A former senior management figure at Rightmove and online estate agency Doorsteps is going it alone for a new holiday property listing service - and he wants crowdfunders to contribute just over £75,000 towards it.
The former head of overseas at Rightmove, Shameem Golamy, went on to become a member of the management team at Doorsteps, the online estate agency led by 20 year old Akshay Ruparella.
However, he has now left the agency and has appeared on the crowdfunding site Seedrs as the man behind Holiday Online, an online vacation property listings service that he calls “a simple solution for rural and coastal hosts”.
He says in the pitch for the very specific sum of £75,002 investment: “Our mission is to capture the Holiday Listings Market in Coastal and Rural regions around the UK. We acquire private holiday lets from owners of single and multiple properties and market them online in return for a commission on bookings.
“We don’t compete with Airbnb (they are one of our partners). Instead, our aim is to attract the properties they do not have, create the property listings ourselves and put them onto their site and others such as Booking.com.”
He says he will offer “a hyperlocal approach to target owners” using a series of localised brands.
The first is NorfolkHoliday.com, offering what it claims to be “a local service but a global digital reach” and wants to attract “owners in remote coastal and rural areas who are not necessarily technology or marketing savvy to do it for themselves.”
The pitch estimates the Norfolk and Suffolk market for this kind of enterprise as £2m with the UK market size as worth £200m.
Golamy values the company at £651,000 prior to the current crowdfunding round, which has so far attracted over £42,000.
You can see the pitch here.
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I wonder if I set up a new High Street Agency how much crowd funding could I raise ?????
£0
He's looking for a big crowd with deep pockets and half a brain
It does seem that despite the belief of many that the local EA has proven to be a very resilient business model.
The online offerings seem to have burned through an awful lot of unproductive cash.
It does seem that the local EA with superior knowledge of that local market than any online EA could achieve has proven to be a stable and workable business model.
Strange that LA aren't in the same position.
But it does look like the commission based sales model appears to be the most effective business model.
So perhaps the much mooted death of the traditional High St EA is far from the case.
It is more like the death of the online EA is more likely.
I'm sure that if the amount of money that has been thrown at online EA startups had been invested in tradtional EA they would have made a profit!!!
It appears the normal EA will remain in rude health as vendors still seem to prefer the commision based sales model.
EA are competitive with eachother and this seems to arrive at an average commission of 1 to 2 %.
Perhaps this commission is now just something that vendors need to accept will have be paid to guarantee a successful sale.
But for EA fearful of being put out of business by online offerings I think they can relax.
Google and Tesco tried to start online offerings but were slapped down as not being compliant.
EA to further establish their professional credentials would do well to become as professional as they can.
This includes all staff achieving professional qualifications.
As local EA they seem to still be the most effective way for anyone to sell a property.
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