x

adrian black

Founder and CEO

3419 Profile Views

About Me

Residential Property Expert and Technology Expert

my expertise in the industry

Sales, Lettings, Technology and Finance

adrian's Recent Activity

lots of unprofitable businesses and low earning potential and low levels of trust in the industry - not a sustainable operating approach - model and businesses have to change to much more platform driven with higher levels of transparency - exactly what YOUhome Property Gurus are doing, and have been doing for a while

From: adrian black 13 January 2020 07:43 AM

nice round up - thank you

From: adrian black 21 December 2019 10:25 AM

the founders should have paid more attention to what happened in other industries - technology played properly and giving leverage always wins - studying Amadeus the airline ticketing system would have been very worthwhile - but there again the property industry can take a very siloed approach to its detriment

From: adrian black 20 November 2019 09:02 AM

Prime London and Outer Prime agents should take a look at YOUhome who have led this transition. In addition to high commissions and work flexibility their approach supports lots of energy and a team culture and local focus. Their platform platformYOU enriches and augments skills and increases sales productivity with lots of sold properties proving that.

From: adrian black 17 October 2019 07:31 AM

technology needs to be configurable and customisable by situation and have the ability to be dialled up and dialled down according to need - exactly how platformYOU by YOUhome is built !!

From: adrian black 16 October 2019 07:49 AM

i think it's the product proposition that doesn't resonate and a failure to deliver to local markets and establish a sustainable proposition

From: adrian black 15 October 2019 11:05 AM

3,000 total career Prime London sales done by YOUhome Property Gurus team - highly experienced, possibly most experienced team in Prime London

From: adrian black 02 October 2019 21:08 PM

From: adrian black 30 September 2019 07:43 AM

Prime and Outer Prime London account for around 25% of the total tax take at rates far higher than comparables given here - and no surprise that Singapore has a great liquid property market with the seller pays approach.

From: adrian black 27 September 2019 08:16 AM

Residential is all about the people and the environment. Working with them continuously to improve skills and effectiveness to become Property Gurus and offering the platform to enable and accelerate that. All resulting in greater sales productivity. Commercial is all about increasing the yield delivered by the space.

From: adrian black 18 September 2019 09:23 AM

just do away with it all together - it's a terrible tax

From: adrian black 13 September 2019 08:15 AM

nothing about delivering a better client experience and better sales results

From: adrian black 09 September 2019 07:28 AM

When 1 in 20 homes sell in a year you only have to walk around 4 miles to find £100k a year of business !!! Not hard if you want it.

From: adrian black 05 September 2019 16:57 PM

We have been doing this in London at YOUhome Property Gurus for a number of years. As we say Proptech, Shmoktech - focus on the experience and needs, understand the possible and innovate to deliver that.

From: adrian black 22 August 2019 09:33 AM

Simply heading in the wrong direction. Selling homes is an expertise driven business and expertise driven businesses have never been built offering continuous sales promotions then cross selling other expertise that they don't have !!!

From: adrian black 21 August 2019 07:44 AM

Markets should flow and there is something very wrong when the property market gums up as we lurch from one piece of tax speculation / change to the other. Let's be clear stamp tax is a bad tax, it inhibits flow, reduces transactions and charges buyers for the future privilege of owning a home, all are clearly wrong.

From: adrian black 19 August 2019 07:43 AM

15,000 running sales and 45 post sales advisors, 50% chain checks and 70% conversion instruction to exchange - those home sellers must be very motivated. Also plateauing instructions and increasing recruitment challenges. Lots of change still to come. Purplebricks deserve a lot of credit for precipitating this great new phase in agency. We are at the early stage of a new beginning.

From: adrian black 16 August 2019 08:43 AM

YOUhome are - Will Darbyshire visited and Chris Watkins rates the tech as awesome, James, you are welcome to visit anytime and we will buy you lunch !!!

From: adrian black 07 August 2019 09:07 AM

Our analysis, using land registry and other data sources for prime London, is showing a 35% fall in the value of property purchased Q1 2019 compared to Q1 2018 and a 37% fall Q2 2019 versus 2018.

From: adrian black 06 August 2019 08:12 AM

Stamp tax is a bad tax, both cutting it (or removing it) and / or transferring in to the seller (or a combination of both) will add much liquidity to the market - as we, with others, have been saying for some time. Increasing liquidity does not in itself increase prices, that is driven by supply and demand. I agree that we will see many more sellers and transactions would increase a lot. Stamp tax at the moment is really a tax on the future benefit of living in a property and I thought we were trying to increase home ownership so removing the tax on that benefit would seem a very good first step !!!

From: adrian black 05 August 2019 07:57 AM

Doesn't surprise me in the slightest, and I think the fall is even bigger in London. The business delivery model is wrong and all the revenues are consumed by unnecessary costs and service levels are falling so the value add is dropping. Exactly the reason why we redesigned it. Our agents earn well.

From: adrian black 24 July 2019 09:58 AM

A view we have held for a while and will turn a bad tax into a good one. Will increase transactions and much better solution than idea of capital gains tax on principal residence

From: adrian black 16 July 2019 07:46 AM

Absolutely right that creativity will drive innovation and combined with clear engagement on customer experience will add the value and set the future paths

From: adrian black 29 May 2019 08:06 AM

agree this needs to be looked at in detail - problem with capital gains tax / tax on profits on selling is that will vary by how long people have held homes. Whatever is done and what route is preferred should focus on increasing flow and the number of transactions, that will increase economic activity in many areas and generate much needed and more tax

From: adrian black 23 May 2019 07:59 AM

internet, sminternet; online smonline. It's about being obsessive about customer experience and results. Agents who focus on that will gain market share, those that don't will lose it. Sure there are more and better modern methods to deploy and technology plays a role but clients only care about what is in it for them and not how we do it.

From: adrian black 15 May 2019 08:06 AM

Michael has been the main innovator in beginning great change in the industry for the better and for the good and deserves great credit. Change will continue rapidly.

From: adrian black 07 May 2019 08:02 AM

Good article - It's really tough to turn big oil tankers in property industry waters which is essentially a zero sum game (meaning a fixed or declining amount of revenue / addressable commission) is fought over by an increasing number of competitors against a rightly increasingly transparent market place. Integrated innovation is essential around delivering the current service and client experience AND in adding client value in lateral and connected ways

From: adrian black 24 April 2019 07:57 AM

Good to get this statistic on the agenda - in prime london the conversion rate is much lower - we estimate between 20% and 25 % instructions to exchanges conversion which in a falling market is costing home sellers considerable amounts of money

From: adrian black 23 April 2019 07:32 AM

Can't help feeling that the LPE's are not earning enough per sale for the time required to do research, give great advice and wicket keep the sale if sales progression at HQ is not as effective as needed. It works ok for them if their stock options are increasing in value but real issues emerge if they are not.

From: adrian black 15 April 2019 07:57 AM

Partnering is a very interesting trend - and has gained significant recent traction in other industries e.g. Ocado entering several partnerships including Marks and Spencer. Partnerships will reap rewards if both partners focus on the value add and client experience, make the technology as invisible as possible (it's the service and results that matter) and deliver the human touch integration that is essential

From: adrian black 04 April 2019 07:48 AM

Affinity or promoting group models are a really interesting area in the industry at the moment and in some regards I would include the local and regional hubs and also franchises in that group too - who can provide best brand enrichment, training and technology ? Technology is the area that I think will make an ever increasing and critical value adding element.

From: adrian black 14 March 2019 08:03 AM

Agency is a people business with essentially a seller, an agent and a buyer (I know we know this) so the challenge is how does an agent do everything to get sellers comfortable in selling and buyers keen to buy - in all market conditions. Technology can help a lot here but not in the way many have applied it so far

From: adrian black 07 March 2019 07:40 AM

Home sellers want agents to sell their homes, they want to pay for excellent sales skills backed up by excellent local research and they want to pay for the experience to get the sale done - sellers do not care about the technology or what their agent is called they care about convenience, communication and results - that is the sustainable model

From: adrian black 27 February 2019 08:11 AM

Expensive retail storefronts are no longer required in Prime London Agency. The cost savings that are made can be invested in better property marketing and higher earnings for more experienced estate agents. Both are essential to deliver results in this very tough market.

From: adrian black 26 February 2019 08:20 AM

the environment has changed and businesses are going to have to demonstrate clear revenue growth, points of competitive differentiation and a clear path to sustainable profits to attract funding

From: adrian black 25 February 2019 07:55 AM

Purplebricks is profitable in the UK and is operating at scale and has achieved remarkable accomplishments in a short time. It is its international businesses that are really hurting it. The challenge for them will be to take what they have in the UK and improve it, this is a smaller challenge - obviously if they make the right moves, than the one they have overcome to get going. Let's not write them off yet.

From: adrian black 23 February 2019 11:57 AM

Purplebricks have led the shake up of an iindustry lagging the times - much more will change going forward and with greater speed. We are probably at the end of estate agent change version 1.0

From: adrian black 22 February 2019 08:21 AM

Interesting perspective - and one they tried more than 10 years ago in Surrey. Time has moved on and hubs with the right brand, people, operations and technology combination can achieve a lot more today

From: adrian black 05 February 2019 07:44 AM

I think more like the end of the beginning. The industry is changing rapidly.

From: adrian black 05 December 2018 09:36 AM

All types of agents have challenges. Mostly centralised i.e. the call centre guys (in broadest sense) have way too high customer acquisition costs in a category that is not growing fast enough to justify it; mostly distributed guys (i.e. the longstanding models) have way too high overheads to leave enough to pay producing agents enough and neither is delivering the service that commands the fees needed to deliver a good profit - better models will emerge - YOUhome www.youhome.co.uk is a good example

From: adrian black 10 November 2018 10:13 AM

"total category media spend in the sector increasing 80 per cent” and sector market share growing much much less means established players fighting back and/or new entrants need more rapid product / service innovation

From: adrian black 06 November 2018 07:42 AM

we are coming to the end of version 1.0 - going forward agency will change increasingly rapidly and those agents who deliver great local service and technology with a human touch will lead - we simply cannot rely on inflated marketing claims without delivering at the coalface; local must be local and the value delivered must generate sufficient revenue for good agents to make good livings - they are worth it !!!

From: adrian black 01 November 2018 08:04 AM

YOUhome has some great tools for people interested in Prime Central London http://www.youtrends.co.uk and http://www.youeye.co.uk we also track and report total spend on property – which has fallen to 2006 / 2007 levels

From: adrian black 20 December 2016 08:11 AM

YOUhome have been very accurate for the last 2 years see www.youiq.co.uk - i expect we will issue good research again - hope to help to change your view Graham

From: adrian black 22 October 2016 09:41 AM

Breaking News