A company that is changing the way homes are bought and sold in the UK founded by a former estate aegent has signed up its first sales agent customers including Keller Williams and most recently, Bracknell agency Avocado Properties.
MyPIPS, which casts itself as the ‘buyer’s champion’ in any property transaction it is involved with, was founded in 2022 after Patsy Irwin-Brown (main image with COO and husband Robin) realised there was a significant gap in the property market for a ‘buyer’s champion’.
“Phil Spencer always says the UK property market needs to have someone who is one point of contact for all the third parties who are part of any transaction including agents, conveyancers, surveyors and lenders but who, unlike a sales progressor, is representing the buyer not the seller,” she said.
Irwin-Brown had been working in this role previously after leaving KFH to take a career break, helping a broker friend who needed someone to help struggling buyers get their purchase over the line, and soon realised it could be a business.
“What we do is help buyers negotiate the offer and progress their sale, reading through contracts and surveys with them, and working flexi hours even if it means talking to our clients at 9pm,” she says.
Emotional support
“This includes practical support but also emotional help – buying a home particularly for those doing it the first time, can be a challenge.
“We use our years of experience in agency – in my case 15 years – to walk them through the process and that is why our existing, and future teams will always be former estate agents.”
Irwin-Brown says many buying estate agent bfranches effectively do this role as part of their service in the prime and super-prime end of the market, but she is targeting those who cannot afford that kind of elite service.
She also says that many estate agents and vendors love how her clients come prepared when they make an offer and that, in one recent case, a buyer won the bid even though they weren’t the highest or cash buyers.
“The vendor told us through their agent that they liked the fact that our client had bothered to enlist the help of an expert.”
But is this service to the benefit of estate agent firms – don’t they want a ‘weak buyer’ so they can control multiple offers and play buyers off against each other?
To this question, Irwin-Brown says that ‘it depends’ – but that the agents she has worked with so far would recommend her service, largely because she has prevented potential sales falling through.
MyPIPS charges a flat fee of £750 for its ‘hand holding’ service and at the moment gets 75% of its referrals from brokers and the rest direct through ‘friends and family’ type recommendations. But Irwin-Brown is now hoping that agents will refer MyPIPS to buyers and revolutionise the way homes are bought in the UK.