence has been lost ….. no longer in favour with the city …. a liability to pump anymore money in when the way ahead is looking grimmer by the day, senior management abandoning ship, the housing market in decline (the gravey train is in decline), Brexit fiasco (PB customer service claim this is why they are not selling listed properties!!!), escalating number of LPE’s leaving, still no declaration of a dividend ….. oh dear not looking good for the share price to climb, all the liabilities about to arrive from OZ and the USA and the major international investment banks now saying sell and down valuing share price to £1.00 to 80p. Shareholders demanding answers! Will its cash reserve be wiped out in a blink … it will if it continues to spend as it is. Has all the signs of an earlier end.
What do the protagonists of Call Centre Listers (we are all online!) not understand about the value most vendors place in experience, expertise and full service?
BSOS23PC
‘We have made a good start to 2019, achieving double digit listing growth in a market when many others are experiencing declines.’
What an absolute joke of a statement from a chief executive you thought would understand the concept of business.
They charge peanuts to sell a home.
They take this low fee on sold in addition to a even lower fee option upfront.
They have millions in advertising budget including a professional, Olympic medal winning athlete
Listing is not a problem – actually selling people’s homes and making a profit seems to be a massive problem.
If you couldn’t list homes with the above structure there would be no hope for you and you should not even call yourself an estate agent.
P.s I wish my mortgage lender and the kid’s school would accept growth as payment each month!
I think what could make quite a big difference for the industry is if traditional agents were made to publish how they charge. Once they get behind closed doors they can get away with saying what they want about onliners and their competitors.
Something else that has crossed my mind would be for the onliners to employ house sellers, perhaps via a third trusted party, and for them to arrange valuations from traditional agents to record and make notes of what is said about onliners in private. Bring this information into the public domain.
Somebody I know had HouseSimple around the other day who are offering free marketing. They subsequently spoke to a traditional agent and they suggested there must be some catch and also said that in their experience anything you get for free typically wasn’t very good.
Onliners need to up their game. They need to compile information on what is being said about them. Produce answers to those claims and leave this information with vendors when they provide their valuations.
Oh cyberduck, you really have excelled yourself with that comment. Here, have a dislike. No really, my pleasure.
Having a bad hair day. I recall you said you worked on facts and had no allegiances to on-liners. This mornings little rant sounds like it! Up their game …. FACT they are all failing and either gone out of business or about to and reviews are exposing how bad they really are.
So this is the sort of business and behaviour you support …..
https://uk.trustpilot.com/reviews/5cd2bf05a8436908c414ebbb
No, no, no – this one:
https://uk.trustpilot.com/reviews/5cd4aed6a8436908c415d85d
Another one for a regional manager to apologise to.
No sensible vendor will use an agent who slags off their competitors (however, nothing wrong with educating them about the difference between traditional agency and the callcentre/FSBO market).
As for House Simple, let’s hope they have received further funding and are really going after PB’s share of the callcentre lister/FSBO market. With the Bruce management team being culled and YOPA also in turmoil, it’s feeding time at the cannibal zoo.
Sometimes word are just better kept in your head.
Cyber duck, you really are clutching at straws! How you can have the audacity to proclaim that real agents are in someway conning the public is laughable.
Online agents from the get go have done nothing but tell big fat juicy lies, that’s how you got any business, along with millions of other people’s money. Face it, it’s over for online pretenders. The amount of you lot that have gone bust this year is the tip of the purple iceberg, and you know it. I suspect once PB do themselves a favour and roll over we will never hear from you again. Tick tock…..
It is important to note just how much effort and how many column inches have been used to promote online disruption in the Telegraph.
I am convinced a lot of the investment and all of the group-think reinforcement that allowed respected agencies to invest time, money and reputation in testing disruption has come from them all reading the same newspaper and all being in a very tight network all operating at a given social strata.
Estate agency is a service industry, the financial difference between an uncontested internet sale and an applicant register sale is going to err on averaging £29,000, (a forced sale figure on the average transaction price of £290k)
Vendors aren’t stupid, the majority own a home because they are doing something different to those who don’t, they might not be smarter but they have thought things through. People who own home and are selling are smart enough to understand that saving on average £2500 does not compare with missing out on £29K.
In my book expecting smart people to be stupid isn’t a firm foundation for any business, expecting them to punt a years salary on a months wages isn’t something the vast majority will ever consider.
FSBO does have a place but it isn’t anything like the % that will make the model viable.
This sort of news just makes my day and confirms what we, us traditional agents, know. You cannot sell a home for less than a £1,000. If you are attempting to do so, you will be out of business in the short term, fact. Do the maths. Work out your monthly costs associated with running this business. Then, estimate how long it will take you to sell a home (on average) and then, the time taken to get it through from sale to completion. Oh, and by the way, you will only “probably” sell half of your stock.
Sorry for the sermon, but hopefully this will help the “disruptors” launching their new cheapo “oh so innovative” new business “model” on here, when evidence clearly now shows that it just won’t work. The divvies with more money than sense will look for another bubble to invest in and then it will leave the rest of us to get back to normal, looking after our customers properly and earning a reasonable living in the process!
Happy Friday Everyone!
“Kane has contributed a huge amount (of cost) since he joined but, as we look to push forward to our next phase of growth, we’ve taken the decision to change the leadership in our sales function” because we love him and want to give him the opportunity to progress (elsewhere)
I do that with all my best employees especially when we are achieving double-digit growth and making lots of money!
Does this mean he’s selling his lamborghini?
The need to lay people off is a sign of a growing and strong business!!
Yeah, thanks for that Yopa, but I won’t be investing though!
“We have made a good start to 2019, achieving double digit listing growth in a market when many others are experiencing declines.”
Totally meaningless and incomprehensible statement.
What exactly does ‘double digit listing growth’ mean in terms of real numbers?
Last April we list 2 properties this April we listed 3 properties that gives us a 50% increase year on year or double digit growth.
Stats mean nothing, smoke and mirrors, it’s a failing business.
Exactly SP.
Exactly SP.
Exactly…but you cant afford the tv adverts to lie about it = They win
Thing is they cannot afford the TV adverts, Press and PPC click which is why they will fail. Just not sustainable.
Even Quirky admitted when they stopped the media, press and PPC all enquiries dried up.
Gosh!!! Everyones leaving these FSBO sites. They finally worked out that not going to make any real profit.
‘One of the largest estate agents in the country’…. but the smallest agent in every town they operate in: The online lie in a nutshell.
Also bricks saying they sell quicker then the top 10 agents… top 10 or largest 10 ?
Interesting . So the CEO of LSL goes into a yopa meeting saying estate agents charge to much and are scum… gets in his range rover and walks into MArsh and parsons, yourmove etc , saying YOPA are a waste of time and also scum…
Which cake will be eaten first?
You Rat