I was watching the BBC television news last night when a story appeared on the wonders of a 19 year old who was already alleged to be worth £10 million after developing an on-line estate agency called Doorsteps. Yes, it was great free publicity for the company.
Bearing in mind the continuing debate among investors about listed company Purplebricks (PURP) I thought it was worth a quick look. Purplebricks has a stock market valuation of £950 million despite rising losses. Will the business model work, particularly in the USA where it needs to be successful to justify the valuation? Nobody knows.
Some commentators have suggested that there are few barriers to entry into the on-line estate agency business (i.e. anyone can get into it as evidenced by the fact someone still at school did so).
A traditional estate agent will charge several thousand pounds to sell an average house (but you only pay if they do so). Purplebricks charges £1200 in the London area, and £850 elsewhere. But Doorsteps charges only £99!
Doorsteps raised £390,000 from investors via crowdfunding platform Crowdcube at a pre-money valuation of £12 million from over 490 investors. But if you look at who owns Doorsteps it is a company called Upside Capital Ltd that was only incorporated at the end of December 2016. Not exactly a long track record then is it.
Will Purplebricks put traditional estate agents out of business, or will Doorsteps put Purplebricks out of business? I suspect the answer to those questions will be a complex one but I’ll have a stab at it.
Firstly can Doorsteps conquer the market while still charging so little? Bearing in mind that they will have high marketing expenditure, still need to employ local “agents”, and pay management, admin and IT overheads, I rather doubt it. With few barriers to entry, there will no doubt be other entrants offering to do it for £95 rather than £99. Result, lots of companies with little business individually and all losing money. Who might win out on that race to the bottom is anyone’s guess. For investors it looks like an area where you are likely to lose money irrespective of which horse you back.
This myriad of low-priced entrants might also damage Purplebricks business model, who in addition already have other competitors such as Yopa, Tepilo, Housesimple and Emoov operating at different price points. It’s beginning to look like a market which has grabbed the public’s, and investors, imagination and which will soak up enormous amounts of capital as the companies all try to out-spend each other to grab market share.
One interesting aspect is the ease with which Doorsteps managed to raise money on Crowdcube. Crowdcube have over 400,000 registered users and the few hundred who invested in Doorsteps probably put in a few hundred pounds each. In effect they were punting on an investment in a private company (and hence with limited investor protections), on a company with no track record, and with an inherently risky business plan.
I fear that the crowdfunding approach to raising capital from investors as evidenced in this example will lead to a lot of disappointed investors in due course.
But having said all of the above, it is very clear that the estate agency market is changing rapidly. Some people won’t wish to pay upfront to sell a property, but others may be happy to take the chance of “no-sale”. Paying £1200 on the chance that a sale will be made and quickly may be attractive to some house sellers, particularly when their past experience of traditional agents may not be great (estate agents have a reputation for sharp practice over many years). So if Purplebricks can establish a good reputation (which has yet to be proven), and spend enough to grab a decent share of the market, they may establish a sound business, but how profitable it will be is anyone’s guess. In addition, traditional agents will react by doing more on-line offers at lower cost, as some are already doing. One can see that this market will become a price battleground as there seems to be little differentiation between the various on-line competitors. That’s a recipe for low returns on capital and poor returns to shareholders in the long-term.
When the product being offered is the same, service and reputation will be a key differentiator, I suggest, in this market. Competing on price alone looks like a dubious business strategy however.
Note: I have held Purplebricks in the past but do not do so presently because the more a company is debated on bulletin boards and by share tipsters the less attractive an investment it tends to become. It just leads to irrational speculation, both up and down.
Roger Lawson (Twitter: https://twitter.com/RogerWLawson )
For standard houses I’m not sure why we need estate agents at all, why not the equivalent of ebay?
I believe Rightmove will accept adverts from individual sellers (or if not they should do so), because there is certainly not much agents do now. It would also be easy to put a board up saying “house for sale” outside your own home.