A UK hybrid estate agency, launched around 2014, that sells homes for a fixed fee using a national network of local property managers and a central team.
Yopa is an estate agency that does not run high-street shops. Instead, a seller pays a fixed fee, and the company uses its own technology, a central team and a network of self-employed local property experts, called Local Property Managers, to sell the home. A 2016 interview with a founder described a hybrid model, in which online tools do much of the work but a local person handles tasks such as viewings and valuations. Its fee options reported in 2019 included paying upfront, monthly or on completion under a No Sale, No Fee offer.
Yopa was founded by four people: Andrew Barclay, Alistair Barclay, Daniel Attia and David Jacobs. A January 2016 interview describes the business as around two years old, with 60 Local Property Managers covering England and Wales, a central call centre in Tamworth, Staffordshire, and seven staff in the call centre. The company's ambition, in the founder's own words from that interview, was "to be the Google of real estate", and he said they did not want to be run like an old-school agent. We found no later mission statement.
By August 2019 Yopa was run by chief executive Ben Poynter and was appointing Grenville Turner, a former chief executive of Countrywide, as chairman. The company said it wanted to grow in Scotland. Beyond the Tamworth call centre in 2016, the pages we read do not name offices, but the Local Property Manager model means that people work from their own areas across England and Wales. A job-board listing for local estate agents suggests it was still recruiting for the role, but we could not confirm its current size or status.
The sources we read do not describe the culture in detail. Mr Poynter has spoken of Yopa's commitment to customers as a core value, and the model gives experienced estate agents the chance to work for themselves, which suggests a culture built around independence, though that is our reading rather than a claim by the company. We did not find any staff survey or independent review.
The roles in a hybrid agency include local property managers who value, market and show homes, call-centre and customer-service staff, marketing and technology teams, and finance, legal and compliance staff. Anyone interested in selling property, working with people, or running their own area-based business can see the model in this example. Because our evidence is from 2016 to 2019, check Yopa's website to see whether it still operates in the same way.
Website: www.yopa.co.uk
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