Outspoken sales and lettings agent Ajay Jagota is the latest to voice criticism of Rightmove's new price valuation app and the danger of giving portals too much information.
The Move or Improve' app allows homeowners value to their properties using only their phones but has a 15 per cent range estimate meaning that an average UK property - now about £272,000 - could be up to £40,000 wide of the mark.
Rightmove says the app will offer a better and more honest solution to the existing automated valuation tools and has stated that the app is not designed to take the place of traditional agents but is instead designed to help them get new customers.
But Jagota, founder and chief executive of the KIS agency, has hit out at the app saying there's no way a computer programme - even a very clever one - can ever match the local knowledge of the local market of a local estate agent.
He says if the app is as inaccurate as some fear, agents could come under pressure from customers to give a property a price they know to be wrong.
My real worry as an agent is that giving portals like this too much data and too much influence makes them too powerful. They aren't the property market, they're the market's digital meeting place, they can't exist without local estate agents he says.
If our industry had been a little bit more savvy we would probably have chosen to do what other industries have done and taken matters into our own hands. If as agents we had taken the initiative and developed our own portals the likes of Rightmove and Zoopla would probably not exist today as there would be no reason to invent them he says.
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Comments
Okayyy... we all know the tool is useless but this post isn't exactly prima facie evidence - is it
'kerry', trust me - your property hasn't 'gone up' THIRTY SEVEN GRAND in a month - don't care HOW 'up and coming' your area is or how well the local schools and bars do in any league tables.
Have to say I agree with this article, the valuation tool was very off the mark on a house we were selling- by 37,000 in fact!! Thats the dif between the price it came out with and the one we sold it for btw! In a rising market the app is useless because it doesn't take into consideration the factors that influence an area's changing marketability- new shops/bars/school catchment area and league table results! Its ridiculous and the sooner people are aware of its serious limitations the better!
APPARENTLY, he is "The UKs most innovative property expert...".
The only "innovation" I see is the use of complete cr@p to fluff up his own ego.
APPARENTLY, "The firm is famous for being the first letting agent in the country to abolish deposits"
Interesting - the company seems to have been set up in 2006, and I first came across the concept in the late 1990s with another North-East Lettings company - when this guy was selling Thomson Locals, apparently...
You might be var nigh three hundred miles South, 'London Agent', but you might as well be sitting right next to me - I, and most people in the North East haven't heard of him or his 'agency' either...
In what world is he a 'Prominent' agent - 3 branches in the North East and I have never heard of him. I doubt RM will be crying