Hybrid agent YOPA is upping the stakes in the online sector after appointing advertising agency Publicis UK – with a new national TV advertising campaign now under way.
The campaign, consisting of three 30-second adverts and starring the ‘Village People’, underlines the benefits to house sellers of using YOPA. The ads make a connection between Y-O-P-A and Y-M-C-A.
Savills led a £16m funding round to back YOPA, which launched in January this year and whose three directors are Daniel Attia together with Alistair Barclay and Andrew Barclay, sons of the Telegraph owners.
YOPA claims that its valuation requests have more than quadrupled since launch, with instructions up fivefold since February. The firm is conducting a nationwide recruitment drive for more local property agents.
Attia, co-founder and chief executive of YOPA, said: “We loved Publicis’ energy and refreshing approach.
“We’re incredibly excited about our upcoming advertising campaign and are confident that it will significantly boost public awareness of YOPA’s service, propelling the brand to the next level.”
Guy Wieynk, chief executive of Publicis UK and Western Europe said: “We’re delighted to be working with a game-changing brand such as YOPA.
“Like them, we were surprised that the property market has not moved on more quickly from its current high street format with the advent of the internet.
“After all, nearly every other sector has evolved and changed: banking, insurance, travel and retail to name but four.
“We’re looking forward to highlighting how some of the unnecessary pain of moving house can easily be avoided.”
Savills itself has just launched its debut TV advertising campaign.
This is great,
Hybrids are changing the industry quicker than the traditional high street agent can blink.
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“Pal” Hahahahahahahaha.
Ha.
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can I join in?
Ah ha ha ha! ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!……..ah ha ha….ha ..ha haaa!
ooo, that was a good laugh.
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I can’t resist this is too funny.
Go on Hybrid Agent,
Tell me just one thing hybrid agents have done to shape the industry?
Here is a list of issues with pay up front / hybrid agents.
* Poor staff – number do this as a second job, they are not professional, they are the agents that have bounced round from agent to agent over the years and have run out of places to go.
* Expensive – What incentive is there to obtain an offer or the very best offer once you have taken a fee upfront.
* Possible Illegal trading – Number of LPE’s are self employed and have not registered as such,
* Manipulated market – Number of agents are manipulating figures for market share and growth.
* Dumbing down of service – next to no sales progression, just ask agents or solicitors who have had the misfortune of dealing with an online lister / hybrid.
* Old Tech – Onliners and Hybrids say they are changing the market. In fact they are playing catch up. They have not innovated anything. In fact they are copying full service agents and doing a poor job at it.
* Not profitable – Still not even breaking even.
* Poor service – sellers and buyers not being shown properties, no interest in negotiation, no sales progression, no proactive mailing or call outs to buyers.
* Poor advertising – Poor quality pictures. No virtual tours. No description selling the area, house or associated details.
* Forced to use solicitors – At least one on line lister INSISTS you use their solicitor which is illegal.
* Poor chains – Chains are not checked, meaning high fall through s.
So do tell where you have changed the industry for the better.
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TheHybridAgent was posting on this forum at 2.37pm/2.40pm this afternoon yet they chose not to respond to you smile please, now why could that be?
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Hybrids are adapting to consumers change in habits. Being available when people need them is massive in the modern world. 80% of high street agents don’t open on a Sunday and close by 5:30pm. The methods of advertising hybrids use rather than the good old outdated door knocking is extremely effective. Reaching millions of potential clients instantly.
Hybrid agents are not part time staff. They’re self employed. Many working hours that high streets agents wouldn’t dream of doing.
The incentive is future business. Consumers are very savvy and do a lot of research prior to making the decision on which agent to choose. A lot of the research is based on previous property sales and the length of time on the market. High prices achieved high volume of valuations booked. Maximum value and a cost effective fee potentially saving £000s.
You have no evidence to suggest that hybrid agents are manipulating figures.
Not all hybrid agents leave sales progression to their clients.
The technology around the hybrids platforms have completely changed the industry. Allowing consumers to instantly interact.
Many businesses make little or no profit within the first few years of trading…
Agents all have the same database of buyers within their own areas. Making calls during the working day isn’t proactive when the majority of buyers are in work. Registered buyers all get emails for properties that match their criteria.
Hybrid agents do not market properties poorly and no agent does virtual tours on every property.
All consumers have a choice regarding conveyancing.
Hybrid and high street agents both have the same level of sales that unfortunately fall through. Again you have no evidence to back up that hybrids have a higher fall through rate.
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“You have no evidence to suggest that hybrid agents are manipulating figures” property industry eye is littered with evidence. Marketing people aren’t very good at numbers so what in one advertorial is a number designed to promote the much cheapness aspect of the offering is a number that contradicts performance figures.
Then the biggie;1 listing = 1 listing fee, (sometimes no listing fee because it looks like it is a property owned by staff or their family or associated persons and sometimes properties on with other agents all together but not let’s get into that detail, it is evidenced but it bores Eamonn) if a property appears multiple times as new on the market there isn’t any extra cash going in the pot other than the kickback commissions from selling other services. If a story pumped out says the average revenue is £1080 it becomes very easy to divide turnover figures published a few month later by that previously quoted average revenue.
If the revenue is say £132840 it is easy maths to work out that number equates to 123 listings. What tends to happen is that a marketeer will write spin and gufferage based on one good month and give the impression that is what’s happening every month. Stupid people fall for it, smart people don’t.
Using that example a bloke in marketing might get a bumper month of 60 listings to get all sweaty about and will magic that into the impression it’s 720 listings a year, the fact months 1-11 only managed 5 monthly listings gets conveniently forgotten.
Back to your main point about no evidence, there is a dropbox of evidence being shared with journalists and industry regulators which documents a discrepancy between what is being claimed in press releases and what is countable on the portals where properties are being listed. The whole point of NTSEAT stating that portal juggling breaches industry regulations was to show they are aware of what is going on and clarifying it is against the law.
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The problem YOPA have, and other hybrids, is that their USP is price.
The only way they will take big market share is to undercut PB but to gain the brand awareness to get any meaningful share will take massive TV investment. Minimal income and massive spend isn’t a viable business proposition.
As I said yesterday, PB have stolen a march on the other hybrids and it will be nigh impossible to stop their dominance. No smart investor will pump big money into a new or existing hybrid because their chance of seeing a decent return is now almost non existent.
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In fact, PB is doing a lot of good to hybrid / online model. It is much easier now to enter the online / hybrid market because the population already heard about the model, you do not have to educate vendors, they are already familiar with the online model.
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I completely agree with you. Catching up with PB now is near impossible. What YOPA will do though is help spread the message to the consumers that the hybrid model is the future of estate agency.
Gone are the days of high fees with outdated methods of marketing.
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TheHybridAgent, can you contact me at @mondinion. Thank you.
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Hi @TheHybridAgent.
Outdated marketing methods, What do you mean by that?
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We is referring to listing on the internet but not portal juggling, staying within the law, that is outdated marketing. The moderns way is to get the portals send out the same tired listing every time they change a photo, change a price , change a branch, change a logo, change a description have a technical glitch with their CRM system, list, de list and re-list a property.
Get with it Wardy juggle them listings
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Oh no. Not Bobby ringing the same old bell shouting ” bring out ya dead”
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Can I guess you’re too young to remember General Portfolio, how they operated and what became of them?
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Morning Robert
I have some things I would like to discuss with you.
How can I contact you?
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Ros is always happy to forward on emails, ask Ros to send through your details and I will call you.
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Hybrid agent and other LPEs
Claiming high street agents use outdated marketing techniques shows how much you have been duped and misled. . I bet not one post on here can tell me a turkey modern technique that high street agents doesn’t not adopt or employ. Forget about the frosty cycsmism ask yourselves if there is one single modern marketing technique that isn’t being employed mainstream?
when you look at it you only do what everybody else does but run around a bigger patch earning less money.
your contractor PB, YMCA only real modern marketing technique is how they market themselves by using spin and dubious stats. They do this in the full knowledge that we ( the UK) have a week and benign legal stance on misleading the public.
their spin goes further. It’s designed to make people like you feel your backing a winner. They fill you with the same subjective, self produced data aimed at getting you inside and doing their bidding.
essentually they have done a brilliant number on people like you. Running around a massive territory doing the hard work for less money.
The comments above, and on other stores posted on this forum are with out doubt
THE MOST STUPID! INSANE! IDOITIC COMMENTS EVER WRITTEN. EVERYONE WHO JAS READ YOUR COMMENTS ARE WORSE OFF FOR THEM.
I WILL PRAY FOR YOU……GOD HAVE MERCY ON YOUR SOUL. YOUR HEADS GONE.
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Sorry can’t spell when using phone keypad for some reason.
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Cowboys and Indians pretty much sums it up! This is nothing more than the wild west throw back to the dotcom boom in the early 1990’s. You would think people would have learnt something from back then. Get someone to throw money in the deep hole, tell them you have revolutionized estate agency (no they haven’t in their wildest dreams). All they are doing is using cost to fool the public that quality doesn’t count. Yeeha.
Note to Hypbrids: You are a speck on the horizon, still now you are only able to must a faction of high street estate agency business with all your talk. The only people who seem to give a damn about you are agents, because the public don’t care for you.
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If you sold a new car for around 1/3 of its manufacturing cost, you would initially see a lot of these cars around until the manufacturer ran out of money to pay for the parts to build this car and pay their staff and other expenses.
Likewise with on line only estate agency clients, except at least the new car buyer ends up with a car.
Two questions for the Government.
1.What policy have they in place, if any on line only upfront fee agency went bust potentially losing 1000s of their customers many£100s ?
Traditional, branch based, No sale, No charge agency protects their customers from this potential loss and are only paid when a sale completes.
2. On this basis and when the Government generally charge much more than the traditional branch based estate agent in SDLT, why do they appear to favour the loss leading up front fee agent?
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I’m up early watching my BT router go green orange red blue as part of a sustained denial of service attack which prevents the PJ server collecting data , fear not Hybrid new boy there are two other systems monitoring the data manipulations.
If an agent spends £2,000,000 each month on television advertising to have any public awareness and then does manage to list 3000 properties each month they spend £666 of their revenue on buying each property onto their books.
If an agent spends £20,000 for an office that sells 120 properties in a year they spend £166 buying each listing onto their books
If an agent receives £800 for per listing after the VAT there is only £666 left to pay the bills, I was going to ask where the money comes from to pay the listing reps but the room is suddenly filled with O Fortuna!
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I’m bored of the high street agent vs hybrid agent, both will co-exist with both styles having companies start up and then go bust.
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My wife works for the financial services side of Savills, SPF. With Savills backing these guys will succeed. But as aforementioned PB being the first REAL hybrid agent they’ll struggle to catch up in my opinion.
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