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Where Is The Monii Money

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About Me

Asking Oliver Gleave (Loop Software) where £180,770 Crowdcube investment went when Monii ceased trading 64 days later.

my expertise in the industry

It's a simple question, Where is the Monii money?

In May 2016, Monii Limited raised £180,770 on the crowdsourcing website CrowdCube. Eight weeks later, the company ceased trading. There would have been two months running expenses and possibly some limited redundancy payments. However, this does not explain where this substantial amount of money went.

103 investors in Oliver Gleave’s company are owed an explanation.

One of the investors trusted Oliver Gleave with £20,000 - her life savings. Life is the key word here as this young lady was terminally ill with secondary breast cancer. A fact that Oliver knew. Having no children of her own, she wanted to leave a legacy for her nieces and nephews.

She died in May 2018. It is for her that we want the truth about were the Monii money went.

Where Is The 's Recent Activity

I'm not convinced that the definitions and categories are clear. It was Voltaire who said, “If you wish to converse with me, define your terms.” Online seems self-explanatory. This is an estate agency that operates exclusively online without any physical highstreet presence. Hybrid is slightly confusing. My interpretation is that it's both online and has a physical presence. This sounds like every single traditional estate agent operating today. They have an office and a website or indeed, have an office and use a property portal. The self-employed module feels even murkier being a mangled mixture of traditional, online and hybrid estate agencies. I think you have to separate how each business operates as the self-employed definition seems a bit loose. For example, my local estate agent is self-employed with a physical office and an online presence. Ridiculously, he can appear in all of these categories!

From: Where Is The Monii Money 11 April 2024 13:12 PM

I'm with John. Not only is it cringy, it is also, biased, poorly researched and missing the most important data point. There are a couple of ways of doing data analysis. First, you can come up with a theory or commercial argument you wish to make and then manipulate the data to show you are right. Or, you can interpret the data in an unbias manner and draw a conclusion. Go back a decade (i.e. before EXP raided our shores) and the rank order was pretty much the same. Estate agents have traditionally appeared in the lower half of any commission-based sales industry. It is utter ignorance to attribute the running costs of an estate agency to reduced commissions. Every one of the other listed industries has similar if not the same kind of overheads. The real stupidity is to claim that the self-employed model offered by EXP means more commission going directly to the agent WITHOUT providing any data! So I challenge Adam to publish the total commission earned in the last 12 months and then we can all divide that by the 477 eXp agents and we'll see where they rank.

From: Where Is The Monii Money 11 April 2024 10:58 AM

Would be good to get more data on sales arranged over time verses fall through rates. It could be that up front searches leads to less sales being arranged which in turn leads to less fall throughs. The true message is more likely to be better quality pipelines of a lesser value. There is a productivity gain by not having to progress sales that would never complete.

From: Where Is The Monii Money 26 September 2023 08:02 AM

Or the usual pre-Christmas increase in activity...

From: Where Is The Monii Money 26 September 2023 07:56 AM

Companies House has 22,098 active estate agency businesses registered. If you rerun the figures based on this it equals 3.1 sales a month.

From: Where Is The Monii Money 26 April 2023 09:41 AM

The data source and method of analysis would have been useful.

From: Where Is The Monii Money 14 April 2023 09:25 AM

There isn't a figure for how much property prices are being reduced by to sell the property it could be that that affects the number of properties selling after a price reduction. For example, a 20% reduction should have a better impact than a 5%. Other variables such as total number of properties for sale and total number of applicants, viewings and offers would also be useful. Also, analysis that excludes the London bubble with a more local focus may proof useful. Finally, if the works been done, what percentage of sellers change agent after a price reduction? Uni-data analysis rarely yields much more than a headline!

From: Where Is The Monii Money 28 March 2023 10:37 AM

Firstly, I’m not sure of the relevance of this and Adam Day at eXp and the conclusions drawn are based on what exactly? Secondly, I’d really like to know the data sources for this information. As of 17:20 on Wednesday 1 March 2023 there are 4,424 real estate jobs on Indeed available. 814, or 18.4% are in the South East. 128 or 2.9% are in the South West. and 911 or 20.5% are in London. At the very least the data sources should be referenced, the date that the information was correlated and then the methodology applied to the information. Meanwhile, back to joining the dots between PARKER PROPERTY RESIDENTIAL LIMITED and SPRING FINANCIAL GROUP LIMITED…

From: Where Is The Monii Money 01 March 2023 17:33 PM

Are sellers switching or are estate agents canvassing more? Single data analysis doesn't tell you much. The question that should be answered is WHY sellers are changing agents?

From: Where Is The Monii Money 24 February 2023 11:13 AM

This is something the likes of eXp UK need to be aware of. They have 300 plus independent, self-employed estate working under their banner, most having their own limited companies. However, when you go onto the individual agent's website, they all claim that their company registration details are "...eXp World UK Limited are a registered company at c/o Corporation Service Company (Uk) Limited, 5 Churchill Place, 10th Floor, London, United Kingdom, E14 5HU. Registered company Number is 12016573. VAT..." A quick look at Companies House shows you that there are two named directors are James Bramble and CORPORATION SERVICE COMPANY (UK) LIMITED. James doesn't appear to be an agent for eXp and there aren't any eXp agents named as "Persons with significant control." The other director is just an incorporating business. I can't see the relevance of these company details to any agent operating for eXp. What should happen is that the registered eXp'er displaying their own company details on their microsites. Just looking at a few random examples you’d have: Scott Gunn should be listed as VICTORIA SCOTT PROPERTY SERVICES LIMITE, 9 Waltham Close, Cliftonville, Margate, CT9 3YF. Company No: 12334755. Aaron Tonks should be listed as AARON TONKS THE PROPERTY GUY LIMITED, Swinford House Albion Street, Brierley Hill, West Midlands, DY5 3EE. Company No: 12845130. Samantha Cerrone should be listed as CERRONE ESTATES LIMITED, 8 Church Green East, Redditch, Worcestershire, B98 8BP. Company No: 12693878. Simon Mabbatt should be listed as SPM PROPERTY SERVICES LTD, 63 Carruthers Court, Racecourse Road, Newbury, RG14 7GH. Company No: 11412391. Chris Abraham should be listed as ABRAHAM & SONS PROPERTY LTD, Severn House, Hazell Drive, Newport, South Wales, NP10 8FY. Company No: 11091539 And the list goes on and on...

From: Where Is The Monii Money 22 February 2023 14:19 PM

I would question the relevance of the compatible property-related and other jobs mentioned. Residential estate agency has near-zero educational entry. The majority of the other roles mentioned require a degree level or similar. It's not unreasonable to assume that a university-supported profession comes with a higher salary. A fairer comparison would be found with retail and/or non-specialist sales roles. Traditionally, a basic salary is 50% of OTE. Where commissions are uncapped, there is no upper limit. Not everybody wants a job where there is an element of risk associated with earnings. For others, the opportunity to have effort linked to reward works.

From: Where Is The Monii Money 22 February 2023 13:56 PM

I would question the relevance of the compatible property-related and other jobs mentioned. Residential estate agency has near-zero educational entry. The majority of the other roles mentioned require a degree level or similar. It's not unreasonable to assume that a university-supported profession comes with a higher salary. A fairer comparison would be found with retail and/or non-specialist sales roles. Traditionally, a basic salary is 50% of OTE. Where commissions are uncapped, there is no upper limit. Not everybody wants a job where there is an element of risk associated with earnings. For others, the opportunity to have effort linked to reward works.

From: Where Is The Monii Money 22 February 2023 13:24 PM

I wonder if this is Vince Courtney clearing out the low performers at PurpleBricks and eXp being the next worst option? Just a thought.

From: Where Is The Monii Money 10 February 2023 10:35 AM

I'd actually like to know when the last time one of those in this video has actually been door-knocking. Not some romanticised time from back in the 1980s/1990s but in the last twelve months? How many doors did they knock on? How many instructions did it lead to? How much revenue (completions) did it ultimately achieve? You can loathe it, call them vermin gutter agents, scaring elderly clients and lacking creativity (great little summary of the above!) but can you make a business case for it being cost-effective? You'll notice a lack of comments supporting the activity...hang on...got to go...someone at the door...

From: Where Is The Monii Money 25 January 2023 10:39 AM

It would be good to know what is meant exactly by selective and how a correlation between whatever the selective criteria are and the bearing this has on a seller choosing or not choosing an online agent. And building on Stuart Forsdike's above comment, what is the definition of online in the property environment? Also, the data comparison doesn't match: "Using TwentyCi data, Davy also reported that the UK housing market delivered 289,635 new instructions during the final three months of 2022, up 8% annually but down 28% compared with the previous quarter. Purplebricks saw new instructions fall 12% annually to 7,156, Davy said." The figure that's missing is PurpleBrick's last quarter comparison rather than only quoting the more detrimental annual one. This is a great example of somebody being selective with the data. They've decided the outcome they want to prove, "...sellers are set to become more selective about their estate agent this year..." and then engineered the data accordingly. Rather than laying out all the data, demonstrating a methodology and then drawing an objective (not subjective) conclusion.

From: Where Is The Monii Money 16 January 2023 11:29 AM

Is somebody with a beard selling a flat three years ago really property industry news? I trust Estate Agent Today is charging eXp for these advertorials...

From: Where Is The Monii Money 06 January 2023 08:34 AM

For a commission to be earned a seller has to be charged. Is this at an increased cost to the seller or a division of fees between referring agents? The point being one increases revenue and the other doesn't.

From: Where Is The Monii Money 05 January 2023 09:42 AM

Nathan fails to answer his own question!!

From: Where Is The Monii Money 18 May 2022 08:06 AM

From: Where Is The Monii Money 07 April 2022 08:12 AM

"There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics." Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) I've written before about the numbers behind eXp UK. Just search "Where is the Monii Money". With a hint of narcissism, the "eXp UK International Expansion Leader" has clearly taken delivery of the Emperor's new clothes and splashed on a bit of snake oil! There is the inherent danger that might start to believe his own hype! Rather than extrapolating the numbers with a good dose of massage oil, I challenge Adam Day to publish the actual data in rank order for ALL the eXp UK estate agents so the grown-ups in the room can see and appreciate the actual numbers. The good news for those agents who have signed up to eXp UK is that there are various miss-selling laws that should cover you...

From: Where Is The Monii Money 11 March 2022 10:37 AM

I agree with James. Big claims being made but no data on what the actual reduction in transaction time is or is likely to be. Joined up visibility of the process requires that all parties use the platform. Seven signed up CRM companies could already demonstrate a potential variation in the process.

From: Where Is The Monii Money 08 July 2021 08:09 AM

My experience has been that a change of software, regardless of training, stakeholder buy-in and even an understanding of estate agency, rarely means a change in business processes required to maximise the return on a software installation. A common analogy I draw on is the dramatic development of Excel over the last 30 years, yet how we use it on a daily basis hasn't typically changed inline with the functionality offered.

From: Where Is The Monii Money 26 May 2021 09:54 AM

There is a hint of "Social Media For Dummies" where there's bound to be a chapter on producing an industry-specific survey for industry-specific publications along with a CEO quote and a data anomaly to spark a bit of discussion! In a slightly more series tone, the answers and responses are only as good as the questions being asked. We shouldn't be surprised that sellers want to achieve as close as they can to their asking price, and as an act of reciprocity, the acceptance of the fee runs in parallel to this expectation. A better question would be to ask if the seller put the property on the market at the price recommended by the agent? And if not, why not? Achieving a fuss-free easy sale, again, shouldn't be a big surprise but again, this depended on the question. I can't imagine that anybody wants a chaotic sale, thwart with stress and drama which then drags on forever. A potential interpretation of what 70% of people want. Only 8% of people wanting regular updates is interesting. I don't know many sellers who don't want to know what a potential buyer thought, or what's happening with an offer, how is the sale progressing or occasionally, what data is coming back from the portals? I'm struggling to accept that 92% of sellers don't want to know what's happening with their property. It' always difficult to be objective as personal bias will influence the interpretation of the data, but I think there are flaws in either who was asked, how they were asked and/or what they were asked.

From: Where Is The Monii Money 11 May 2021 09:19 AM

To answer the headline question it's actually really simple. Have more women starting in estate agency and working their way up based on competency and achievement. Pretty much the same as anyone who reaches a senior level.

From: Where Is The Monii Money 29 April 2021 09:01 AM

Not the first property person to fail...whereisthemoniimoney

From: Where Is The Monii Money 30 March 2021 10:29 AM

I trust these were virtual viewings not in person ones. What's the guidelines on clean done and time delay between viewings again...?

From: Where Is The Monii Money 29 March 2021 09:16 AM

Nothing new here. Parkers used to do this a lot back in the day.

From: Where Is The Monii Money 26 March 2021 08:14 AM

Data indicates that people move on average every 20.8 years (longer in London and shorter in Kent!). There's long-tail and there's long-tail... Would be good to know how the FIA actually tested the viability of this product and what the demonstratable improvement on the "64%" (and where did that number come from?) was. It's a clever idea though. A software marketing product that is unchallengeable in terms of having to demonstrate a return on investment. A salespersons dream!

From: Where Is The Monii Money 01 December 2020 11:13 AM

One of the promises of technology is the automation of routine, repetitive or mundane tasks to the point at which personal intervention or decision is required. My experience of the relationship between estate agents and the various proptech solutions is that rarely does a new or change of CRM system bring about a fundamental change in the commercial success of an estate agent (assuming that commercial success is the desired outcome). This is a good thing for estate agents. It means that a bad estate agent is unlikely to be transformed into an outstanding estate agent by technology alone. It is rare for an estate agent to change how they operate based on the provision of a new or different technology platform. Here's a simple analogy. Excel has over the last couple decades become a shadow of its original self with a whole host of functionality and widgets being added with every iteration. However, how I use Excel hasn't changed since 1993. Protech is yet to understand the psychology of technology usage...

From: Where Is The Monii Money 25 November 2020 10:29 AM

Or just tell your competition what you've been appraising and save £100 month...

From: Where Is The Monii Money 20 October 2020 09:36 AM

Where's the analysis to prove this claim? And the follow-up question is, what is meant by sell? Zoopla says that it takes an average of 50 days to sell. Let's say two months is 60 days. If sell is time on the market, then it's a "Back to the Future" moment. Hidden in the small print is the right to change agent if a buyer is not found which must then increase the time on the market. Taking the value of the property listed and dividing by the UK average house price, we're looking at around 200 properties listed. Statistically, a third will complete, so a best guestimate on revenues is around £120,000. That's not bad for what is intrisically a photography and floorplan company!

From: Where Is The Monii Money 13 October 2020 09:25 AM

For sales agreed, it would have been more meaningful to have the actual numbers and then a large pinch of salt. To cannibalise another phrase, "...sales arranged is vanity, sales completed and commission paid is sanity..." I'm also not clear on the data sources to make such a judgement.

From: Where Is The Monii Money 09 October 2020 10:16 AM

They forgot to mention the YSL Kouros aftershave that could strip wallpaper at 100 yards...

From: Where Is The Monii Money 09 October 2020 10:01 AM

If something needs constant medication, chances are it's not well. Medication may alleviate the illness and give the impression of normality. It may delay death but if there is no cure, the removal of the medication brings the reality of fragility sharply into focus. The housing market appears to be heavily medicated. A rise in property prices may be a false positive as an indicator of health. The idea that all is normal because the graph is pointing up is possibly a distraction from what is really happening. The delay in what's going at the coalface today is rarely reflected in this historically correlated data. I worked through the boom of the eighties and the recession of the early nineties. I remember house price drops of 40%, negative equity and repossessions. That was 30 years ago. The challenge will be that estate agents and homeowners either didn't experience this or don't believe it could happen again...

From: Where Is The Monii Money 02 October 2020 10:30 AM

I think I may have missed something. The fee is calculated as a percentage of the price regardless of how long it's on the market. I can't see any relevance in this "research" at all. In fact, let's give sellers a reason to drive down the fee by telling them that on a daily basis one agent is "cheaper" than another. It's got the feel of an inexperienced marketer who got to page 19 of "Online Marketing Hacks" which recommends report writing as useful content generation! Anyhow, time to make a brew in my chocolate teapot...

From: Where Is The Monii Money 24 September 2020 13:02 PM

1. It would be useful for mio to explain what it means by "'...have a positive impact on transaction times and fall throughs..." whilst supporting any claims with some data. 2. PIP Vault is only a differentiator is your competition isn't using so I guess they'll be limiting who can use it to support this claim? 3. AgentRelay claims thousands of estate agents are using it but has yet to rustle up a client testimonial...

From: Where Is The Monii Money 24 September 2020 12:53 PM

I thought about this over night and have a couple of further thoughts. Forbes believes that 90% of tech companies fail so that is more likely to be the starting place for your claim of a percentage failure reduction. Maturing Innovation is almost an oxymoron although I do agree that innovation should come from within with the caveat that any idea should be religiously challenged. Encourage people to fail quickly and cheaply. Never engage experts. An "ex" is a has been and a "spurt" is a drip under pressure!

From: Where Is The Monii Money 24 September 2020 07:30 AM

This is Bertrand Russell's teapot! Give me a real-life Proptech example of solving a problem that doesn't exist yet? I think you can identify a problem and build an education piece to highlight the problem which then has a possible solution through technology as this requires an acknowledgement that the problem exists in the first place. I suppose you can say that a technology has been created and what are the Proptech implications but again, this is not about timing and it would still have to tilt towards solving the problem. You can eliminate the "chicken and egg" situation by having a problem-focused technology methodology and no carts or horses will be hurt or damaged during this process!

From: Where Is The Monii Money 23 September 2020 11:47 AM

Just wear the f****** masks! The arguments about doors locked, highstreet presence, commercial categorisation are irrelevant. Get some branded masks. Leave them on appraisals, drop them through other agents properties but more importantly, wear them and show YOUR customers that THEIR safety and the safety of your STAFF is being taken seriously. Rant over...

From: Where Is The Monii Money 23 September 2020 10:29 AM

It's an interesting take and I'd like to add a couple of points. ONS data says that 42.4% of business fail within the first five years. If nothing else changes, the figure of 424 would reach 3,468 failed companies. That's not "because", it just "is". Someone much more clever than me once said, "...the only reason for any purchase is to solve a problem or to have fun..." Timing is a hard one to measure but solving a problem isn't. Technology either addresses the issues or doesn't. I suspect that particularly in PropTech, businesses tend to focus purely on the delivery of the "new" and fail to solve the problem.

From: Where Is The Monii Money 23 September 2020 10:18 AM

I think the phrase is something like, "...it's not the hours you put in but what you put into your hours..." Again, focusing on one data point fails to provide anything meaningful. The only situation where this has any value is if a) people charge by the hour and b) what that hourly rate is. Even that's flawed but it's better than this irrelevant nonsense. Rayner Personal have done a couple of these pieces now and if they continue in this way, it'll just damage their brand...

From: Where Is The Monii Money 23 September 2020 09:36 AM

I'm reminded of a Basil Fawlty rant where he says, "...next contestant, Basil Fawlty, answering questions on the bleeding obvious..."

From: Where Is The Monii Money 17 September 2020 09:14 AM

Robin is spot on. The engagement rate is a better measure. Any analysis that is only looking at one metric is inherently flawed. Consider that unhappy clients also follow. May be this is a measure of how many people these agents have upset!!

From: Where Is The Monii Money 28 July 2020 09:02 AM

Next time you speak to Oliver, ask him about the missing £180,770 from Monii. Trust is very important if you're going to start recommending products...

From: Where Is The Monii Money 12 February 2020 11:11 AM

Next time you speak to Oliver, ask him about the missing £180,770 from Monii. Trust is very important if you're going to start recommending products...

From: Where Is The Monii Money 12 February 2020 11:10 AM

Next time you speak to Oliver, ask him about the missing £180,770 from Monii. Trust is very important if you're going to start recommending products...

From: Where Is The Monii Money 20 January 2020 09:48 AM

Interesting read. My view has always been that the role of technology is to automate the boring and/or routine allowing us to focus on the more interesting and ideally more rewarding work.

From: Where Is The Monii Money 15 January 2020 08:14 AM

In a similar vein, and supporting the "...controversial crowdfunding site..." label, Oliver Gleave, the founder of Jupix, also used Crowdcube to raise over £180,000 in his new venture Monii Ltd and ceased trading 64 days later. The Crowdcube valuation was in excess of £600,000. Not bad for a company with no viable product and no customers! Just Google Where Is The Monii Money...

From: Where Is The Monii Money 26 January 2019 11:04 AM

Bracknell. Prospects Estate Agents. 1992. £350 + VAT. We should be celebrating 25 years of a fixed fee service...

From: Where Is The Monii Money 15 June 2017 09:56 AM

Is this really news? A complaint is made. It gets investigated. A conclusion is made. It's the final result that matters, not the probing.

From: Where Is The Monii Money 05 May 2017 09:02 AM

It has nothing to do with the good of estate agents. It's a pure-play revenue generator by a founder who refers to estate agents as "lazy and inept". (end quote) The NAEA claims to have 10,500 members. If CIELA had those kinds of numbers, it’s annual turnover from membership alone would be £4,410,000! That’s an 18 fold increase on the founder’s property software business! Put another way, CIELA needs only 596 members to replace its other revenue interests! There’s around 18,000 estate agency businesses in the UK, so if I say there are two directors for each company, there are at least 38,000 potential people that meet CIELA’s criteria of being either a shareholder or director. To match the revenues of the founder’s property software business, only 1.56% of their potential audience need to become paid members. Not looking to burst anybody's bubble but when you know and understand the personalities involved, you see CIELA for what it really is...

From: Where Is The Monii Money 04 April 2017 10:48 AM

So CIELA have a problem with some of the wording and claims of PB, but the very independents they represent have been fined for running a cartel (https://www.estateagenttoday.co.uk/breaking-news/2017/3/four-estate-agents-pay-370-000-after-admitting-price-fixing). PB don't fit the criteria for membership when it comes to CIELA so why is there the continued need to attack them? Surely you'd focus on the positives of the agents you represent rather than the negatives of those you don't. And don't for one moment think that independents don't make misleading claims. Local to me, Marriots claim 30% of the local market and Rightmove says it's 5%!

From: Where Is The Monii Money 03 March 2017 12:33 PM

CIELA has nothing to do with standing up for the independence and everything to do with revenue generation. The annualised cost for joining CIELA is £420. (ARLA/NAEA is £260). Total market size is around 38,000 in terms of independent estate agents who are registered directors at Companies House. If CIELA was ti reach NAEA membership numbers, is annual revenue would be £4,410,000. An estimate of Easymatch’s revenue is around the £300,000 mark and declining. CIELA is an opportunity to replace Easymatch’s revenue. CIELA only needs 714 members to replace its existing revenue or 1.87% of the 38,000 total market. I’ve written quite an extensive piece on the whole CIELA premise that I’ll be publishing soon…

From: Where Is The Monii Money 03 March 2017 12:26 PM

Interesting article. Taking the ZPG acquisition of Hometrack, have you considered that ZPG could be lining up to go direct? Other proptech investments by ZPG (Vieweet 360 being one) seems to indicate more consumer based products rather than agent focused. Both MoveIT and uSwitch provide additional consumer data that marries well with Hometrack. Doing some very quick and dirty maths, ZPG only needs around 5% of the UK residential sales market to cover all the revenue lost by no longer being a portal. I've been watching Trussle for a while and I suspect they will have a greater impact on the housing market than all the other proptech gadgets and gizmos put together. I actually think there's already enough products and services for the high street agent to successfully leverage technology for commercial advantage. There's a raft of CRM's, valuation, messaging and marketing options to piece together a coherent and connected property experience. But, the agent is only one pillar of the property process. Finance and legal are the other two. Trussle could be the start of an emerging market that simplifies the financial side of buying and selling. Legal is a bigger challenge as it's an industry stooped in tradition having been pretty much the same for hundreds of years. There's a company called Juro who are using artificial intelligence to create employment contracts. It's not too much of a stretch to see this extended to conveyancing. Digital house contracts created in seconds is a real possibility. Why is this relevant? One of the investors in Juro is also an investor in ZPG! So with a strong property website, CRM technology, price comparison software, self-instructing technology and an interest in AI contracts, ZPG only needs finance to over a complete instruction to completion model with or without estate agents. What's the betting that Alex Chesterman's already got Ishaan Malhi on speed dial...?

From: Where Is The Monii Money 08 February 2017 11:07 AM

This has more to do with revenue generation than improved standards in the industry. I have a firm recollection of my meeting with Charlie in March 2015 where he eluded to his next big financial opportunity...

From: Where Is The Monii Money 22 January 2017 18:27 PM

Morning Simon. I've just sent you a LinkedIn request as I have additional information and views on CIELA. Hopefully you'll accept.

From: Where Is The Monii Money 21 January 2017 10:28 AM

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