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Glenn Ackroyd
Glenn Ackroyd
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About Me

my expertise in the industry

Glenn's Recent Activity

Glenn Ackroyd

From: Glenn Ackroyd 01 June 2017 09:45 AM

Glenn Ackroyd
Hi Krisjan, The £100k of sales that you refer is a figure that a number of our established franchisees are achieving, but certainly not all. Of course, we would never pledge that any agent would be able to guarantee this figure. We also allow applicants free reign to call franchisees to discuss how their franchise is going compared to plan as part of the process. We make it quite clear in our business plan that in the first year, businesses will be operating at a loss - simply to reflect the cash flow realities of estate agency. It takes on average 6 months from instruction to receipt of completion funds and not all instructions will be successful. We have actually just changed our model to significantly address some of this year 1 cash flow pain. So now a franchisee can elect to get a £250 cash advance from us upon listing a property - repayable once the house sells or is withdrawn. Quite unique in franchising and certainly in our sector. It means that with typically bank funding you can start a franchise for under £12k, covering your Year 1 cash flow - Vastly better than other franchisees in this sector, or the start up costs of a traditional branch. Given that we are a relatively new business, with new franchisees, and accounts information is always recorded for the year/18 months past, you should see a pattern of losses recorded for franchisees in the first year of trading. It's planned and built into our 'What Can You Earn' Business Model which each applicant models for themselves based upon house values, commissions and anticipated sales in their area. We're very open about sharing this information and the realities of the costs involved and the cash flow hurdle to overcome in the first year and we do so very very early in the process. We'll be going through all of our numbers on an online webinar on the 17th January at 7pm which you're welcome to attend (register at www.myagency2017.com). At the end of the webinar, each attendee is emailed the model to work through the numbers to see how it might pan out for them. As for tenancy lengths in excess of 4 years, I've been operating a letting agency since 2005 - We simply re-branded and launched the franchise in 2013. So we've got lots of data. For more recent instructions we apply a formula based on the number of managed lets and ratio of tenant turnover. For example: If you have 120 properties under management and on average 10 tenants give notice and leave every month, then all tenants would leave over a 12 month period inferring an average tenancy length of 12 months. If only 5 tenants give notice and leave every month, then all tenants would leave over a 24 month period inferring an average tenancy length of 24 months. Whilst our average has just breached 5 years, in our model 'What Can I Earn' model we only assume 3 years average tenancy length to be conservative with any projections.

From: Glenn Ackroyd 09 January 2017 21:36 PM

Glenn Ackroyd
Re "Other agents have been using this model for years; Hatched etc. " We started out in 2010 - Launched the franchise in 2014 after pilot in 2013. "I would also dispute their use of the word 'property expert'. An expert is not someone who has been on a weeks training course and paid a large franchise fee. Experts have experience. I don't mind any company promoting themselves. What I don't like is when there are inaccuracies and false statements." We don't just do a weeks training course.... 1) Pre-training access to our 'Eweniversity.co.uk' training course. This has video, presentation, downloads, Soundwave download audio 2) 1 weeks initial training 3) 1 day per month 'Success Summit' training 4) Bi-weekly 1 hour video webinars 5) Over 40 x 1 day business training days on specialist topics (run by 3rd party experts) on areas like accounting, business planning, marketing etc 6) Online ewetube training video vault 7) Online forum 8) Weekly local business boost 1:1 meetings for franchisees 9) 5 day dedicated franchise and marketing support team 10) Dedicated in-house pay per click management team How does that compare to the training that your company provides? And re 'experience' - agents talk all the time about experience. All that matters is service deliverability. That's what a customer wants. So what an agent things matters not one jot. Our franchisees work really hard - nights, weekends because they're passionate and focussed. That shines through in the reviews they get. They're number 1 in the UK on trustpilot and we're so proud of our franchisees achievements. They may not be time served, but when it comes to customer service, they are incredible.

From: Glenn Ackroyd 17 August 2016 08:49 AM

Glenn Ackroyd
J C - You make some very valid points. Our model has always been centred on having a very local property expert - Other players have had people on the ground covering very wide geographic areas leading to traditional agents questioning how 'local' they are. And we operate a 'No sale, no fee model'. Purple Bricks have been excellent in 2 things; 1) Bringing on investors and outspending the rest. This is the core reason for their market share and usurping the longer established players. This has come at a cost and to date they've lost millions as a result. 2) Pivoting their model to bring on board commission only non-employed Local Property Experts (98% of their LPE's). This has allowed them to scale and offer ever increasingly localised foot soldiers. The recent Jeffries investor report is a very interesting read. It questions whether LPE's can earn enough from their up front sign on free of around £250. It also questioned whether a model based on sign ups, as opposed to completions was aligned with the consumer interest. This I think goes to the heart of whether pay up front hybrid models will continue to gain market share. Eyal Mallinger, formerly of Countrywide, said last month at Proptech that his research suggested only around 50% of listings complete. Jeffries could only find evidence of 5% of Purple Bricks homes selling in an average time of 5 months. The 5% figure cannot be correct and I suspect registration lags at Land Registry will have distorted this number considerably. These issues will determine the success of the model. If customers know that at best they're 50% likely to lose their money, the appeal of 'low cost' will wain, because people don't like to gamble when selling their homes. So it will be interesting to see if the next City release has any mention of completion rates.

From: Glenn Ackroyd 11 June 2016 08:57 AM

Glenn Ackroyd

From: Glenn Ackroyd 01 April 2016 09:03 AM

Glenn Ackroyd

From: Glenn Ackroyd 05 October 2015 08:38 AM

Glenn Ackroyd
So Ewemove are/have been opening Hg St offices. When I was playing sith the chat rep, he said fees were lower due to not having expensive offices. Interesting that Glen is saying several are now opening offices. "Was also with Russell from eMoov who said they had begun offering a higher fde model and had gained extra business. Umm upward fees and traditional offices. Are the budgets trying to tell us something we already knew?" Hi Trevor - we've never priced on budget that the other model's you refer to. We price comparable to traditional agents and compete on service. For example 24/7, accompanied viewings as standard. The high street offices are for our franchisees who are expanding and need more Valuation reps. It is still a significant saving on the cost burden of a traditional agent, given that we cover portal fees, phone calls from tenant/buyers, we deal with landlord gas checks, repair calls, landlord accounting, tenancy management etc etc. I welcome other 'online' agencies looking to charge more. I've long had serious doubts about many 'online only' agents who don't have local reps not being sustainable based upon their pricing. Lots have raised £millions of cash, only to need to raise £millions more months later due to a phenomenal marketing burn rate. Investors will only 'buy' the story for so long before they start asking serious questions. So I totally agree with the concerns voiced on forums like this about many of these new businesses being akin to the dot com bubble of the late 90's. I think in 12-18 months we'll be seeing stories of a number of online agencies going pop once the seed investment runs out.

From: Glenn Ackroyd 02 June 2015 11:46 AM

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