
The property industry's collective eyebrows were raised this week as Michael Bruce, co-founder of the defunct property portal Boomin, emerged as a potential buyer of the company's intellectual property through his new venture, My Bespoke Room.
For those with short memories, Boomin crashed and burned spectacularly in late 2022, taking £30 million of investment with it and leaving 80 staff jobless. The venture had aimed to revolutionise property search by creating an earlier-stage engagement platform for house hunters, with innovative features like Sneak Peek for off-market properties.
The timing of Bruce's new company's formation - just months before Boomin's collapse - coupled with his interest in acquiring the IP, leaves a rather peculiar taste. While it's not unprecedented for founders to pick through the bones of their failed ventures, there's something distinctly uncomfortable about the architect of a £30 million spending spree potentially nabbing the resulting innovations for pennies on the pound.
The irony won't be lost on traditional estate agents, many of whom viewed Boomin's demise with barely concealed glee. The Bruce brothers, having previously founded Purplebricks, had spent years attacking the traditional estate agency model through aggressive advertising campaigns that essentially accused high street agents of daylight robbery. That these same agents then gladly accepted Boomin's free trial periods, before walking away when asked to pay, speaks volumes about the long memories of our industry.
Yet we shouldn't entirely dismiss Boomin's innovations. Their property playground concept, particularly the Sneak Peek feature showing pre-market properties, demonstrated genuine insight into consumer behaviour. The problem wasn't the technology - it was the messengers.
The Bruce brothers' previous venture, Purplebricks, had effectively poisoned the well with traditional agents. Their commission-bashing campaigns had done significant damage to the industry's reputation, making any subsequent collaboration with high street agents problematic at best.
Now, as the administrators sift through the wreckage, the question becomes whether these potentially valuable innovations will find their way back to market through My Bespoke Room, or if they'll remain mothballed as a cautionary tale of how even good ideas can fail when burdened with too much baggage.
The Boomin saga serves as a reminder that in the property industry, relationships matter. You can have the slickest technology and millions in funding, but if you've burned your bridges with the very people you need to make your platform work, you're building on sand.
As we watch this latest chapter unfold, one can't help but wonder whether the Bruce brothers' legacy in property tech will be one of innovation and disruption, or simply a series of expensive lessons in how not to win friends and influence estate agents.
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