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Purplebricks' target for its financial year ending July 31 2015 is 85,413 instructions and for the following year 100,849 - if met, that would represent 10 per cent of all sales.

The target, revealed by financial news service Citywire, is the second big coup for the site which is run by Michael and Kenny Bruce, the brothers formerly of Midlands agency Burchell Edwards.

This ambitious target comes as star' fund manager Neil Woodford has been explaining what lay behind his heavily-publicised £7m investment in Purplebricks announced over last weekend - and it seems disruption' was the biggest attraction.

Purplebricks represents a highly disruptive business model in the world of estate agency. The business has the vision, the technology and an experienced management team - and now with the funding at its disposal, I see a significant opportunity for the business to lead the market in changing the way we buy and sell houses explains Woodford.

He has also revealed the specific purpose of the spend, which is the largest investment from his £2.4bn Woodford Equity Income Fund to date. It will specifically support the site's launch across central England following its roll-out in London and southern England.

Woodford's stake is reported to represent 30 per cent of the equity in the agency.

Comments

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    Sounds great until you look into it. 665 plus Vat payable any time over ten months or on completion. With the difficulties in getting mortgages many larger houses could take more than ten months which effectively means you lose your cash. What incentive is there for them to sell your house when they have your money

    • 22 September 2014 15:33 PM
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    85,413 instructions for the whole year seems very impressive indeed. Av 234 sign ups every single day of the year, basically what emoov get every month they plan to get per day.
    As for this months target of 7117 sign ups they are currently on around 190, so only 6927 to sign up in the next 10 days to stay on target. Fingers crossed aye

    • 21 August 2014 09:01 AM
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    credit @purplebricks its not easy to get investment at that level from an experienced fund manager. Wether these figures are true reflection of their business plan who can say but of course any new business is going to set itself ambitious but hopefully realistic goals. Wether their business model works out the way they planned only time will tell,but with this level of investment and more to follow from my own www.easyproperty.com this is the year that online really could take off.

    • 19 August 2014 16:50 PM
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    These figures do seem a tad optimistic, to say the least.

    • 19 August 2014 10:18 AM
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    HUGE GAFF by PB..in their own announcement surprise surprise the only target they mention for the next 12 months is to list lots! This publicly reveals the truth behind the "we are the good guys and can save you 's " charade, they dont/wont really care whether they sell these homes or not because they've earned their fee by just listing them. Their staff have no real incentive to sell them and therefore doing so clearly doesnt feature highly on their agenda or targets!
    If anyone out there is up against PB's anytime soon I'd suggest that you show them this quote from the business owners themselves as it very clearly demonstrates why listing with them is likely to end up costing far more than they will try and convince them they are saving them.

    • 19 August 2014 08:12 AM
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    I am an agent who invests heavily in technology to make sure we have the most up to date marketing tools available to us. In order to make sure we are able to offer excellent customer service we have a ratio of 1 full time member of staff to 15 properties. If Purplebricks expect to be able to offer similar customer service levels and marketing they will need to recruit over 12,000 agents by July next year. Somehow these figures just seem too optimistic.

    • 19 August 2014 08:04 AM
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    With 2.4b to invest - if this is his biggest invedstment to date then his investors should be very worried indeed and if the motivation behind his making the investment is that he thinks PB's model is going to be "disruptive" then it speaks volumes about the individual.
    Lets face it this 7m represents less than 0.3% of Mr Woodfords 2.4b so PB's rhetoric aside, he's having a very small "punt" on something that if he were to know anything about he'd know has been tried and failed many times before by management teams equally if not more experienced than this lot of dreamers - but hey it's easy to be brave when it's not your own money your gambling with! ... and "purplebricks"....surely theres a spelling mistake in there somewhere!

    • 19 August 2014 07:50 AM
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    It is with regret but in my view this could possibly be Neil Woodfords biggest mistake to date. Stick to what you do best

    • 19 August 2014 07:50 AM
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    These figures are inaccurate. 10% of all property instructions per year will not be 85,000. The test will be to see whether Purplebricks will be able to convert however many instructions they do achieve into sales, I would be very surprised to find that they are able to sell 85,000 houses. They seem to be very confident that their online model is going to be able to do something that none of the other guys, combined, have even got close to doing after 7 or 8 years of trying.

    • 19 August 2014 07:45 AM
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