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
Will RRA mean almost 50% of renters need a guarantor?
A surge in tenants who require a rent guarantor is coming to the post-RRA rental market New analysis by Zero Deposit reveals that the proportion of local authority districts in which the average tenant is likely to need a rent guarantor to secure pass tenancy affordability checks could increase from one-in-five to almost one-in-two…
Read More 
Nationwide House Price Index for May 2026 – Thoughts from the Industry
The latest Nationwide House Price Index for May 2026 shows that: House prices fell by -0.6% between April 2026 and May 2026. This marks the first monthly decline recorded so far this year. Annual house price growth slowed to 1.7% in May 2026, down from 3.0% in April 2026. The average UK house price now…
Read More 
Annual house price growth slows in May
UK annual house price growth slowed to 1.7% in May, from 3.0% in April House prices were down 0.6% month on month Headlines May-26 Apr-26 Monthly Index* 551.0 554.3 Monthly Change* -0.6% 0.4% Annual Change 1.7% 3.0% Average Price (not seasonally adjusted) £278,024 £278,880 * Seasonally adjusted figure (note that monthly % changes are…
Read More 
Signs of Outdated Wiring in Older Tulsa-Area Homes
Tulsa has a lot of beautiful older homes. Brookside bungalows, Maple Ridge tudors, the postwar neighborhoods that fill out Midtown and East Tulsa. They were built well, but most were built before central air, before microwaves, before two-car households with two laptops and a dozen phone chargers. The electrical systems inside them were designed for…
Read More 
Britain’s seaside price hotspots revealed
New analysis from the UK’s largest property platform Rightmove reveals Britain’s seaside hotspots where prices are rising the fastest Bootle in Merseyside leads the way, with average asking prices up 11% year-on-year, followed by Crosby in Liverpool (+9%) and Penarth in South Glamorgan (+9%) Other coastal locations including Llantwit Major in South Glamorgan (+8%) and Llanelli, in Carmarthenshire (+7%) are also seeing strong price growth Average asking prices are currently 0.3% lower in Great Britain compared to last year, with some seaside hotspots outpacing the…
Read More 
Hertfordshire emerges as strongest performing London commuter county
New research from UK Property Development reveals that while London property prices fell by more than -3% in the past year, prices in some of the capital’s surrounding counties have enjoyed positive growth, none more so than the premium commuter county of Hertfordshire. In the past year, London’s average house price has fallen by…
Read More