Nothing has divided the estate agency industry in recent years more than the creation of OnTheMarket by Agents' Mutual.
Since the new portal was first mooted, well over 15 months ago, agents have been passionately for or against.
Many industry insiders - usually those firmly on one side of the debate - have made a point of telling those with opposing opinions that they have a responsibility to tell vendors why their agents have (or have not) joined OnTheMarket.
It is perhaps a sign of precisely how professional many in this industry are, that several agents have done exactly that. They have proven their accountability by contacting vendors and explaining what they are doing and why.
We reproduce two letters here, one on either side of this great industry divide.
The first is from Knight Frank, one of the founding against of Agents' Mutual, and this was sent to its vendors across the country:
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, 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
On the other side of the fence here is a letter from Colin Shairp, who runs the Fine & Country Southern Hampshire and Town & Country Southern agencies.
He is not joining OnTheMarket and he's written to his clients to explain why. He has also published this letter in his local newspapers:
It's the nature of marketing a new product that there has to be a certain amount of brashness if it is to succeed.
But there's a new kid on the block in the world of estate agency insisting that to join its on-line presence estate and lettings agents are only allowed to be on one other portal.
In kind human terms, such an approach might be described as an overabundance of self confidence. This new portal, owned by a group of estate agents, is insisting that already successful portals must be abandoned in order to come to its party. To keep the property analogy going, how do you think you would fare if you arrived in a neighbourhood and asked everyone to come to a party provided they left behind all allegiances to all their old friends but one Precisely!
So it is that I'm not abandoning Rightmove or Zoopla to join the new portal. The latest survey by Property Academy, in which 4,506 people currently selling their home or investment property were questioned, shows that 94 per cent expected their property to be marketed on Rightmove and 68 per cent on Zoopla, while 39 per cent backed Primelocation.
I don't see it in the interests of my clients to withdraw their homes from being promoted on one (or more) of the top three most used property portals just to satisfy the whim of a start-up. If you are thinking of selling your home, ask any estate agent you are thinking of instructing if they have abandoned other portals they formerly used in order to join the new one.
Many may well answer that they have done so to break the grasp of the other portals and also to save themselves money. But if they are working for you and charging the same commission as other agents then the only winner may be themselves. After all, your property will not be on-line where you imagined it might be and you will be taking part in a marketing experiment that may possibly delay the sale of your home. If the agent argues that it won't because the property will still be on Rightmove or Zoopla then what is the purpose of backing the new website other than to save money
Personally, I will continue with both Rightmove and Zoopla while that's what my clients expect. True, their combined cost is probably equal to the overheads of 1.5 extra staff members but I have ameliorated that not by slashing their bill but by insisting they add on other marketing tools for free. This increases their effectiveness for sellers because greater analysis of their data is possible.
Interestingly, the Property Academy survey, for which 35 per cent of respondents lived in the south east but outside London, shows that 68 per cent of all respondents first saw their next property on Rightmove or Zoopla, 62 per cent said they would not consider selling through an on-line only agency, and 78 per cent did not make their choice of agent by selecting the one with the lowest fee. What impressed them most when considering which agents to seek out for valuations was the agent's reputation (20 per cent), its marketing or brand (16 per cent), or because they had dealt with the agent before (14 per cent).
In other words, they like what they're getting already and that's what I'll continue to provide. But I'm not averse to change and when it's needed I'll make it. Until then, the industry can carry on navel gazing and I'll carry on selling homes.
Colin Shairp, director, Fine and Country Southern Hampshire
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Comments
Well its alright for CS who has industry awards coming out of his arse for the time being, but when Purplebricks begin taking his instructions (look on zoopla at how many instructions they have in Portsmouth and surrounding areas), maybe he will change his tune.
And as for all these figures quoted about people expecting their property to be on Z or RM, well of course they expect that, there's no other major portals out there!!! Isn't that the whole point of OTM If more people committed to it, in a year or 2, i'm sure a huge percentage of vendors would say that they expect their property to be advertised on there!
Its all well and good these agents not joining OTM and citing their reason as 'its in the best interest of my clients', however i'm sure many of them probably love the idea, but are scared of loosing instructions during the first couple of months whilst OTM finds its feet.