Listen to this articleeMoov is the opposite to traditional real estate agents. A fair fixed fee (5 times lower than main street); technology that provides transparency and a great user experience plus a degree of ‘self serve’ ability. And a customer service offering that is superior to the generic (and which is generally seen as poor generally across UK players). eMoov still utilizes professional people to visit the home to value; to assist with offer negotiation; buyer qualification and sales progression to completion. That’s eMoov’s big differentiator as most of their hybrid and online competitors cut corners on that important stuff. Below is our recent interview with Russell Quirk, the Founder & CEO of eMoov:
Q: You’ve recently announced $11.59 Million in Series B funding round; could you tell us something more?
A: This is out third fundraising round and our biggest by far. We’ve previously used investment to build the technology platform and the senior team and now that those foundations for scale are in place, it’s all about marketing growth. We will be six times bigger by the end of 2019.
Q: What is eMoov’s story, how did you start?
A: My background is in real estate agency. My grandfather started the original family business back in the 1950’s and further generations have carried on the profession. In 2006 I started to think about the future disintermediation of the property industry and believed that it would evolve as the insurance, travel and recruitment industries already were. In 2008 the financial crisis nearly killed my traditional estate agency business and I sold it to focus on launching a disruptive, online version that I thought I could grow into a big business that would eventually exit in a meaningful way and rather than the year to year, lifestyle kind of approach that UK real estate is dominated by.
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Q: Why is now the time for a technology solution like eMoov?
A: Because technology is crucial to take the heavy lifting of admin at scale. And because the consumer is used to being empowered and in control of ordering their groceries; booking a holiday; streaming a movie; or buying consumer goods. Why should opening up the home buying and process be any different to that. It’s about getting the estate agent to move out of the way where they restrict visibility, access and transparency. Often the agent just gets in the way. Customers want to ‘own’ the process and call upon the agent when they want them rather than being dictated to by a smoke and mirrors act.
Recommended: Q: What are your plans for the future?
A: Growth. Dominating the ongoing disruption of our space through cool and useful technology. And being on the customers’ side. We’ll consider an international expansion maybe and will also think about Saas’ing our platform to the industry so that the traditionalists can charge lower fees but lower their overheads too and therefore preserve their margin. Why would we assist our competitors? Because if we don’t, someone eventually will and we’d like to capitalize on the Saas revenue ourselves instead.
Last Updated on September 17, 2017
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