Page 8 - Redbrik: Property and marketing Autumn/Winter 2019

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spoken for themselves, with the
likes of Emoov and Tepilo going bust. Customers have been left thousands out of pocket, with nothing to show
for their significant upfront payments. Hatched was another online-only agency that was closed down this year when its owners, Connells, could not see any future for the model.
Yopa and Purplebricks continue to seek further investment to fund huge losses and try to sustain their multi-million- pound marketing.
Our plan at Redbrik is to continually refine what our clients need from us, and it always relates back to our ‘fly- wheel’ approach to improvement.
1. Attract the best people to work for us
2. Cultivate our customer-centric
culture
3. Deliver a highly personal and professional service
4. Work with and attract the right clients
5. Accomplish visible success
6. Invest in the best training and systems
In terms of the property market itself, one thing is crystal clear – we need more new homes.
In a recent report by the National Housing Federation, they considered that 340,000 new homes are needed per year to meet the demand. They suggest that 8.4m people, equivalent
to one in seven across England, live in ‘unsuitable housing’. Overcrowding, the inability to afford the rent or mortgage, and hidden households (where people live with friends or relatives as they are unable to afford to move out), are issues which each affect more than 2.5 million people alone.
Current rates of house building are half this level. Just 169,450 new homes have been completed in the last year.
So where are these new homes going to come from and how will they be delivered to the market? Personally,
I think the next decade provides us with a fantastic opportunity for our towns and city centres to re-define themselves as genuinely fabulous
residential offers. There are so many incredible vacant and underused buildings that can be converted into dwellings.
Creating the right mix of housing, retail, food and beverage and commercial can revitalise our high streets and bring people back to living in the centres. With less reliance on the automobiles that came to the masses in the last ‘20s, there is more opportunity than ever
to move back to our town and city centres.
We are already seeing the start of this movement in Sheffield with the re-imagination of Heart of the City II (HOC II), formerly conceived as the retail quarter, which has adapted to changing consumer demand.
Backed by Sheffield City Council alongside its strategic delivery partner Queensberry, the scheme will provide a dynamic and vibrant mixed-use district in the heart of the city centre, making Sheffield an even more exciting and interesting place to live and work. (Check out our interview with Paul Sargent, on page 24 for more info).
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