Showing posts with label The Joneses. Show all posts
Showing posts with label The Joneses. Show all posts

Monday, February 18, 2008

The Joneses Real Estate business fails to keep up with market conditions

The prospect of the only float this year, so far, to kick off, certainly piqued my interest and following in The Joneses, a cut price, flat rate real estate agent that planned a back door listing on the NZAX early this year.

c Fox Corp 2007

According to the Real Estate Institute, The Joneses real estate business model
was flawed and it led the their liquidation. The business case is no Bart Simpson
fly by night though, the Joneses simply undercapitalised and were unable to function
in the current property and stockmarket downturn.


Its business model differed from the run of the mill Real Estate agents like Barfoot and Thompson, Century 21 and Harcourts, who all charge much larger selling fees on a sliding scale, tapering off as the price they might get for your house gets higher-no incentive here to get a better price for the seller.

Unfortunately the Joneses were not able to keep up with the market uncertainties surrounding them.

In the face of a marked and welcome (in my opinion) downturn in Real estate sales and property prices the IPO was bound to have “done a Burger Fuel” and tanked because the appetite for real estate and sharemarkets in combination was a recipe for disaster.

Joneses management say the business model was sound and I would agree with that. Their problem was that they needed volume of sales for this business model (just like most businesses) and their cash flows simply ran out before they reached critical mass.

The Real Estate Institute came out today and trumpeted their old fashioned model as the only one that could be a success and clearly they were rubbing hands together as their competition bit the dust but they shouldn’t be too quick to dismiss the likes of other cut-price real estate companies that operate successfully.

This sector works well overseas and here but is expensive initially to set up.

Increasingly these days, individuals have become savvier when selling property. Negotiating fees with the full price brokers and as the internet and businesses associated with the net matured, to allow that media to process house and property sales, websites like Trademe have taken business off the big boys.

Contrary to popular belief the best person to sell your property is you. You know better than anyone else, you know your suburb like the back of your hand and the incentive really is there for you to get the best price.

It is human nature for us to be lazy and that is where these Real Estate agents see the gap and try to fill it. We “just don’t have the time”, or “we don’t have the expertise” to sell our house, quite frankly that is bullshit. It ain’t hard.

The laziness also extends to the agents, their “incentive” to get you a better price just isn’t there. When their fee slides downwards as the sale price of your house goes up then one can see they just aren’t living in the real world or working for you or the buyer. They are in it for themselves.

How much extra time do you have to spend at work to pay the $15,000.00 or more these companies charge?

But I digress.

Given better market conditions the Joneses IPO would have been a success. As with most things financial, timing can be 80% of your success. The Joneses management were just not able to time the market to make this thing a goer.

Having said that, clearly the capital to help make this business float wasn’t there from the beginning and the IPO would have allowed them cash to develop the company in a sustainable way.

It would have been wise for Joneses management to have got extra capital from the get go, make the business profitable for a number of years, then list.

The stockmarket is better off without the likes of the Joneses in its present guise and one can see a return of such a company to the market when financial stability returns to the global equities and the real estate sectors.


Related Share Investor reading

Can the Joneses keep up with the market?
IPO quality indicative of poor economy


New From Fishpond.co.nz


Hubbard: A Biography of Allan Hubbard

Fishpond


c Share Investor 2008




Thursday, December 13, 2007

Can the Joneses keep up with the market?

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The Joneses will have to work hard to satisfy stockmarket
investors that theirs is a company worth investing in to
make the IPO a success.



A dearth of IPOs in New Zealand so far this year and what we have had has mostly been unmitigated garbage.

News released yesterday that The Joneses , the cut price real estate agent, is going to list on New Zealand Exchange's alternative market, in mid-February 2008 piqued my interest somewhat.

Now I guess your initial reaction might be hell, I don't trust real estate agents, and you could be forgiven for thinking that but I can see some promise in the idea that the owners of the Joneses', TJRE Holdings and director Chris Taylor have.

Kiwis have no listed exposure to the residential property market and we just love to invest in residential property, at the expense of the sharemarket mind, but what an opportunity to combine the two aspects.

The company is very small and has been operating since last year, with offices in Dunedin, Christchurch, Auckland and Wellington, so the possibility for good growth is there.

Revenues from house sales commissions are estimated at NZ$1.2 billion, with Barfoot and Thompson in Auckland taking up the bulk of that. The revenue is certainly there so it is a case of the Joneses upping their ante to keep up with the Barfoots and LJ Hookers of this world.

In the absence of more details of how the company is structured and how revenue is made, presumably through a cut of the sales commission, one cannot make a serious decision to plunk any shekels down yet.

Time to look at the industry and see how this model might work/fail if you want to invest.

Bring on the prospectus.


Related Share Investor reading

IPO quality indicative of poor economy
The Joneses Real Estate business fails to keep up with market conditions



C Share Investor 2007