Boomin Founder's Optimism Contradicted By Anonymous Analyst

Boomin, the newly created British challenger portal with a big marketing budget, is said by its founder to have got off to a flying start after its Easter weekend launch. One of Boomin's founders, ex-Purple Bricks man Michael Bruce, told Estate Agent Today that he's "really really delighted" with the portal's performance so far.

The new challenger portal which was over a year in the making has several features which it believes will set itself apart from the current industry incumbents which all, according to Bruce, do the same thing. The company launched with around 5,000 agents signed up to list for free until 2022 with some 600 more agencies said to have been added since then. According to Linkedin, the portal firm employs a staff of 127 people and is believed by many in the UK property industry to be much better funded than many challenger portals thanks to its founders' Purple Bricks wealth.

Although no figures have yet been released, Bruce claims that Boomin is doing better than OnTheMarket at a similar stage of the portal's development and has seen "thousands" of valuation bookings already, though he does concede that taking on the big three British portals will be a gradual process.  The nascent property portal has until now targeted smaller independent agencies in its sign up efforts, but claims that "getting all the agents is definitely an ambition".

The issue of Boomin's inventory coverage was the subject of another piece in the UK property industry press over the weekend as Property Industry Eye published comments from an unnamed analyst who claimed that Boomin is "scarcely making a dent in some of the larger markets". The portal is in the midst of a big marketing campaign which aims to make Boomin "a household name in record time", but according to the analyst quoted in PIE, the marketing campaign may be hindering the portal company's cause as a lack of inventory means users driven to the portal are unlikely to come back.

Comparing the first few weeks of Boomin with the launch of British #3 portal OnTheMarket in 2015, the analyst claims that while Boomin has an estimated 21.3% of market coverage for sales and 10.4% for rentals in Greater London, OnTheMarket had around a 30-40% coverage which was much better in key sales areas when it debuted.

The battle for supremacy in the lucrative British property portal market is as hot as it has ever been with Zoopla spending money on rebranding and updating their product suite, OnTheMarket on a charm offensive ahead of results season and Challengers like OneDome and Boomin sounding off about their own milestones.