Online hybrid estate agent YOPA has announced that it has raised a further £15 million from investors including the Daily Mail’s parent company DMGT and Grosvenor Hill Ventures, the investment arm of Savills.
The company has also made some punchy claims within the statement accompanying the news of its Series B funding, which follows the £16 million investment Savills made in the agency in June last year.
This includes that its market share is increasing rapidly and that hybrid agents like it and Purplebricks will handle 50% of all sales by 2020.
YOPA, whose founders are Daniel Attia, Andrew Barclay, David Jacobs and Alistair Barclay (pictured LtoR), also claims that the hybrid agency is one of the “country’s top three agents for successful property sale” based on percentages of sales agreed against listing data from Rightmove data.
YOPA has a national network of 75 local agents who work exclusively with the company but are freelance not employees, plans to use the new investment to double the number of agents working for it by the end of this year.
“After a strong first quarter of trading, we are delighted to have closed our Series B round of funding,” says Daniel Attia, co-founder and CEO of YOPA.
Savills
“Having DMGT lead this round is incredibly exciting and we are also pleased to continue our close relationship with Savills, who have reinvested and maintained their equity stake.
“Having two industry giants backing our vision is not only a testament to our model of estate agency, but to the team at YOPA who are the driving force behind the business.”
Key player
Paul Zwillenberg, CEO of DMGT, says he is “impressed by YOPA, which has quickly established itself as a key player in a new market that has exciting growth potential, and look forward to seeing the progress of the team’s expansion plans”.
DMGT has form in the world of digital property. Its own Digital Property Group, which included FindaProperty.com and PrimeLocation, merged with Zoopla in 2011 and enjoyed a £160m windfall from ZPG’s flotation in 2014. It also has its own property information businesses, Landmark, in the US and Europe.
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