Former Emoov CEO calls for top 3 estate agencies to merge to survive

Former Emoov CEO claims the top three firms still afloat in the sector should merge if they want to continue business

Russell Quirk, the Founder and former Chief Executive of Emoov, makes the call for consolidation in a video interview; and in an article he has written on the same theme, he makes the claim that over £150 million has been spent by online firms on TV, radio, Google, Facebook and outdoor advertising - all for a market share that remains well down in single figures.

Both the video interview, with respected industry consultant Chris Watkin, and the article written by Quirk himself have been shared with Estate Agent Today readers.

The article is a critique of how and why the UK’s online sector soared and then collapsed, partly because of what can retrospectively be seen as over-enthusiasm by participants - including Quirk himself - but also because the data suggested the market would end up much larger than has turned out to be the case.

“Between 2011 and 2015 Emoov doubled in size each year. As did the likes of House Network, House Simple, etc. Then in early 2014 along comes Purplebricks and duly quadruples in size in its second year as a consequence of good marketing and a humungous ad spend. Then they double the next year and so on. The logical conclusion? That the prospect for the growth of the online model was massive."

— Russell Quirk

Buoyed up by seeing the sector receive millions of pounds of investment by well-known individuals including Neil Woodford, Charles Dunstone and Sarah Beeny, and simultaneously hundreds of millions from organisations such as Tosca Fund, Savills, LSL Property Services and the Daily Mail Group, the individual agencies on the ground then went marketing crazy.

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