CIELA again shrugs off sabre-rattling by PurpleBricks lawyers:
May 19, 2017
CIELA again shrugs off sabre-rattling by PurpleBricks lawyers, reiterates public request for substantiation of “completed sale” rate.
In response to this Telegraph article, PurpleBricks’s lawyers have written to CIELA for a second time claiming that the statement by CIELA Founder Charlie Wright is defamatory.
CIELA has today (Wednesday) responded (attached) to Norton Fulbright’s letter dismissing their letter as classic corporate bullying tactics with no substance and requesting clarification of the facts.
Charlie Wright said “We fully stand by our position that Purplebricks adverts are misleading because they compare its services to those of indepdent agents, and claims to perform better at a lower cost. This necessarily implies that the services are substantially similar, when in reality, nothing could be further from the truth.
But more importantly, CIELA must not succumb to such corporate tactics – bullying that almost always results in small business owners hushing up, purely due to legal intimidation. This is the kind of behaviour that corporates get away with all the time and cannot be tolerated. It breeds an environment in which only the giants with heavy resources may play, and eliminates the chance of transparency and accountability. This has an unfair knock-on effect for unwitting consumers and agents alike. We must resist such indirect market manipulation; hence CIELA’s publication of its response to Purplebricks in full.
We invite Purplebricks to refute this view with hard evidence which proves otherwise. We will not hold our breath though, as it has consistently ignored many public requests for transparency and substantiation, for obvious reasons.”
Shared by: Charlie Wright charlie.wright@ciela.co.uk
You May Also Enjoy
Breaking Property News 20/8/26
Daily bite-sized proptech and property news in partnership with Proptech-X. Why Angela Rayner Housing Secretary is in the wrong job – again A smile, bluster and vague soundbites will not solve the UK housing crisis Thought Leadership by Andrew Stanton – CEO Proptech-PR ‘I have been involved in the UK property industry since the mid 1980’s…
Read More 
Buyers Looking Beyond London
London new-build demand plummets behind commuter belt as buyers look beyond the capital Demand for new-build homes in Essex more than three times higher than in London, while Hertfordshire faces supply squeeze amid growing buyer appetite The latest research by UK Property Development has revealed a growing divide between London’s new-build market and…
Read More 
Top six tips for first-time buyers
Independent mortgage broker, Flagstone Financial, has outlined key advice for first-time buyers, pointing to flexible options as signs of an improving mortgage market. With high loan-to-value lending (80–95%) becoming more widely available, the property ladder is more accessible than in recent years, and experts at Flagstone Financial, partner of the Beresfords Group, are advising…
Read More 
England’s rental stock surges by as much as 86.6% in a year
Rental listings have almost doubled in Tyne and Wear since August 2025, with Greater Manchester and a host of other markets also recording double-digit growth The latest research from Propoly has revealed that England’s rental listings have climbed by an average of 7.4% in the past year, led by an 86.6% increase in Tyne and…
Read More 
One in five homebuyers have been ‘catfished’
The latest research from House Buyer Bureau has found that, with the rise of A.I, “homebuyer catfishing” is becoming an increasingly familiar experience for UK buyers, with one in five saying they viewed a property where the listing photos had been digitally enhanced to make the home appear better than it actually was. However, while the…
Read More 
Only 31% of letting agents confident their onboarding process protects against tenancy fraud
The latest research from Propoly has revealed that just 31% of UK letting agents are absolutely confident that their tenant onboarding process protects against tenancy fraud, as lengthy onboarding times and delays with referencing continue to create challenges for the industry. Propoly surveyed UK letting agents to understand how long tenant onboarding currently takes,…
Read More