Estate agents signed up to OnTheMarket have started contacting vendors to explain how they are no longer advertising properties on one of the big two, Rightmove or Zoopla.
However, online estate agent Russell Quirk - a long-time thorn in the side of OnTheMarket, which bans online agents - says he still does not believe all agents signed up to the new portal have informed vendors of the consequences of losing exposure of the major portals.
Over the holiday period Quirk wrote to agencies run by Agents' Mutual directors, who will operate OnTheMarket, telling them that it would be poor consumer ethics if they failed to tell vendors. Knight Frank appears to have been one of the first OTM agents to respond, sending a letter dated January 6 to its vendors.
The pressure that I applied to them has begun to prick consciences and they have, accordingly, chosen to at last declare to their customers that they are dropping one of the big two portals. It's evident that this move resulted from my letter, given that my correspondence to them preceded this action by several days says Quirk.
I still await a response from all of the bosses I wrote to .... that Savillls, Spicer, Strutt and Parker, Douglas and Gordon et al are now being transparent about their decision to disadvantage clients by dropping Rightmove or Zoopla he says.
Here is the wording of the Knight Frank letter:
Monday 26 January 2015 will see the launch of a new property portal - OnTheMarket.com.
This is a very exciting development for the property market and Knight Frank have
been at the forefront of its development since it was first conceived back in 2011.
The portal is run by Agents' Mutual, which is made of a membership of over 2,000 estate agency firms, amounting to 4,000 offices. It is envisaged that the membership will grow significantly once the portal goes live.
The motivation of the portal is to deliver the best user experience for vendors, buyers and prospective tenants, with results produced clearly and in an uncluttered way with no pop-ups or third party advertising as is found on the other major portals.
To give the portal a change of establishing a meaningful presence, each member agent will only be allowed to display properties on one other portal.
Knight Frank undertook an extensive survey assessing all of the available data and concluded that the best portal to go alongside OnTheMarket.com, for our business, would be Rightmove.
Rightmove not only delivers more referrals to Knight Frank but the quality of those referrals are [sic], in our opinion, higher than those received from Zoopla/PrimeLocation.
Rightmove is, in our view, the market leader, ranked 8th in the list of the most viewed websites in the UK, well ahead of Zoopla at 35th and PrimeLocation at 120th. Google has announced that it is the most searched for business in the UK.
We believe the combination of our own website, www.knightfrank.co.uk, together with OnTheMarket.com, the new entrant with all the publicity that will ensur, as well as Rightmove, the most established and dominant portal in the market, will give our clients properties [sic] a winning combination for online marketing.
From 26th January 2015, properties being marketed by Knight Frank will no longer appear on Zoopla/Primelocation.
This is an exciting time for the property market and we believe OnTheMarket.com will be of long-term benefit for all those with an interest in buying, selling or renting property in the UK and overseas.
If you have any questions regarding the above, please feel free to contact us.
Yours sincerely
Comments
I think that Russell is a secret admirer of OTM and he is peed off that he cannot join. No one has the God given right to join anything. If the owners do not want to let you in then tough. Long live OTM and in a year or two's time we can stick two fingers up to Russell and his cronies. We were right and your were........................yes WRONG
Russell Quirk bores me! will he ever give it a rest
What do the institutional shareholders of Savilles, Winkworth etc think about all of this
Would be interesting to know what their terms are with the CEO.
Unless Quirk really is a consumer champion and is about to team up with Anne Robinson on Watchdog, I really don't see what he gets out of this By encouraging the OTM agents to spell out and explain they're advertising choices properly, he is losing his only bargaining tool. Very strange.
Here are some questions I think we'd all like answered:
- Which of the founding partners came up with the idea of the one portal rule ((My guess is once this is banned by the Cartels Committee, they'll all distance themselves from it and fingers will point)).
- Will EAT be recording the number of listings which the founding partners have live before the launch and a month later. I.e. will they lose listings
- Can an agent be sued for claiming that they are changing portals to increase awareness if this is not factually true
- What do AM consider success From various blog posts it seems the key measure is the demise of a portal.
- Why does NAEA endorse an organisation which excludes many of its members Has this question been asked (Could this become a threat to the NAEA)
I would like to think that [b]every single agent would do this[/b], after all, have estate agents not already got a bad enough reputation!
My GF's aunt has been advertising with an agent who joined OTM and came of one of the big two end of Dec without notifying her. Needless to say, she has just changed agent off the back of this, as knows and trusts Zoopla/RM and wants her property on both. I've heard a few people do this of late. No doubt there are a few agents out there who will go out off business because of it. There is a lot of competition out there, and not to be on both the big two I think is just crazy.
Look at the Zoopla adverts that are constantly running along side these blogs/articles - are we going to get objective articles regarding the implementation of OTM #dontbitethehandthatfeedsyou
We too have written to our vendors with the same information in advance of Zoopla contacting them directly to try and undermine our independence. Zoopla do little for us here.
Russell Quirk leads agency like Gerald Ratner led the jewellery industry. Some times its best to keep quiet
Keep going Russell, your doing OnTheMarket a massive favour!
Quirk again I don't believe it.
So, KF informs clients that they are being taken off the 35th most visited site in the UK to go on the untried, untested and currently unknown OTM ... and that is "exciting".
For WHO exactly