In-Deed, Harry Hill’s online conveyancing service with ambitious plans to take the market by storm, is to invest in high street law firms.
The company made its announcement one month after the implementation of the Legal Services Act, which allows non-lawyers to invest in and own law firms.
In-Deed was launched this year, securing £4.5m investment through an AIM flotation in June.
After delivering its first set of results, it now says it will use its funds to secure ownership of provincial firms, giving its brand ‘strong visibility on Britain’s high streets’.
Harry Hill, former boss of Countrywide estate agents, said: “We’re making great progress in building a national conveyancing brand, and the next logical step is to establish a strong presence on the high street.
“This will allow us to continue to build our customer-base nationwide and begin widening our legal service offering beyond conveyancing.”
Yesterday, In-Deed announced its interim results for the six months to the end of September.
These show that it had revenue of just £3,100 and made pre-tax losses of £823,109
The site said it had had instructions from 120 home buyers/sellers, and has £4m cash in the bank. It reported that visitors to the site are running at around 350 a day.
It added: “Our challenge has been conversion of these visitors into paying customers.
“We are confident that house buyers/sellers like the product, but our website has to work very hard to communicate the product benefits and to differentiate us from a miscellany of ‘lookalike’ products promoted on the web, almost always under a misleadingly low price banner.
“We gather data on the performance of our web pages and in the last three months we have implemented a programme of changes to the website which have had a positive impact on customer conversion, but significant challenge remains to achieve an economic acquisition cost per customer.”
The site launched a telesales operation as a pilot in September, when it also adjusted its prices downwards.
The firm, which has nine full-time employees, concluded: “We are very happy with our product that we believe sets genuinely high and new standards in the UK conveyancing market for service and transparency.
“There is also much to be satisfied with in terms of the traffic to the In-Deed website. Going forward, the focus is on customer conversion.
“The next few months will provide some clearer answers about how telesales fits into this process. Management are also exploring other sources of leads which have potential to reduce the cost of customer acquisition.
“With most home owners only moving house once every 12 years, we have concluded that traditional advertising solutions are most unlikely to yield acceptable returns, giving extra challenges to materially increasing brand awareness. In addition, we continue to have ambitions to widen our legal service offering beyond residential conveyancing.
“Taking these factors into account, the Board has decided to accelerate the exploration of opportunities arising from the Legal Services Act which would potentially allow In-Deed to own one or more legal firms, or majority stakes therein. This could enable In-Deed to capture margin, by undertaking legal work directly itself, as well as provide additional distribution.”
Comments
Rubbished on solictors blog, 4.5m is not going to buy anything good.
Whoops had a dyslexic turn and got the numbers a bit wrong sorry chaps but it still means out of business in 18 months.
680000 transactions quoted on the first story at say 2.5% of the total is 17,000 deals they may get provided they roll this out across the whole country (the %age of 2.5% I have quoted is the generous side of returns on flyers posted) and at £25 per deal is £425,000. Less than 10% of the investment.
Who in their right mind funded this. Must have been Stevie Wonder because nobody could have read the business plan and made sense of it.
Even at £75 per deal quoted by Razor this is still only a quarter of the investment and they lost £823,109 in 6 months! Times this by 2 and what have you got? Out of business in 18 months.
Sit back and smile sweetly lads your friendly local conveyancer is still going to be here next year and the year after.
Well - if they carry on like CPL or the management department of Countrywide there will be no problems here for the local conveyancers. Good local firms can thrash the pants off of these firms hands down with their eyes shut.
How many of you guys out there cheer when you hear CPL are involved? I bet these could be counted on the fingers of one hand and you would still have at least one left to pick your nose with.
As the partner or a sale/lettings and conveyancing company for the last 15 years, I know first hand that the profit from each transaction sale or purchase is running at approx £75 max , so unless In-Deed do what most other large internet based conveyancing companies do - ie catching out the client with a clause charging additional payments for completing a sale within 28 days of an exchange , there is only money in bulk turnover = cr*p service , another CPL then, oh joy
£3,100 from 120 instructions implies £25 per sale.
Is this really a business really worth £4 million of investment?
Also love the comment "Going forward, the focus is on customer conversion". What kind of businessman realises that 6 months down the line?
There is every opportunity for this to succeed because Harry Hill will have the benefit of learning from Countrywide Property Lawyers mistakes .... which could perhaps be summed up in one word ... slow. I am sorely tempted to say rather more about CPL but I might regret it. It will be a great shame if a centralised conveyancing service manages to tempt vendors away from using the traditional local solicitor.
An online conveyancer called indeed that when you google search "indeed conveyancing" its natural ranking is beaten by another conveyancer and a recruitment agent!
They obviously have a limited understanding of how online advertising actually works!
I have heard from a good source that they will be directly engaging with potential customers who are displaying estate agent for sale boards in all areas.
Sorry Harry but there is liitle margin in conveyancing. That is why we at Rees Page Solicitors and Estate Agents started selling houses. Far better for Estate Agents and Financial institutions to keep collecting referral fees from conveyancers rather than take on the risk of doing the actual conveyancing.....if in doubt go and talk to a Professional Indemnity Insurer and see what effect conveyancing would have on your insurance premiums.
in Two Words BATTERY FARM