An online estate agency group has raised over £500,000 from 77 investors, with 54 days of its crowd-funding campaign still to go.
The company insists that the future of the industry is online, and that it is doing better than Purplebricks.
MyHomeGroup launched its bid last Wednesday and is looking to raise £750,000 on Seedrs in return for almost 16% equity. The business said it expects to hit target within a fortnight.
It claims to be more successful than Purplebricks, Yopa and Doorsteps, in terms of sell and let times, while claiming that almost 5,000 agents have shut since 2015, and that the future of the industry is online.
MyHomeGroup values itself at almost £4m pre-money, and consists of three businesses – SellMyHome, RentMyHome and ManageMyHome.
Calling itself the UK’s number one online estate agency group, it has a five-star Trustpilot rating and says it operates in a market worth an estimated £10bn.
The business was founded in 2013 and says it will use the money raised to grow the business, adding: “We aim for exit opportunities to trade buyers, private equity businesses of the stock market.”
Of the 77 investors (as of yesterday) so far, the biggest is Guinness Asset Management Enterprise Investment Scheme, which has contributed £400,000.
Guinness Asset Management EIS is an earlier investor, said to have made an earlier multi-million pound investment in the company in the first quarter of last year.
MyHomeGroup is headed by managing director Will Clark, formerly a Knight Frank agent.
Last December, it emerged that as part of a restructure, five members of staff had left MyHomeGroup.
SellMyHome has three packages – £575 for the DIY services, £875 for a home selling package, and £1,999 for no sale, no fee.
All the packages include listing on Rightmove and Zoopla.
Yesterday on Rightmove, there were 181 available properties on SellMyHome for sale.
EYE asked for a comment on the latest fund-raising round, and we were told: “The group are providing an opportunity to invest in three different brands: SellMyHome.co.uk, RentMyHome.co.uk and ManageMyHome.co.uk, servicing UK residential sales, lettings and property management.
“The structure of the business allows the group to thrive and remain versatile to the seasonality and changing market conditions.
“The crowd-funding campaign, launched July 3, has already gained momentum in reaching the target figure. The company is offering 15.9% equity in the business, and founder Will Clark expects to be 100% funded within the next fortnight.
“The three brands offer significantly more attractive rates than their high-street competitors, allowing landlords to save £2,000 on average per year, and saving sellers £6,000 on average per property.
“They do this by offering a tech-driven approach, which enables them to benefit from economies of scale, introducing new service lines and increased cross-sell opportunities.
“Proceeds from this funding round will go towards further developing a centralised platform – a one-stop shop – for all property transactions.
“MyHomeGroup Ltd has reduced their marketing cost per customer in 2019 across all three brands to £90, with over 35% of their custom coming through word-of-mouth referrals.
“Furthermore, they are able to boast a quicker let/sale-agreed time than Purplebricks, Yopa and Doorsteps, according to Rightmove data.”
The statement quotes Clark, as saying: “Nearly 5,000 estate agents have shut down since 2015 and almost 4% of all shops closed in 2018.
“This, compounded with the fact that 98% of buyers are looking on Rightmove and Zoopla for their next move, further indicates the future is online.
“It’s a huge market to overcome, so we never expected the industry to flip on its head within a couple of years. However the evidence suggests the need for a more efficient and credible way of managing all property transactions.
“It’s no secret that we’ve been operating in a tough market for the last 18 months yet the business continues to show considerable year-on-year growth, bucking the trend of the overall sector.”
He said: “Much like the hare vs tortoise, we have nurtured our way to become leading brands in the online sector and firmly believe we have laid the foundations to be market leaders.
“With such distinctive and strong brand names we recognised, since inception, the need to deliver best-in-class customer service. With this in mind we have focused on sustainable, organic growth and we’re now beginning to reap the rewards of consistently being the UK’s No.1 rated online agency group.
“Furthermore, the natural consolidation in the market has given us an opportunity for substantial growth over the coming years.”
Comments (25)
So one investor who is already in for a few hundred K puts in another 400k. An investor who can afford to lose. Does that mean 76 investors only raised 100k between them?
There’s an easy way to kill off all these online agents, LEAVE RM and that’s leaves them with only on-liners. job done!
Dear SellMyHome
Your Ts & Cs that you ask customers to carefully read and accept are out of date.
According to the LinkedIn profile your Data Controller has not worked for you for over six months.
Oh – and when you refer to ‘him’ in said Ts & Cs, the person is actually a her.
But luckily people don’t read Ts & Cs so you should be okay…
Oh – and your Complaints page link doesn’t work.
Nice work PeeBee
That was a quick flick-through, fluter.
There’s a reason this shower and other onliners don’t have offices, who hasn’t worked high street and had a moaning vendor in, it focuses the mind and is something you want to resolve or bin off if they’re not listening asap without influencing other clients or team members as its happening, easy to disregard an email or IM, ah sod it put it on the internet take the money move on, same goes for online lawyers or those bucket shops with a ” fee earner” and minions below, buy cheap buy twice and retard the efforts of everybody else around you that know what they’re doing.
And then I get a promo email from PIE ” maximise your earnings with minimum effort ” sheesh.
And now another one from PIE 4 hours later promoting Zoopla, I don’t want emails every 4 hours thank you
Wow, yet another new entrant whose fatuous claims PIE seems to take at face value. Apparently they can save a landlord £2,000 per annum, yet a simple check on their website shows that they charge almost exactly the same as we do here in Cheshire for an average property yet without inspections and almost twice our price for a tenant find service. Do these people pay for the advertising here?
Cheshire Agent
EYE takes nothing at face value. It reports what is being said. What your potential clients are being told, or seeing on screen.
To be forewarned is to be forearmed. You should be thanking Frau Renshaw, not berating her.
I think that is Cheshire Agent‘s point. The article jiggles around with what was said, but was MyHomeGroup asked how they calculated the numbers they are presenting to potential clients and investors?
PeeBee
aSalesAgent reiterates my point. We keep seeing these stories where press releases are regurgitated through journalistic newsfeeds. If PIE aims to be a voice for the industry and not just a classifieds board then I believe it should hold all parties to account and challenge in some way rather than simply throwing it online as clickbait for its readers. The challenge is not purely for online entrants but for all agents across the industry.
As to your first point surely reporting what has been said without question is to take it at face value?
You just know that if you were cryogenically frozen and defrosted in a hundred years that one of the first headlines you’d read would say, ‘The future of estate agency is online.’
‘The future is online.’ Umm.. I don’t know a single estate agent that isn’t already online! Estate agents set up websites and submitted their properties to the property portals years ago, that was the past!
If, however, Mr Clark is suggesting that the future is entirely online without the need for the traditional, personal, hands-on approach whereby people buy from people, then he is severely mistaken. He really should have realised that while he was fortunate to work at Knight Frank. Look at their profits compared to any other low-value, low-service agent.
The low-value market is shrinking as vendors start to realise that going away with the most money in your pocket after fees etc is more important than cheap fees. Therein lies the difference. If they can enjoy a good service as well, all the better. Vendors don’t want to market their property cheap, projecting a homeowner that cuts corners on a very expensive asset, attracting cheap buyers who make cheap offers.
There are paintings and works of art worth £235,000. These, if not sold privately, sell publicly at auction. Why is it, do you suppose, that these aren’t offered on eBay? If you’re lucky to have a painting worth hundreds of thousands of pounds, you’re highly likely to be intelligent and successful. So why do these savvy vendors choose instead to pay around 20% commission instead using an auction house that markets it for what its worth and therefore attracts high bids, often in excess of its guide price? Because they’re quids in!
If you decide to sell cheap then you risk selling cheap… if at all!
Not that i would call anyone a liar, but not sure how a vendor is saving £6000. The average selling price in the uk is around £230k, average fee is what around 1% inc vat these days, there are charging two grand inc vat presumably, so if there is a saving it amounts to a couple of hundred quid.
Not to mention a £2k saving for landlords each year too! Maybe here in London but most of the country would be delighted if they could get £2k to let out a property- let alone earn enough that an agent could offer a client a saving of £2k. If you take a national average of £700 pcm and a fee of 12% that’s a fee (inc VAT) of £1008- so they are apparently paying their landlords £1k a year to ensure they generate the claimed savings of £2k.
“I am the best”
love from Spartacus
No, I am Sparticus!
No, No, No. WE are Spartacus
Oh God, please make it stop. It’s like Groundhog Day with all these utterly deluded people lining up to relieve the gullible of their cash.
Do these investors learn nothing?
For the sake of your own purse strings do your home work. There is no money in cheap bargain bucket call centre agency, if there was all the big chains would have simply converted?
Go and find a Ponzi, far better odds of a return on investment!
Just a quick one…
How can they be worth £4m, when a quick check shows liabilities of over £2.7m?
I value myself at £100m… because … I said so. So there!
SetFiretoMyMoney.co.uk