Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou is tomorrow launching easyProperty at London's Natural History Museum - and he's doing it next to dinosaurs.
The symbolic launch event, at which easyProperty chief executive Robert Ellice and London Evening Standard property journalist Victoria Whitlock will also speak, will come at the end of the website's first day of full service' live lettings advertising.
The website has been set up using privately-sourced investment but now it is searching for more funds through a mix of modern crowd-sourcing and more traditional sources.
Investors are offered a 13 per cent stake in the website in exchange for £7.5m, with the funds being used on marketing and enhancing its start-up technology. Ultimately the site will also expand to cover major mainland European countries as well as the UK.
easyProperty will charge zero per cent commission and claims to already have 10,000 homes pre-registered by landlords. Its target is to let between 4,000 and 5,000 homes each month with most income being generated by selling additional services.
Ellice, a former Home Counties traditional estate agent who has worked in the industry for over 20 years, has told Letting Agent Today that "Online's happening now because the stars have aligned."
"Firstly, small agents have established the online principle. Secondly, many areas now have fast broadband. Third, so many other industries have moved online. Fourthly, a huge surge to mobile technology has happened. And finally, the High Street generally is declining as retail activity switches to the internet" he says.
He says easyProperty will offer every single element of traditional lettings and sales agency - valuations, EPCs, property management - except for an office.
"We'll do it cheaper using pay-as-you-go expertise. We won't have agents in traffic for hours a day handling two appraisals. We'll use people in the area" he says.
He is also optimistic about the future but does not discount the traditional estate agency model. "People want choice so traditional agency won't die - why should it - but within 10 years the majority of sales will happen online."
Comments
Checked their Rightmove and Zoopla links and it seems that in almost a month since they went live (forget the "pilot site" nonsense). They have just 118 properties on their books across the UK and not one is showing as Let Agreed. Not sure where the other 9882 properties that were supposed to be there for the promised 15th go-live have gone but they need them like yesterday :-)
It'll take off you can believe that.
Also it hasn't office properly launched yet so it's probably why there are only a very small amount of properties on it
just searched for Dover- no results - just searched all the other areas we cover - no results... says it all really !
Always been an interesting one. Is it a vanity project by a company only ever interested in the bottom line, or is it a genuine attempt to transform the property industry I fear it is the former.
So an unlaunched business competing in an already saturated market is valuing themselves at around 70m I would love to see this pitched on Dragons Den! So if I invested 7.5m for the 'generous' 13% of the company made a 1m profit it would take me 57 years to get my original investment back. Brilliant! Where do I sign up
Been on the site and not as many properties as I expected. Just 1 in Bristol, 2 in Birmingham and Liverpool and 0 in Newcastle so far...