Online Estate Agency Pioneers Partner With World’s Largest Real Estate Business
Three former online estate agency founders have sensationally announced that they are going into business with Keller Williams, the largest real estate company on the planet.
Mark Readings, Russell Quirk and Anthony Quirk respectively launched House Network, Emoov and HomeSeller and were the earliest of innovators in the space before PurpleBricks, easyProperty and YOPA were ever conceived.
They have racked up over 75 years’ estate agency experience between them in both the traditional and digital sectors.
Their deal with the UK entity of Keller Williams, run by former Countrywide director Ben Taylor, sees them securing a large swathe of Essex as their territory, the home county of all three former onliners and where each is well known. Russell and Anthony founded a traditional estate agency business together in 1999 which grew to cover most of south Essex over the next decade and Russell, no stranger to notoriety, is a former Brentwood councillor and Planning Committee Chairman.
Readings is set to manage the Keller Williams Essex Market Centre as Operating Principal and will use his 15 years’ experience as CEO of the first ever hybrid estate agency as good standing to launch and grow the global brand quickly, starting with the recruitment of 100 agents over the coming months.
Russell will maintain his focus on Properganda PR whilst Anthony continues to also run his successful agencies, Anthony Quirk & Co at Canvey Island and Beaulieu Estates, Chelmsford.
Keller Williams, a multi-million dollar company with 180,000 agents in 40 countries, is a relatively new entrant to the UK market and operates six other market centres including London Prime in Victoria; London Bridge; Bromley; Kingston upon Thames, Leeds and Glasgow. It is expanding rapidly. In recent months Ben Taylor as owner of the Keller Williams licence for this country has grown his team and recruited increasingly well-known and respected team members and agents including Nicky Stephenson, formerly of Peter Knight’s Estate Agency Events; Daren Cridge of PurpleBricks; and Andrew Benn previously a managing director at Spicerhaart.
‘With our huge collective experience gained from many years pioneering and evolving online estate agency and as high street agents for many years, we are well placed to understand where the future of estate agency lies and it’s destined to be a traditional fee approach meets high service, greater accessibility and tech empowerment. This is exactly what Keller Williams have been all about since they were founded in the 1980’s. No one does it better or makes more money’ says Mark Readings.
‘Months of contemplating and reflection have led me to invest in Keller Williams as the brand and model that has the potential to be one of the biggest estate agency businesses in the UK in addition to its worldwide status’ says Russell Quirk. ‘It’s not until you push the boundaries of the industry as Mark, Anthony and I have done that you start to see that customers will pay a decent fee for decent attention and that this can be achieved by recruiting a significant number of motivated, ambitious local agents that will have the ability to earn proper money, this combined with well-known local people and the credibility of a global brand, superior training and a model that cuts out the unnecessary elements but works hard to promote its people as its biggest asset’.
‘Exciting times. I’m delighted to be working with Mark and with Russell again to be part of a business that is set to dominate the Essex market and beyond as that transformation takes shape. The combination here of brand, people and experience is going to ensure a very lucrative business for all those that now become part of it. Agents are able to keep up to 90% of the full fee earned and work on their own account on as flexible a basis as they wish. That’s exactly how estate agency should be’, says Anthony Quirk.
Ben Taylor says ‘It’s pretty evident that estate agency in this country is changing for the better. Leading that, Keller Williams is all about empowering our agents through training and technology to deliver a world-class experience to their customers. Partnering with industry veterans such as Mark, Russell and Anthony helps to progress our strong growth still further and I’m delighted and proud that we’re now working together.
Next year is shaping up to be a very interesting year indeed for us and for Keller Williams globally, already at 180,000 agents across 1200 market centres in 40 countries.’
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