Teen sets up £12m estate agency – at school!
‘I proved I could do what I said – sell a house for £99’
MOSt teenage boys spend their school lunch breaks playing football or chatting to girls. But Akshay Ruparelia spent his selling houses. the young entrepreneur set up an online estate agency while in the sixth form.
And his business model has been such a hit that his company, Doorsteps, has been valued at £12 million.
Akshay, 19, put plans of studying economics and management at Oxford University on hold because the firm – which charges just £99 in commission – is proving so popular that this week it became the 18th biggest estate agency in the country, just 16 months after its website went live.
the firm, which he started after persuading family members to lend him £7,000, employs 12 people. he recently raised £400,000 from investors on a crowdfunding enterprise website in exchange for 3.25 per cent of his business. With Akshay and an uncle owning the remaining shares, the teenager is theoretically worth millions.
the company is recruiting an expanding network of mothers across the UK, who work on a self-employed basis showing clients around properties. ‘I want to rip up the old-style way we sell homes in this country,’ said Akshay, who set up the business between lessons at Queen elizabeth high School in Barnet, London, and still managed to get five A-levels – three A*s and two As.
Akshay, who lives with his parents in harrow Weald, north-west London, says his ‘lightbulb’ moment came when he read a biography of Ryanair founder Michael O’Leary.
‘Mr O’Leary began by selling flights for just £4.99 and his point was that if you can offer customers something at a price they just can’t believe and you deliver what you say you will, you hook people in and your business will work.
‘I took that logic and applied it to estate agency. Research showed some online estate agencies were still charging homeowners between £800 and £1,000. I knew I could do it for a fraction of that.’
After setting up the website he paid his sister’s boyfriend to drive him to Sussex to take photographs of his first client’s home. ‘I hadn’t passed my driving test and didn’t have a car. It was a fivebedroom place with a swimming pool! I put the house on at £485,000 and the land for £185,000 on top, and I’d sold it within three weeks.
‘I was standing in the playground and got an email on my mobile from the vendor to say he’d accepted the combined £670,000 offer I’d got for him and that I was a “legend”. that was a sensational moment. I was just thrilled. I’d proved what I said I’d do – I’d sold a house for £99.’