CEO of knock.com Tells Us Why His Company is Not an Ibuyer

June 24, 2020
Share this Post: 

As its founder and CEO Sean Black told Simon Baker during a session of last week’s Global Online Marketplaces Summit, knock.com seeks to be a one-stop-shop for Americans looking to release equity in their homes in order to move house. From purchasing, refurbishing and selling the old house to offering a mortgage on the new house, knock has already centralised the process of transacting for many and is a prime example of the burgeoning ‘convenience economy’.

As a founder of Trulia, Sean is well placed to give insight on the market, and in the half-hour video of his conversation with Simon there were plenty of talking points:

  • Unlike the ibuyers, knock has been cashflow positive on a unit-economic basis “pretty much from day one”. Black said that knock’s model “makes more sense” than that of the ibuyers.

  • The company has done several thousand transactions to date in its 6 markets and is looking to double both of those figures this year.

  • He believes that the 6% agency commissions in the US is gumming up the market and wants to naturally reduce this figure to loosen the market up.

  • 90% of all knock houses transact within 90 days.

The video of Sean’s talk at The Global Online Marketplaces Summit is live, along with those of all the other speakers, on our Youtube channel here. An interesting insight into a fascinating new type of business model.

Read more

June 24, 2020
Since March 2020 Edmund's job has been to read about, write about, collect data on, analyse and generally know about real estate marketplaces and the companies that run them. Before that he worked at the aggregator Mitula Group (which became Lifull Connect) for five years.

Subscribe to our mailing list to get the famous, free Friday newsletter!

News and analysis to help build better online marketplace businesses, in your inbox, every Friday

Related News

Nils K
Ringier's Nils Körber on ArtificiaI Intelligence, Training the Machine, and Talking about Problems

"What would you do with one million interns?" The award for the best question at the PropTech and Portal Watch...

Read More
Untitled Design 13
As OnTheMarket Hits 15,000 Advertisers, Zoopla Fights Back with Big Agency Deal

The British property portal Zoopla has announced a new long-term listings deal with Dexters, one of London's top agencies with...

Read More
Untitled Design 12
LeBonCoin Suffers Data Leak and Boliga Comes Under Cyber Attack on Same Weekend

LeBonCoin, the leading French horizontal marketplace owned by Adevinta, has acknowledged that some of its users' personal information was exposed...

Read More
Number 2S Challenging Hero Image 2
Analysis: Can Zoopla, Realtor.com and Domain See Off Challengers and Close the Gap to Market Leaders?

Well-funded challenger portals have been generating a lot of headlines in the industry recently. CoStar has been explicit about its...

Read More

Editor's Pick