The battle of the portals is hotting up after Propertyfinder has said that it will take on Rightmove head-on.
Chief executive Gillian Kent said: “It’s a classic case of he who hesitates is lost. Now is the exact time to go aggressively after disenchanted Rightmove agents.
“Already, in various parts of the country, we are beginning to recruit clusters of members from Rightmove who prefer our prices.
“We charge £175 a month per branch – a fraction of the Rightmove cost. And we have no intention of raising our rates. Now is not the time even to consider it.”
Rightmove currently charges £400 to £500 per office each month, but massively dominates the market.
Kent, speaking to Estate Agent Today, revealed that the site has grown 30% in membership and now has 5,500 agency offices.
“We have also invested in a stronger management team and staff resources. Last month, we had our busiest-ever traffic on the site, with 2.2 million unique visitors.”
Kent, who took over as chief executive at the beginning of the year, said one of her challenges was to differentiate the portal from its competitors: “We want to do it by offering excellent service, by showing agents that we care about them and their business, particularly in these tough times, and also by our very cost-effective prices.”
She said of rival Globrix, which like Propertyfinder is also backed by the News International media group, that it had a clever business model: “But although it offers free basic listings to agents, its problem is that it will still have to make money.”
Propertyfinder will 'seize the moment', says boss
08 October 2008
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Have any estate agents out there been successful in negotiations with Rightmove etc?..
Our company has been with all major portals for some years now, we have a number of offices across London and it would seem that different portals work for different areas. Naturally this makes it harder for us to choose which contracts to cancel and therefore a reduction in fees is preferable - But has anybody been successful?
having read all of these posts i can agree one way or another with all of you regarding portals. Yes it is confusing but i can only tell you my own personal experience.
i do think that RM has provided us with a great foundation but their pricing structure is just crazy.
we left them in september to join Propertyfinder and i can honestly say that we are getting the same amount of leads as RM and saving over 50% per month.
The sales rep and account manager were both good to their word and delivered exactly what they said in the time frame agreed.
funnily enough i'm still waiting to see my RM rep!!!
Keep your eyes open for Jasdip.com the next major free portal. You wont need to set up a feed or ask to join! You will be able to ask to leave though if you wish, but why would you???
We use both Propertyfinder, Findaproperty and Rightmove. The amount of leads from all portals are about the same. Rightmove sent us 119 leads in the last 9 month at a cost of just over £28.00 a lead!! In this economic climate I believe this is not an acceptable price to pay. We will leave Rightmove when we are assured by them we will not incur a cancellation fee from them, beware !!
Property Live portal is being launched and is exclusive to NAEA, ARLA, ICBA, and NAVA members and is guaranteed to always be FREE!!!! It's being demonstrated on 14/15 October at Agency Expo Exhibition in the City. As it's only going to be available to regulated agents it will set a new standard in portals in that the public can have confidence in it's members.
I’d recommend a site called propertyindex.com, because they have a pay for results business model. I list all of my stock for free and only pay for qualified homemovers on a £1 CPL basis. Very cost effective in the current market!!!
I have read with some interest all of the above. I must say from our own experience that all of the free sites and portals are free for a reason!! With all due respect how can you compete with the likes of propertyfinder and findaproperty when you have less than 1000 people visiting these sites(henry pryor)??
we have recently come off Rightmove and have signed up to both PF and FAP and still have saved over £200 pcm!!
last month propertyfinder gave us over 100 leads with Findaproperty giving us some 40+ which is 10 more than RM gave us on the previous month.
Not just that but the salesman was polite and genuine unlike our local RM who posted the contract out to us and has NEVER been in to see us until we cancelled!
all well and good signing to a free site john but how much traffic do propertyfoyer.com get.........my guess very little
I am on with propertyfinder.com in SE London and what a nice cha
ange to recieve so many genuine leads month on month.
Keep up the good work guys, highly reccomended.
With regards to feeding to property finder. It is a little more complicated for some software providers but we do it well.
Our Powl software is widely available for use, and without any additional fee's to feed to any property portals!
Check out our demo here:
http://agent.propertyowl.co.uk/
and our feature list:
http://agent.propertyowl.co.uk/agent-services/property-management/
I operate INEA.co.uk (The Independent Network of Estate Agents) we are growing by the day and offer a modern approach via web networking through our site. INEA is a true mls allowing members to solely list or group share listings. We now have 137 member agents. The site will be free to our first 150 members and its far, far more than just a portal. It allows subbing, which is how the market use to be. We have just agreed to create a live feed out to Globrix, So with INEA you can have the power of a national mls and soon in support of free portals we will be uploading members properties to Globrix. Why not check us out: www.inea.co.uk
Please forgive a shameless plug but the concerns expressed by so many are what led me to try to work with all those who are unhappy with portal costs by setting up the Estate Agency Buying Group. www.eabg.co.uk.
Over 800 people have so far visted the site since news of the launch was broken by EstateAgentToday and more than 400 offices have either added their support to the site publicly, called or emailed me with their details.
The internet is bound to continue to provide an effective way for agents to promote both their brands and their properties and the huge choice available can only help to bring cost down. However, it requires a concerted effort by many to change the habits of an industry that has taken the 'easy option' for too long. Perhaps now is the time to try to sort out which work, where to advertise and how much this advertising is worth?
As highlighted by the various discussions and various plugs, there are about as many internet property web sites/portals as there are HIP Companies. No wonder Joe Public is confused. Why dont we just use all use one budget website ie ripoffmove.com
We looked at joining propertyfinder once b4 but they use a different format for feeds and it was going to cost £2000 to get the software written by our IT guys to be able to upload. Its fine if you are with vebra or gmw but we have our own system. With regards to rightmove, i think it is a case of agreeing with all the local agents in your own town or village to come off so no one has an advantage. I appreciate agents are generally out to beat each other but there are many places where co-operation exists. If agents get together to choose what websites they want to go on and exclude rightmove then rightmove would be in all sorts of bother.
Hopefully propertyfinder can sort out our feed issue. I am awaiting a return call from the chap while he looks into it but surely we are not the only agent to have experienced this problem?
It's true, there is no one-size-fits-all portal but it is a good idea that all agents make use of all available free technology and marketing products available to them in this market. Globrix and the forthcoming Propertylive are going to do great things for agents, and although you may not be able to completely remove your portal spend, you will almost certainly be able to reduce it.
We have been using propertyfinder now for the last 5 months and what a refreshing change (from RM!) to have some great quality leads and a very amicable account manager who calls in at least once a month for a chat and a cuppa!! I have recommended their portal to several other agents in our franchise. I agree there are free sites out there but we get all our credible leads from Propertyfinder.The partner sites alone bring me enough properties to easily justify the fee.
I think portals offer different experiences in different areas for buyers & agents as we experienced the opposite to Sara's: "We advertise with propertyfinder and get plenty of leads from the main site and its linked sites such as hotproperty. The back up is good and we have the chance to feed back our views and suggestions. Our rep visits us regularly and we don't feel 'taken for granted'."
Why not join a TRULY FREE property portal such as PropertyFoyer.com? We did and are getting business from them. It is FREE to advertise and FREE to receive responses via phone or email directly from prospective buyers and tenants.
Glad I got out of Right Move when I did!! I was paying £175 plus VAT pcm and barely got a lead from them in 10 months! That was bad enough - I certainly wouldn't pay what they're asking now. I get a much better response from the free sites I'm registered with
I did intially find it hard to choose between all the portals available now, and when I finally did select a few, It's Propertyfinder that still continues to impress me. They deliver good leads and what I really value is their service. They are so helpful and informative. It's really good to see a friendly face interested in my business rather than someone just appearing at my office when they want me to pay more.
I think Miles Shipside is a greedy ****!!! Agents are trying thier damned hardest to network chains to pull deals together and all those morons at rightmove can do is kick us in the wallet!
We advertise with propertyfinder and get plenty of leads from the main site and its linked sites such as hotproperty. The back up is good and we have the chance to feed back our views and suggestions. Our rep visits us regularly and we don't feel 'taken for granted'.
Does it really offer good value at £175 per month? How many visitors does it get in proportion to rightmove?
I think that increased competition is great and may move rightmove to reduce prices.