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News Story

Letting agent asks portals to ban private rental service

Wednesday 29th October 2008

A lettings agent is asking the major property portals to turn away listings from upad, a new online lettings business that matches landlords and tenants by cutting out agents.

Kristjan Byfield, company director of Base property specialists in London, acted after receiving a marketing email from upad which said it was launching to save landlords paying costly agency gees.

The email claimed it was advertising on portals that included FindaProperty, propertyfinder and other sites.

Byfield said these were sites “that have long made a lot of money out of estate agents and continue to do so” and that they should not be marketing properties in direct competition with the letting and estate agency industry.

“When Tesco tried to launch a similar service a year or so ago I think we were all relieved to see the portals all take the same stance and decline the business as it was a conflict of interest. Although ‘upad’ will obviously have far smaller financial clout and immediate market presence to Tesco, I do not see why they should be treated any different.

“I think it is only fair that as an industry we demand that the major property portals, in particular the major sites charging considerable fees, (if not all portals who are successful directly off the back of letting/estate agents) refuse to handle this company’s properties. The service they are offering is not regular competition between agents but direct competition to the industry itself.

“The market is hard enough without being turned on by the very companies we pay to promote us.”

Digital News Group, which owns FindaProperty and Primelocation, has made it clear that it does not accept advertising from upad.

The marketing email that Byfield received reads as follows:

“Landlords: don’t give away your hard-earned profits!

Dear Landlord

With landlords – on average – handing over half their annual net profit to estate agents in finders’ fees, you can be forgiven for feeling hard done by.

At upad we think this is far too much. And we know through experience how difficult being a landlord can be, particularly with the credit crunch really beginning to bite.

So at upad we do things differently. We charge from only £29.50 to put your property in front of over 1.5 million London renters. And we guarantee to find you a tenant.

upad is the new online service that intelligently matches landlords to tenants. Free to potential tenants, it’s also both easy-to-use and highly cost-effective for landlords.

Advertising your property on upad, which has the capital’s largest selection of rental properties, puts it in front of London's 1.5 million2 renters. Place an ad with us before December 31st 2008 and take advantage of our fantastic half-price offer of just £29.50!

Not only will the ad appear on upad, but on a wide range of other sites too, including: Gumtree, Fish4Homes, Propertyfinder, Hotproperty, FindaProperty, Globrix, Zoomf, Oodle, Nestoria, UpMyStreet, AOL, Virgin Media, Tiscali, Yahoo and Times Online.

What are you waiting for? Click here to visit the site and see for yourself!

Join the rental revolution!

James Davis
upad founder and private landlord

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Posted By Interested Observer on Friday 31st October 2008 01:45:45

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Gone are the days where having listings gave you an advantage, everyone has everyones listings now as agents seek to generate leads for their properties from as many credible sources as they can. If UPAD can do this and give agents another cost effective channel to market their properties then good on them. Even Rightmove is sydicating its agents listings now in an effort to get more traffic and justify its hefty fees (check out nestoria)

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Posted By John S on Thursday 30th October 2008 10:25:24

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We have been advertising on a new FREE portal for estate and lettings agents called PropertyFoyer.com and have been pleased with the response. It is a no frills site but has a lot of search funtionality. Registering and uploading properties is quick and simple. If more agents advertise FREE on this site our own properties would benefit from scale

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Posted By London Agent on Wednesday 29th October 2008 12:24:48

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It's all a big joke, there seems to be concerns about this cheap site listing how about ALL agents advertising along side landlords (talk about shooting yourself in the head) on 'GUMTREE' if no agent advertised on 'GUMTREE' then the private landlord will not secure tenants as the site would not be worth the time a tenant going to if it only had a handful of properties on it. Come on!! Wheres 'AGENT POWER' AGENTS determine which portal SURVIVES and NOT the PORTALS. We have also cancelled our RIGHTMOVE membership -- when they refused to honour our lettings rate if we came away from the sales for a few months (like Trevor)refuse to to pay just £500 a month for leads 10 miles from our office. Any more RIGHTMOVE cancellations??

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Posted By Jim Parker on Wednesday 29th October 2008 11:24:19

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It's pretty much like what some online only Estate Agents are doing just now. They are taking on properties anywhere in the country at give away prices, have only one office, pay one office fee to rightmove etc and are allowed to list anywhere. Yet just because some agents have 2-3 offices locally they are asked to pay for every branch. The portals should not allow this as it's the high street agents money that keep them going.

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Posted By Benjmain on Wednesday 29th October 2008 11:22:15

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It is the lettings agents fault. They shouldn’t advertise their properties in the portals who are accepting properties from companies such as upad. If I see any portals who betraying me, I simply come off them. Why should I pay them when I see they are advertising against us!!!

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Editorial Contact Details - Rosalind Renshaw | rosalind.renshaw@estateagenttoday.co.uk | 01252 843 566.