easyProperty says its current brand awareness campaign, promoting its livery and website in regional and national newspapers, online outlets and social media, will continue through to next year.
The firm, which currently operates an online lettings agency but will start sales in the spring, has revealed that marketing is to take up around 50 per cent of the £9.75m it has raised through crowd funding and private investment.
It's largely an education task, as we need to let people know we exist. We then need to let them know the difference between traditional and digital [estate] agencies, easyProperty chief marketing officer Chris Welsh has told Marketing Week.
Welch says of the 180 online letting and estate agencies that exist only 10 are national and none is connected to a national brand, which he believes is key to breaking into the market.
Welch says the agency hopes to bring people into the market who do not usually use estate agents, such as the Generation Rent' sector, which he describes as younger consumers that can't afford to buy their own home, or, unlike their parents before them, are choosing not to buy at all as a lifestyle choice.
The Marketing Week piece says easyProperty has signed over 3,500 landlords so far.
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Comments
Just had a look at the EasyGroup website. Have you seen his next venture Easy Food Store! HA!!!!!
There are images of what the first store in London will look like, very much like a bunker from WW2. Will make Aldi and Lidl seem like pure luxury.
Just checked their site 283 properties listed.....60+ let agreed....60+ no photographs. 90% photos taken with a phone with no presentation. They are only picking up the Landlords you would not want in the first place and could guarantee that they all took the 9.99 option with no other purchases. Income to date 3000-30000 max they will need 15000+ properties at any point of time to generate enough to cover overheads or perhaps directors salaries!!
This is a marketing exercise to float the company, not to create a profit making business. Anyone like a wager This company will not succeed. Low cost agency doesn't work. Three years max. Year One - they will have burnt the money. Year Two - change of management. Year Three a few programmers in sitting in the corner office will buy it for a few quid and reverse it into zoopla or some other vehicle. Stellios will make some dosh licensing the brand. Return the 10m to investors and tell them to give it to charity.
Note to all 'high Street' agents (of course they are also digital on-line agents too). Use your localism, visuality and knowledge to the maximum - do a good job and you will have nothing to worry about. People generally like face-to-face contact and people they know.
"...you don't factor in the launch into sales and commercial which requires little in case of additional overhead costs..."
Oh, dear. You state that the customer getting a service which will be costing small coal in the grand scale of company affairs - wonder what bang the customer will expect to get for their buck
Or LESS than a buck, as the case may be...
True - but they ain't gonna have another 20k+ properties, Mr Walker... which is the point that 'interesting' is, I believe, making!
Plus, let's not forget he is referring to an ASSUMED 40% profit margin. Anyone care to guesstimate another figure - closer to... BIG FAT ZERO percent profitability... perchance
Makes the numbers look a tad daunting... ;)
Great. If this fails then it shows that the interent model has failed.
I dont see estate agency as the cheapest wins like a commodity like catching a plane where customer expectation is zero.
Its more like hiring a nanny for your babysitter and not even ,meeting them. What you save on the fee you lose by selling cheaply and not achieving the best price. thankfully the average seller seems to know this.
Exactly. It's not quite as easy as most people think. Not just anyone can turn up and be an estate agent, no matter what certain sections of the public and media would have you believe.
Things did seem to have gone quiet on the easyProperty front until today's news story. A few months ago you couldn't move for news stories about Stelios's latest venture (vanity project), but we haven't heard a peep for quite a while. Maybe they've found it a lot more difficult to establish themselves in an entirely new arena than they envisaged. As other posters have already stated, searches for property in most areas brings up no results. Very strange.
Just goes to show, even with a well-known brand and a large PR campaign and marketing budget behind you, not to mention a great deal of money raised through crowd-funding, it's not that easy to break into a market that is both complex and unpredictable. Experience usually wins out when it comes to sales and lettings.
Will be interesting to see how things go when their sales operations start up and their marketing onslaught goes into full swing, but I get the feeling they could be retreating with their tails between their legs before too long. As I've said on numerous occasions, aviation and property are two vastly different beasts.
What is the average turnover for a established letting agent
Do you remember the banks and insurance companies went into estate agency and all pulled out They probably underestimated the level of skill required, so it was very different from the bank and insurance business model. I'm guessing 'easy' or mostly their investors, will discover the same thing. If you look at another online agency, they've shifted some considerable stock since 2010 but if you allow even 500 a house, it comes to about 1.35M which isn't a lot when you look at their list of staff and investors, also remembering that this figure would be turnover and they'll have costs on each of those transactions. Interesting times ahead.
thanks for the comments, you can't judge a brand barely 1 month into launch on a local basis,especially as we have yet to begin any marketing in earnest :)
@interesting you don't factor in the launch into sales and commercial which requires little in case of additional overhead costs but drives additional revenue.
In fairness, the true measure will be how many properties they have [i]after[/i] the campaign. They haven't done much marketing so far. It will be interesting.
Just searched my area too....guess what No properties available!
If eP is as cheap as they say, the average fee will be under 500 - and say they make 40% profit - they will need to rent 22,500 properties the BREAK EVEN. They have just 300... Investors must be asking questions.
Just searched our area. No properties. easyproperty.com easywaytoburnthroughsomeonesmoney.com.