There appears to be another property portal which appears to use technology to crawl' the internet and lift property listings from agents' websites, portals and social media.
Earlier this month some agents complained that the new portal Houser was using listings without their consent. A number also complained that this effectively meant they were inadvertently breaking the rule introduced by next week's new portal, OnTheMarket, which allows one other portal only' to be utilised by contributing agents.
Now it appears Homeboard, specialising in London property, uses the same approach.
On its website it says: HomeBoard is an intelligent search engine that searches hundreds of estate websites every hour. It uses machine learning to scan for parts of the page contain the relevant data relating to a property listing. It then gathers this information and presents it in a elegant, informative way.
Homeboard is operated by NabiWorks; EAT has attempted, so far unsuccessfully, to contact the firm. However the Homeboard site is clean, simple to use and attractive. It does not carry any third party advertising.
Some detail of how it scours the internet for other properties can be found in the online small print of the site, if you click on its Privacy Policy links.
The section says that information from contributors to the site may come from those contributors pro-actively filling in forms on the site or by corresponding by phone or e-mail or otherwise, as well as those simply using the site online to subscribe to its services, search for a product, or discuss anything on its discussion boards or social media.
Under Information we receive from other sources' it says: We may receive information about you if you use any of the other websites we operate or the other services we provide. In this case we will have informed you when we collected that data that it may be shared internally and combined with data collected on this site. We are also working closely with third parties (including, for example, business partners, sub-contractors in technical, payment and delivery services, advertising networks, analytics providers, search information providers, credit reference agencies) and may receive information about you from them.
Under Access to information' it says: The Act [section 1159 of the UK Companies Act 2006] gives you the right to access information held about you. Your right of access can be exercised in accordance with the Act. Any access request may be subject to a fee of £10 to meet our costs in providing you with details of the information we hold about you.
Comments
Seems to be a search engine like Houser, but is definitely cleaner and more attractive and seems to be free. I'd say big WELCOME to these search engines if they help capture all of the available properties on the market and if they list my properties for free.
Will OTM also go after Google
Should also mention... I see quite a few listings from OTM agents on that site (Haart, Savills, etc). Assume the One-Other-Portal Police will come chasing them down for being represented on a portal they probably don't even know exists
Actually a very nice attractive functional site! If Houser looked like this at launch maybe it wouldn't be the subject of quite so much ridicule. Too bad no one has ever heard of (nor will have any reason to ever hear of) thehomeboard...
Globrix were doing this kind of scraping years ago before they were bought up by Findaproperty etc. oooh, hang on......................
Competition for Houser already - this portal stuff is getting out of hand. How many more are going to jump on the bandwagon