Boomin

Ok, I accept that when Michael Bruce and his team created Purplebricks, it was different and brought innovation to the property industry. Initially it did well, share prices rose to over 500p per share and at one point they became a £1.3b company. However, by the time he had left, the share price was at one point 90.5p, 10% below what the company floated at and a sixth of what it peaked at. Moving on to Boomin, whilst the Bruce Brothers are wealthy enough to support the initial start-up, with talk of daily Prime TV advertising, I can't see them committing to more than 3 months without funding in place. As nothing has been made public, then I have to assume there is little appetite for this right now. Not like the PB days when they were getting money thrown at them from all angles. I also doubt very much if there much appetite for the majority of agents to list their properties as well. All of this contributed to their 5 months delay, at a time when the market was buoyant with the no stamp duty. Building a household name is not going to happen and here is why. This is very different to the Purplebricks days. They had the Neil Woodford's and the financial backing from day one to help them build a name. They had deep pockets and no real competition. This venture doesn't. Now, I understand something needs to be done to stop the monopoly and obscene charging that Rightmove are getting away with. However, all this has been tried and tried again but failed. Interestingly though, not at the expense of the founders and initial backers (yes, they all walked away with nice windfalls), but by the poor retail investors and estate agents. So come on, do we really think that the people who only a few years ago were trying to take all our livelihoods away are the ones to trust on this? Even without them at the helm, do we really need another portal cost? Agent Mutual came along with Onthemarket.com. That was supposed to the be the holy grail against both Rightmove and Zoopla. What happened here, they failed. Not only did they fail, but their 'one other portal' rule only helped reaffirm Rightmove as the market leader, this in turn increased their market share and revenue per client. So what was supposed to be a 'game changer' left us all with a third portal and a third subscription to pay. I welcome anyone who benefited financially with this extra portal to comment below. Hindsight is only a wonderful thing if we can learn from it! So now Boomin.com has come along claiming to be the new game changer. So what USP have they got that is going to change the industry..eh nothing! There is talk of MATCHMAKER and SNEAK PEEKS. Seriously? Are these the reasons why buyers are going to leave in their droves and use Boomin? Now the launch date is the 2nd April 2021. Would it not have been more appropriate to do this on April Fool's day, I suppose that's a question that may be answered one day soon. So, who is ultimately going to benefit from Boomin? The short answer is the pockets of the Bruce brothers and some of the big estate agents (perhaps even greedy decision makers? who knows). Let's be clear, the ultimate objective has got to be IPO in a few years. What happens after that is irrelevant as windfalls will have been banked. So, let's look back at history again. Onthemarket.com, a company that was supposed to be an agent owned portal floated on the stock exchange. There were reports that their CEO at the time, Ian Springett made around £6.45m . Not bad for 3 years work. Most, if not all the founder members who made a few pounds and brought out this 'one portal rule', are now back listing on both Zoopla and Rightmove. OTM shares are today trading at 90p, about 40% below their IPO. So taking this all into consideration, these are the question agents need to ask themselves. i have provided what I believe are the answers: 1Q) What is the real reason for this new portal? 1A) To line the pockets of the owners and a few founding members 2Q) Would this become 'meaningful competition' to Rightmove and force them to reduce their fees 2A) Absolutely not. Zoopla is a £3B company and they couldn't do it, OTM apparently tried and actually made the whole situation worse 3Q) Do you believe the Bruce Brothers have agents genuine interests at heart? 3A) 100% NO. The only interest they have is to form a portal that they can take to the stock market and line their pockets in the near future. 4Q) If boomin was successful and became 'meaningful competition' to Rightmove, what would happen? 4A) Boomin would hike their fees up to similar rates as RM and keep their shareholders happy. Purplebricks was a low-cost estate agent, however it didn't take long before they found ways to increase their cost per client revenue. There are only so many clients buying or selling houses. If you allow this to happen, then be prepared over the next few years to paying 4 subscription fees AND getting the same or reduced leads from all them. Stephen King had a famous quote 'Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. Fool me three times, shame on both of us'. Next year this could be extended to 'Fool me four times Boom!'