'Expect big news soon' says online chief after cash i...

The chief executive of online estate agency eMoov - which has raised £9m in its latest investment round - says “more big announcements” are to be made by his company in the next few weeks.

eMoov, which says it is now valued at £40m as a result, is planning to use the funds for marketing and technology.

CEO Russell Quirk, who founded the agency, says the hybrid and online sector has evolved drastically in the eight years since the agency’s launch.

"During this time, we’ve been focused on building a superior technology platform; hiring an unbeatable management team and providing the best customer service in the industry. With these strong foundations in place, we now feel it’s time to accelerate our growth through a clever and sustained marketing investment strategy” he says.

In what some see as a reference to the agency’s profile slipping behind that of newer agency Purplebricks, which has a reported 65 per cent of online listings, Quirk says: "We’ve been more considered than some in our methodology and therefore, we will emerge and remain as one of the few estate agency disruptors that are actually sustainable. Expect more big announcements from us in the coming weeks."

Business newspaper CityAM yesterday broke the news of the investment.

Some of the new funding comes from Gaby Salem of Wharton Asset Management, as well as Episode 1 VC, Maxfield Capital, Spire and Startive Ventures.

"Having been offered numerous investment opportunities in the online agency sector and from my research of the most dominant players, it was evident that eMoov have the management team, customer service and the technology to dominate this space" Salem told City AM.

Salem calls himself “a seasoned investor of over 20 years with experience in the property sector” and predicts that the online sector - currently with a wide variety of competing companies beneath Purplebricks - will shortly consolidate to only three or four companies.