A lettings platform with national ambitions has again postponed its official launch as it switches from a Purplebricks-style model to a franchise system.
Accommodation.co.uk originally said it would be a hybrid lettings platform using local freelance accommodation managers who would ‘build relationships with landlords’.
But that was May 2018 and, although the company’s website is up and running, its CEO Aaron Short says the business is yet to launch its new model, despite hoping to earlier this summer.
Instead of local accommodation managers, it is now looking for local licenced business partners to launch the ‘next generation letting agency’.
“We’re targeting 25 to 35 year olds who have been working in an established estate agency for three or four years but who want to strike out and set up their own lettings business,” says Short.
Accommodation is to charge them a £995 joining fee and £100 a month thereafter in a bid to take on the big franchised networks such as Belvoir and Martin & Co, whose franchises can cost up to £25,000 to buy plus considerable monthly payments.
“We wanted to make the barriers to entry very small but we’ll still support them with local online marketing, training and software to get them off the ground,” says Short (left).
He also says that unlike other franchises, Accomodation will not take any of the fees its franchisees earn from landlords.
“We will enable them to concentrate on the lettings and the business generation while the heavy lifting will be done by our property management team at head office,” says Short.
“The idea is that they are then freed up go out and find their landlords, do their own marketing which we will then match pound for pound, service the landlords better.”
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