Page 8 - Redbrik Lifestyle & Property Magazine: Spring 2019

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Nationally companies are looking towards Sheffield and Chesterfield
for inward property investment,
with grand schemes in the pipeline. Waterside in Chesterfield is edging ever closer, and the cranes should soon be adorning the Sheffield skyline too, with work commencing on the first two residential buildings in Heart of the City II.
There is also a lot of adverse press speculation about the struggles of estate agents, – however it is really just two types of agents that seem to be struggling. The cheap ’self-service/on- line’ agencies and the bigger, national corporate chains. The online self titled ‘disrupter’ businesses have spent millions of pounds on advertising, trying to convince sellers they are able to solve their moving needs. However, the promise has not always been the reality.
As many as 5,000 Emoov customers nationally, who had paid their selling fees upfront, were left high and dry in December when the business, once valued at a reported £100m when it merged with Sarah Beeney’s Tepilo, went bust (read more on page 13). Operating losses
Redbrik has high street offices, but
we have never classed ourselves
as traditional. We focus on three things: People, Systems and Marketing. You have to be brilliant at all three to succeed, but the most important is people.
at online estate agent Purplebricks more than doubled to £25.4m in the six months to the end of October 2018, from £11.4m in the previous half year. Yopa also filed accounts showing cumulative losses totalling £32,250,786 over the last two years to 31 December 2018.
Many industry commentators expected that the ‘online listers’ share of the UK property market would grow to 12-14 per cent, some even predicted 20 per cent. Instead, evidence from TwentyCi, – the property and home-mover data firm, – show online estate agents achieved just 7.2 per cent of all exchanges
in the final quarter of 2018, slipping back from 7.6 per cent earlier in the year. It also highlighted the struggles the sector has with selling properties priced at over £200,000.
Estate agency is not a product, it is
a service. So while it is an appealing thought to potentially save a few hundred pounds (often not the thousands some still claim) on
agency fees by instructing a low-cost alternative, the vast majority of people understand the value in paying for a
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