Hybrid agent YOPA has raised £15m in a funding round led by the Daily Mail and General Trust – DMGT is the majority shareholder in Zoopla – alongside new investment from Savills’ investment arm, Grosvenor Hill Ventures. Private investors have also contributed.
In June last year, YOPA raised £16m in a funding round led by Savills, so that altogether YOPA has raised £31m in less than a year.
YOPA says it will use the money to fund further expansion, saying that its network of 75 ‘expert local estate agents’ across the UK will double by the end of this year, and grow its market share.
In the last 12 months, YOPA has expanded into Scotland and it recently appointed giffgaff founder Gav Thompson as marketing officer.
It claims to be one of the country’s “top three agents for successful property sales”.
YOPA currently charges £839, up from £780 at the start of last year, and claims that its sellers achieve over 98% of asking price. YOPA also says that on average, sellers save over £3,000 in fees, and that buyers are found in under 30 days.
Yesterday evening the YOPA site was quoting a charge to vendors of £1,399 in parts of London, and a high street agent fee of up to 3.5%. Add-ons such as viewings were being quoted at an extra £300, EPCs at £85, and Rightmove premium listings at an extra £99 “instead of the usual £250”.
YOPA, whose directors include Andrew and Alistair Barclay,the grandson and son of Sir David Barclay, was launched in 2015. Sir David and Sir Frederick Barclay own the Telegraph.
Daniel Attia, co-founder and CEO of YOPA, said: “After a strong first quarter of trading, we are delighted to have closed our Series B round of funding.
“Having DMGT lead this round is incredibly exciting and we are also pleased to continue our close relationship with Savills, who have reinvested and maintained their equity stake.
“Having two industry giants backing our vision is not only a testament to our model of estate agency, but to the team at YOPA who are the driving force behind the business.”
Paul Zwillenberg, CEO of DMGT, said: “DMGT has a history of profitable investment in the property sector, including a significant long-term stake in Zoopla Property Group, leading to the company’s successful IPO in 2014, and the Group’s own portfolio of property information businesses in the US and Europe.
“We have been impressed by YOPA, which has quickly established itself as a key player in a new market that has exciting growth potential, and look forward to seeing the progress of the team’s expansion plans.”
Research published in March by Jefferies found that YOPA has an 83.1% success rate, compared with Connells agreeing sales on 62.3% of its listings, Countrywide 60.2%, LSL 50.6% and Foxtons 48.8%. However, it had a portfolio of only 846 properties, compared for example with Purplebricks which had 10,170.
“Up to 3.5%” How desperate?! If you believe you have a market winning offering, trade honestly.
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Are you sure? Foxtons are charging 3% for sole Agency and 3.6% for multiple agency.
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“Foxtons are charging 3% for sole Agency and 3.6% for multiple agency.”
Your point?
On what percentage of the national market does that relate to?
You’re obviously the kind of person who would run out and buy (apologies – I mean order one online, of course…) a new car when you saw the TV advert:
“With other cars costing as much as £375,000, you should by the Diddle-i-Po from YingTong Motors – a snip at only £3,500”
I doubt you’d even spot the tiny disclaimer, in writing the same colour as the background, which flashed up for a nanosecond in the bottom left corner – not that it’s of any consequence, of course:
“(excluding engine, wheels, seats and paint).”
Time to get a grip, ducky. Reality beckons.
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Oh come on cyber, anybody except the partisan, will see that kind of statement as completely and wilfully misleading.
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Of course it would not suit their purpose to put: ‘High Street agents charge on average 1.3% according to Which?’
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£250 the normal price for a Rightmove Premium Listing ?
And you ‘save £151’ with the special £99 offer ??
Is Ken Dodd their marketing manager ???
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Diane Abbott?
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Genuine question:- How long have YOPA been trading? How much have they made or lost, does anyone know?
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There you go –
https://companycheck.co.uk/company/09120252/YOPA-PROPERTY-LIMITED/financials
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Im not suprised they needed more money looking at their accounts LOL
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When is industry going to start backing itself. A lot of this fund raising will like push out through TV to consumers.
Rather than agents dropping their pants on fees and trying to offer budget copy cat models they would be better to invest in tech to help win local listings and have USP’s that budget and portals do not offer.
Else agents investment will be more money in portals and lowering further of fees.
CRAZY, yet a solid agent proposition whilst there are a majority of older style and hybrids could be in future news raising big £bucks to preserve and prosper what could be.
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“When is industry going to start backing itself.”
The only ‘backing’ you will see in our industry is backstabbing, backbiting, and backpedalling, Mr Mealham.
Anything other than that you’re asking for miracles.
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Think this is to big for local agents now..we proved how useless we were as a unit with the onthemarket not even attempting to take out rightmove. We simply dont work together as an industry.(unlike the legal profession who have cleverly pushed all the blame and strss onto agents)
nope , we need the onliners to actually get bigger now so the public / consumer groups etc can hopefully work out what a rip off this new industry is.
just hope we can all survive until then…..people arent moving like they used to ..tories fault …not labour…that was 10 years ago and they still havent fixed it…
lol….get the politicals going again.
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“…we proved how useless we were as a unit with the onthemarket not even attempting to take out rightmove.”
Don’t you mean “…we proved how useless we are to act as a unit by bailing out of a new project because it didn’t work overnight”?
That’s more like the reality of the situation…
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The reality of the situation is that agents built something for themselves rather than for the public.
Demand rules supply in 2017 and onwards.
Unless you are giving the public what they want then you aren’t going to be successful.
OTM is failing because all they did was replicate ZPG, RM and gave users no reason to switch.
What buyer in their right mind would want to spend time on a portal with less than 40% of available properties. End users want 1 portal and one portal only. The problem for agents is that creates a “monopoly” who control the cost of advertising to this captive audience.
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no pee bee its been 2 years and onthe market have just made rightmove stronger…great work
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No one ‘bailed out.’ they just left a ship with no engine… .if agents had been more honest at the start and said they secretly loved rightmove instead of giving it the big one in their local meeting…while secretly being to scared to leave..onthemarket wouldnt have even happened…
onthemarket was actually very very successfull..the only thing they did wrong was not take out rightmove at the very start…which of course would have been their downfall as agents wouldnt have binned rightmove becuase they were to scared..
loop ..loop .
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“…if agents had been more honest at the start and said they secretly loved rightmove instead of giving it the big one in their local meeting…while secretly being to scared to leave..onthemarket wouldnt have even happened…”
So – have I got this right – is what you are saying there that it was, in fact Agents Mutual who were misled by their future customers into believing their product stood a chance of succeeding at breaking what became known as ‘the duopoly’ (credit: Robert May)?
That being the case, then they can hardly bear the brunt of blame, surely?
On that basis, their only ‘crime’ is foolishly believing the outrageous promises/assurances of certain Estate Agents…
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“…its been 2 years…”
Yeah – and Rightmove had 15 years or so head start on them. Zoopla not so many – but seemingly bottomless pockets to buy their marketshare.
Be realistic, Bless You – it’s a given that you can only eat an elephant one bite at a time – and what idiot would go about trying to eat two in one sitting?
“…and onthe market have just made rightmove stronger…”
I disagree – and have proved it using Rightmove’s own statistics on several occasions here on EYE.
“…great work.”
I wouldn’t necessarily say ‘great’ – but when you consider that their backs have been up against the wall from day 1, they’ve done waaaay better than any other challenger to ‘the duopoly’ so far, I would suggest.
And – what’s more important – they can do better.
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As someone who has tried to put forward ideas time and again about forming a cooperative collective for independents, to gain extra business through collective intelligent marketing, it is very frustrating how little interest can be raised.
If just a 1,000 of us aligned on say an initial contribution of £10 a month…we could start the fight back and gain new business in the process. We could all keep our own brands, identity, whatever, but at the same time become highly visible to the general public as the best way of selling their most valuable asset.
At the moment we still hold most of the cards, as we have the local presence, contacts, data, knowledge and experience. There are new ways we make the absolute most of it, and build a firewall against the investor subsidised threat of the online listers.
I don’t want my small business to be pushed out by people offering a poorer service at a higher overall price (based on FACSIS…Fee Average per Completed Sale including Investment Subsidy). Let’s stop sitting around moaning about it and start doing something constructive.
I said a 1,000 but all it would need is ten of us to make a start.
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You make a fair comment Agent V, the issue is, that for anything to work it needs total conviction and a ****** minded attitude that it will work come what may. It is what the hybrids have done, they trodden the paths to boardrooms and individuals and funders. Its what all of these new propetech’s are doing eventhough not all will survive. A bulletin board will not help you win; arrange meetings, invite 1000 independents and then another..show your passion and prove your concept. Create desire and an argument, others will follow and of course make sure it is relevant. Get market leaders on board! Dealing with estate agents is like herding cats.
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Can you help us make a start with an expression of interest and a way of contacting you?
Just send an email to hiphip@agentv.co.uk and we can talk
I think you might be very interested in what we are developing
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I think one of the reasons cooperation between smaller independents on a large scale is like ” herding cats ” is a source of strength while also our Achilles heel, let’s face it those of us with three or fewer branches wouldn’t put a local competitor out if they were on fire yet an independent from off our patch is “well met old friend, how are your trenches?”
It’s because we are busy, if not busy we’re trying to be busy, our strength is that local immersion and that diary, survival-comfort-excess monitored on a daily basis each month and on the 1st of a new month we start again, there are no online models with anything like this mindset but it doesn’t lend itself to collaboration or global thinking
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