Not so sheepish! Ewemove is UK’s fastest selling agent, claims new research

EweMove agents have the industry’s shortest end to end sales time from new instruction to completion, data claims.

The franchise business commissioned research by analysts Twenty EA which found its typical time from listing to completion was 146 days last year, more than 20 days faster than the sector average of 169.

The report also states that EweMove agents complete more sales than average agents at 70% compared with 57.8% nationally.

EweMove also said the data shows it gets an average of £2,200 more per sale than the average agent, for a typical property being marketed for £250,000.

It also had the highest growth in new listings last year, at 33.3%.

EYE has seen the full analysis, but while we are not allowed to reveal the other names mentioned in the top ten for listings growth, we can reveal they include online agents, firms from big brands such as Countrywide as well as others from The Property Franchise Group, with the next nearest competitor to EweMove registering a 30.4% instructions boost.

Nick Neill, managing director of EweMove, said: “We are proud of the report’s findings.

“So now the time has come to no longer apologise for what we stand for and our Ewenice the green sheep logo.

“We’ve earned the right to announce ‘we’re getting it right’.

“We are profitable and we have never had, nor intend to have, investor debt to burn through, as we’d rather ensure our people have a sound and solid business model with a strong brand to ensure their longevity in a tough market.

“Our franchisees are in control of their own futures, which can’t be said for agency employees.”

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34 Comments

  1. Malcolm Barnard

    Twenty EA are fast becoming the For Sale Signs Analysis of its day!

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  2. smile please

    Best of luck to them, pay for all the bias reports you like those of us in the know (the entire industry) knows the report is as silly as the logo!

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    1. Head_Shepherd#2

      Smile Please – not sure where you get your stance from re bias reports.  Perhaps you should ask to see the performance of your own agency, from the exact the same data set as we did.  It’s not manipulated to fit our agenda, it’s just a look at the data.  And this takes subjectivity and opinion out of the equation, so we can simply deal with the facts.

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  3. Hillofwad71

    “Our franchisees are in control of their  own futures which can’t be said for agency employees”  .
    Well not entirely true as they are totally reliant on leads from Head Office for both instructions and sale enquiries which sounds very much like a passive role for the  franchisee   For a start where there is an increasing pressure on an industry to be transparent  about fees on first point of contact with Ewemove via the chatline when asking the question you are batted off,advised to contact  the local franchisee direct  

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    1. Head_Shepherd#2

      HillofWad71 – why do you say ‘totally reliant on leads from Head Office’.  You couldn’t be more wrong and perhaps don’t understand our model?  Call me and I’ll happily explain!
      In respect of fees, each agent (franchisee) has their own fee scale locally so it will vary by location, but typically we charge the same or slightly higher than local high street competitors.

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      1. Hillofwad71

        Thanks for the  response .
        Looking on your website to ascertain your fee charges I then went on your chatline to beg the question .
        They then  gave me the answer you did.Asked me a series of questions,location ,type of property  etc and I gave them a ball park on value for a steer on fees .After  all that they still didn’t  give me a steer and then suggested  I contact  the local franchisee to ask by which time I got fed up !!      

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  4. jeremy1960

    Hardly likely that having paid a company to research your organisation you will receive and publish a poor report. Paying to do the research starts with setting the questions,  providing the target audience,  cleaning up the stats before the brief is handed out. Another advert on eye?

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    1. Head_Shepherd#2

      We’ve used the same data set as they use for everyone.  As it’s the data set for the UK market.  Perhaps no-one else has published the data for their own reasons…..just saying!

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  5. Woodentop

    EweMove agents clearly don’t have chains. The data is flawed generalisation, misleading and a publicity stunt.

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    1. Head_Shepherd#2

      I think the issue is that our franchisees don’t get paid until completion, like many others, and they work very hard to get those sales completed taking up the slack in chain progression where others step back.  

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  6. Meadey

    Good luck to them; they have stuck to their principles and put up with the flack; same cannot be said for many of the contributors on here!

    Having a sound business culture, strategy that you stick to and decent people on board will work.

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  7. WiltsAgent

    I’m not surprised Nick Neill is proud of the report, he paid for it!. PR Guff dressed up as news.

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    1. Head_Shepherd#2

      I think with all the doom and gloom around our industry at the moment, a story which shines a light on growth and success in a tumultuous marketplace is definitely ‘news’ and ‘good news’ at that.

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  8. Head_Shepherd#2

    Thanks Meady – couldn’t agree more!

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  9. Property Pundit

    TwentyEA, a sister company to TwentyCi, who do research work for purplebricks. #justsaying

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    1. Head_Shepherd#2

      I’m sure they do research for many companies….

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      1. Property Pundit

        And have a habit of not releasing the data for detailed analysis.

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  10. Hillofwad71

    Head Shepherd   It must get confusing for  sellers or buyers .
    You search for properties on your website for example within 5 miles of Marlow Bucks and there are seperate listings by 3 competing franchisees in no disecernible order .
    Ewemove-Chilterns,High Wycombe and Marlow & Maidenhead  .
    What happens when a prospective seller  makes  contact with Head Office to ask which franchise to contact?Difficult  to understand how your territory boundaries are divided up?  
     
    Looking on the territory  maps for all these 3 franchises they overlap so each franchisee is very much reliant on head office making the right call 

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    1. Head_Shepherd#2

      Hi Hillofwad71 – the franchise territories are explicitly clear and cut by postcode territory so if someone calls up and asks about our house our internal systems immediately identify who it belongs to, and if you look at the listing on ewemove.com the relevant franchise will appear alongside any listing, so there is never any confusion.  Good question tho!

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  11. Baggiefan

    you may find some of the franchisee’s have gone out of business and their business passed on, or it simply makes someone with little or no business look a little better.

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  12. Hillofwad71

    Nope they are all still there .Plenty have fallen by the wayside,mind Part of the recruitment campaign is-no experience necessary but that is a hard school .A few weeks training  and thrown to the publicThat makes a mockery of  the profession. One lady in Gwent who started up an Ewemove franchise in Gwent fresh from 22 years in the army Borrowed £35k from Nat west according to the local paper down the tubes in18 months Likewise  Anna Pearce in Northampton-franchise dissolved

     

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    1. Head_Shepherd#2

      As the No1 Most Trusted Agent in the UK, I think the customer feedback we get says we get it right, so no mockery required!
      And as for those that don’t continue with their franchise, there are many reasons why that may occur – not all of which are commercial – but as with pretty much all industries, the failure rate is much lower under a franchise umbrella than going it alone….

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      1. wardy

        You’re not the most trusted estate agent in the UK.

        I am.

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        1. FlyingSheep54

          Beg to differ:  https://uk.trustpilot.com/categories/real-estate
           

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          1. Woodentop

            Ah there you go again using data that is misleading. It has limited data of what is happening in the industry but portrayed as the bee’s knees of who is good or bad. Wardy could just be the best agent, doesn’t have to be on TristPilot to prove it. Look at the fiasco with PB. There are many trusted agents all over the UK.

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          2. wardy

            Ahhh. I see. Trusted is a play on words.

            Harvesting reviews from people who have simply booked a viewing says nothing about how much people trust you. In fact it says the opposite.

             

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  13. Mothers Ruin

    ‘EweMove also said the data shows it gets an average of £2,200 more per sale than the average agent, for a typical property being marketed for £250,000’

    I’m assuming that there should be a comma in there and that Ewemove don’t get £2,200 more per sale. In my area typical fees for High Street Agents are 1% plus VAT and so this would equate to 0.88% plus VAT. I wonder who they are describing as the ‘average’ agent.

    It might be fairly similar in terms of fees to a traditional estate agent and so a franchisor with their business model might be profitable, but is a Ewemove franchisee profitable compared to a traditional estate agent or traditional estate agency franchisee even without the same overheads.

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    1. FlyingSheep54

      Doh! That’s £2,200 more for the vendor. Catch up

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      1. Mothers Ruin

        Thanks Bart so now that I have caught up – is a Ewemove franchisee profitable compared to a traditional estate agent or traditional estate agency franchisee even without the same overheads?

         

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  14. Hillofwad71

    Well a cursory inspection of Companies House of the various companies your franchisees have set up tells a different story many  with annual losses accumulating .
    For example your franchisee for Salford according to Companies House has taken an early bath only last week and thrown in the towel .
    I am saddened to see that you place little weight on a thorough  property and estate agency grounding before taking on board one of your franchises in an ever increasinlg regulatory  environment    

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    1. Woodentop

      Sounds to me like the PR stunt has backfired and was a sheepish attempt to fool people.

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  15. GeorgeHammond78

    Oh how I love reading Head Shepherd’s spirited defence/marketing of his brand, in all of his above hyperbole, this in the main article was the best…’We are profitable and we have never had, nor intend to have, investor debt to burn through, as we’d rather ensure our people have a sound and solid business model with a strong brand to ensure their longevity in a tough market’.

    Clearly, HS while you may have many an attribute (flogging dead sheep is one that springs to mind) you know little about investment/financing. Any professional financier worth their salt will tell you that equity is the most expensive form of debt you can carry – equity only gets rewarded with a dividend AFTER paying for everything else along the way. Why do think hedge funds are so leveraged – because the debt is cheaper!

    Talking of dividends, have you paid one yet to your owners? You the people what ‘invested £9million a digital, no barriers to entry, system? No, thought not. Wonder what their ROE is, oh wait, I already know – the square root of diddly!

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  16. Hillofwad71

    Recent dissolutions

    Ewemove Salford Ltd  dissolved last week

    Ewemove Waterlooville Ltd  Voluntary struck off Feb 2019 after continuing losses

    Ewemove Croydon Ltd   Application currently at Companies House to strike off .Disappeared from Ewemove website

    Ewemove Macclesfieldl Ltd struck off Feb 2018

    Ewemove Redhill and Reigate ltd  Struck off October 2018 struck off fter  sustaining  substantial losses

    Ewemove Hackney Ltd  Dissolved Aug 2018

     

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    1. Hillofwad71

      Plenty more casualty rate!!

      EweMove Oxford East disappeared off website but  company still intact with debts

      Ewemove Bromsgrove  Head company still up and running with a horrendous amount of debt  but no longer on Eewemove’s website

      I think that pretty much sets the scene

      When  you google Ewemove Oxford  for example the words come up YOU HAVE ENTERED THE TWILIGHT ZONE You couldn’t make that  one up

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