Online property portal Boomin goes bust

Online property portal Boomin, has been forced to call in liquidators following a lack of new funding.

The Birmingham-headquartered firm was launched by Purplebricks’ former boss Michael Bruce to rival other platforms such as Rightmove and Zoopla.

Around £6m of equity was failed to be raised, resulting in the company’s 65 employees being told the next steps were liquidation yesterday (31 October).

Boomin moved to a fee-paying model in April, the timing of which Bruce said was not “our friend”.

Bruce told Sky News, “Our move to a fee-paying, revenue-generating model from April 2022 coincided with the start of the economic slowdown and the drying up of funding.

“In line with most tech company scale-ups we overhauled our business model to reflect the new market conditions, sharpening our focus on our key differentiated products and improving efficiencies to bring forward the point where we reach breakeven and generate positive cashflow.”

“While we had a plan, support from a number of existing shareholders and a solution with a new investor, the progressively worsening economic situation, combined with increasing uncertainty in the housing market, has resulted in us being unable to get the necessary funding round over the line in time to enable us to continue”.

Bruce has also placed ‘significant sums’ of his own money into Boomin, which once had 8,000 agents on its platform.

The company is chaired by Stephen Murphy, the former Virgin Group chief.