Online Agent Yopa Gets Additional £20m Investment

One of the largest online estate agents in the country, Yopa, has received £20m in investment following a recent round of fundraising.

It was led by the owners of the Daily Mail, who are already investors in the company, and was also supported by Savills, another existing investor.

As we reported in our Yopa review, the company started life in 2014 when it was founded by Daniel Atta and Andrew and Alistair Barclay, grandson and son of Sir David Barclay who owns the Telegraph along with his brother Sir Frederick.

Despite being relatively new, Yopa has quickly become one of the most recognisable online agents thanks, in part, to their high profile advertising campaigns that include the likes of Sir Mo Farah.

Manuel Lopo De Carvalho, CEO of dmg ventures (the Daily Mail groups venture capital unit), said: “Yopa is a stand-out performer in dmg ventures’ portfolio and we are thrilled to support Ben Poynter and his team.

“dmg ventures backs innovative start-ups at the intersection of consumer, media and technology, and Yopa is a great example of how we can bring our experience and media understanding to bear for young companies seeking to build consumer brands.

“DMGT has a long-term approach and history of investing in early-stage businesses, having helped to create what became Zoopla from investments we made in the early 2000s.

“We’ve closely followed the dynamics of the property market and believe that technology-driven consumer demand will move estate agency transactions from the high street to online hybrids such as by Yopa.”

Yopa Still Lags Behind The Market Leader

The new investment brings the total funding the company has received up to £75m, still some way short of the kind of money that’s been pumped into the market leader, Purplebricks.

However, this also shows in the relative standing of the two companies amongst other online estate agents. At the time of writing, Purplebricks has 20,811 properties listed on Zoopla, Yopa only has 5,479.

The new investment is expected to be used to expand its network of local property agents, develop its technology and grab more market share to try and close the gap on Purplebricks.

However, there have also been plenty of high profile job switches recently with the former chief marketing officer leaving back in May, and more recently, the search began for a new chief operating officer.