Zoopla has signed a deal with a major newspaper group, seemingly unaware of the group’s plans to simultaneously launch a property portal aimed at private landlords and which deliberately cuts out agents. Agents have reacted to the launch, by the London Evening Standard, with incredulity and anger.
Zoopla has done an exclusive deal to operate the property search facility for the Independent, London Evening Standard, and the London Evening Standard’s property website, Homesandproperty.co.uk, a spin-off from the paper’s weekly Homes & Property section.
Homes & Property’s main advertisers are agents, paying – one agent told us – several thousand pounds per page.
The Standard appears to have decided to take the risk of upsetting them by launching London Private Rentals, a website aimed directly at landlords and cutting out agents.
London Private Rentals is a free listing service for landlords, powered for the Standard by online letting agent Upad - for Upad, founded by London landlord James Davis, a huge coup. Geographically, the site covers the whole of London, plus East and West Sussex, Kent, Berkshire, Surrey, Essex, Bucks and Herts.
Mariella Petralia, divisional lettings director for Felicity J Lord, a regular advertiser in the Standard’s property supplement and which took out two pages last week – one for its sales properties and the other for its lettings – said: “I really can’t believe that the Evening Standard is launching such a website.”
Other agents who advertise in the London Evening Standard’s property section described the paper’s launch of a private landlords website as ‘astonishing’. None that we approached had known about it. Last week, the Standard’s Home & Properties section carried its usual ‘diary of an estate agent’ column, which we understand is paid for, written by lettings manager Damien Brown of Kinleigh Folkard & Hayward.
While most of the estate agency adverts are for sale properties, all the agents who advertise also have large lettings divisions.
Meanwhile, the partnership with Zoopla went live on Friday, and was described by Zoopla as a clear win for both parties, and one which would benefit agents.
Alex Chesterman, founder & CEO of Zoopla said: “This partnership will drive significant value for our members.”
A Zoopla spokesman later said that the launch of London Private Rentals had ‘absolutely nothing’ to do with them.
There will be much more on this story, together with agents’ reactions, on our sister title, Letting Agent Today, tomorrow morning.
%20A%20property%20tale%20for%20our%20times.png)
Comments
Makes you wonder why agents bother there is so little money in being a letting agent
You were happy, presumably the landlord was happy to spend his/her £2.24a day not to be disturbed in the night and worry about whether you had or hadn't paid your rent. He or she was happy that their agent accounted for money and was on call to you for over 43,000 hours whether or not you called them.
I suspect you are paying more than £2.24 a day right now for insurances and public services that you don't call either.
I am an Agent and a Landlord and I simply can not afford to upward delegate that role to myself to save 9.3p, in your case, per hour. If I offered you minimum wage to be on call 24/7 for the next five years solid I reckon that is a job you wouldn't apply for yet here you are bemoaning someone having to pay 15% of that to be at your beck and call on their behalf.
What? £84 a month for, I would suggest, in the majority of cases doing very little.
I rented for 5 years until a couple of years ago - almost the only interaction I had with them was the privilege of handing them about £75 each year as a fee for them sending me a new copy of a tenancy agreement with the dates changed. Maybe twice in 5 years I had to call them regarding maintenance issues.
For which, I imagine, they relieved the landlord of about 7 grand.
Are you serious puzzled? the average fee for the average tenancy is £70 plus VAT per month; 84 quid for not having to speak to pissed up tenants at 3 am who insist the shower is broken when it is not turned on. £84 is nothing and works out to under 12p per hour to receive a full management and accounting service. 24 hours a day 365 days a year. As a tax deductable expense the net cost is 7p an hour.
Hopefully you are embarrassed by your post !
Cut your charges! To the point where any and every landlord will think it's not worth doing it yourself.
Yes competition is a good thing but the playing field needs to be level.
In this case the Media- Agent relationship that has worked since printed advertising is being upset. Newspapers, with the profits they have made, in part, from the long term weekly revenues from Estate Agents and Property Management Agents have survived and prospered. Newspapers and media make their money from selling advertising fair enough, agents make money from selling their skill sets to Vendors and Landlords so yes it is fair enough for Newspapers to sell their services direct to Vendors and Landlords but do they really expect that putting a long term (multi generation) business relationship at risk is really such a smart move?
Looking at this as a business decision there can only be one sensible reason why any management team is attempting to claw in this insignificant drip of revenue and that is desperation.
If the Evening Standard think they can survive without the core Agents revenue let them carry on and let us all enjoy the competition, if in the early hours of the morning this doesn't seem to be such a smart move and that reduced profits are a lesser evil than administration then perhaps there is time to apologise and be loyal to their core customers.
As I said before Messr's Zoopla, Milner and co would do well to consider their part in the effective betrayal of the Agency base and give a few moments to consider whether or not this is a deal worth having.
Greed is great for a full belly short term but all parties to this would do well to think how rotten a famine can be!
PropertyHawk one has to suspect your enthusiasm for such a short sighted and grubby business is an indication that you might well be involved with it in some way. If that is the case best keep quite you will only give me more opportunity to express my disgust
Am I the only person struggling to work out what all the fuss is about? Any business has the perogative to take work from any customer it chooses.
I wonder how many of the agents complaining here have ever listed a property that was in direct competition to another property they were selling/letting?
It is perhaps worth remembering that traditional media once carried many classified ads direct from landlords, over the years the likes of Gumtree moved into the classified space offering an on-line proposition for private landlord consumer. Traditional media was slow to react; indeed they did not react in any meaningful fashion….apart from perhaps Fish4 which failed due to competing agenda’s of the media partners and they choose the wrong charging model. What we see here is The London Evening Standard with its partnering with UPAD making a step change to offer a compelling private landlord proposition and compete with the likes of Gumtree, eBay.
Like sales agents, letting agents job is not confirmed simply to property promotion many other service benefits are delivered i.e. valuation, negotiation, accompanied view, referencing, inventory, check-in, check-out etc etc. Moving is a local business so coupled with service delivery most local landlord prefer to engage local property professionals to handle their business….so providing local agents deliver great service consistently there is no need to be concerned. Of course they’ll always be landlords as there are sellers who want to go private and from experience many of these having had a play return to the arms of the agent.
Like it or not competition in a market place, provided its fair, is healthy…it keep business on its toes, is a positive influence against complacency and businesses are more likely to be creative and get better at what they do…..oh and don’t forget having real competition ensures that consumers get value.
#Richard, in respect of your comments about the growing Zoopla network, I refer to my paragraph above…for so long Rightmove have not had a serious competitor, that’s no longer the case and once the Zoopla / DPG content is merged and the might of the combined off and online media partners supporting the Zoopla network is unleashed consumers will come and engage….and who will benefit from response…..agents….who wont be able to escalate their fees year on year unchecked Rightmove….who will benefit….agents!
Pasted this in: good comment.
Added by @property hawk on 2012-06-18 14:13:48
Have you been at a festival all weekend or are you out of touch?
Zoopla are now powering The Standard who, to prop up falling revenues, are providing a means for private landlords to circumvent the agents who are providing what is left of their falling revenues. That is not very clever.
Zoopla have just merged/ sold out to DPG who have a very strong penetration with Primelocation to the same target audience as the Standard. Do you really think the management Team of Primelocation are going to be best pleased that their new division is doing all they can to upset their customers? Perhaps things will be all Fine and Dandy at Zoopla and I doubt they will lose any sleep over the deal but really I can't see many Agents jumping for joy at their Property base being directly exposed their Private landlord competitors.
Good business is about deciding who your customers are and being loyal to them in the good times and the bad.
If the Standard are desperate enough to need a few thousand Private landlords to prop up their business then frankly Zoopla's due diligence should have spotted that and shold have been an indication that this was business they did not need.
Re the London Evening Standard, why antagonise your advertisers. More to the point, will other local newspaper groups copy? If it starts with private lettings, will it go to private sellers? If so, then watch out for an 'exclusive' deal between a newspaper group and an online estate agent that is in reality offering direct sales. This really shifts things.
I read this story and did a search to have a look. I found another site carrying the story 'landlord today'
So in addition to EAT and LAT there is now LT.
So much for fighting the agents corner and all the stories I've seen about those private listing sites. On the other side of the coin I do find it hard to see it being fair that this story is being promoted as good news for landlords and pushing them to see more of the detail with a link to Upad!
Who's corner are you fighting Ros?
Have you been at a festival all weekend or are you out of touch?
Zoopla are now powering The Standard who, to prop up falling revenues, are providing a means for private landlords to circumvent the agents who are providing what is left of their falling revenues. That is not very clever.
Zoopla have just merged/ sold out to DPG who have a very strong penetration with Primelocation to the same target audience as the Standard. Do you really think the management Team of Primelocation are going to be best pleased that their new division is doing all they can to upset their customers? Perhaps things will be all Fine and Dandy at Zoopla and I doubt they will lose any sleep over the deal but really I can't see many Agents jumping for joy at their Property base being directly exposed their Private landlord competitors.
Good business is about deciding who your customers are and being loyal to them in the good times and the bad.
If the Standard are desperate enough to need a few thousand Private landlords to prop up their business then frankly Zoopla's due diligence should have spotted that and shold have been an indication that this was business they did not need.
Rightmove is honest, you know exactly what their model is.
Lets (excuse the pun) be clear here, if you go to The London Evening Standards site http://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/privaterentals/ scroll down and you’ll see it’s powered by the national lettings business UPAD.
UPAD are a member of ARLA and promote their properties on PropertyLive, Whilst UPAD do offer classified marketing services direct to landlords they also offer a menu of management services. This service has nothing to do with Zoopla.
As for The London Evening Standard and the Independent’s decision to be powered by Zoopla surely this will only benefit agents who have Zoopla network membership as their properties will now be exposed to an even greater audience than they are now….
A lot of Agents must think this is quite similar to when Tesco tried to launch its private sellers portal but needed Agents to give critical mass and Fish4Homes was persuaded to do the job. Either didn't think it through or wasn't aware of Tesco's true intentions. Result was Agent power. Agents demanded properties were pulled off and the Tesco site was doomed.
There is always a smartarse behind schemes like this often they are accountants. People who run some figures and come up with a brilliant plan for raking in a fortune.
I remember a fat, truly arrogant slob who got put in charge of a well respected local newspaper with view to driving up profits. He upset his staff, he upset the agents, he didn't make any more money but 22 years on the Agent's protest is still going strong. A a group all the agents advertise one week and don't bother the next.
The Standard needs to run some figures and work out how many Private landlords they need to attract in order to replace 1 agent, factoring in how much the cost of sale is to attract those landlords. they then need to work out that unlike an agent, a private landlord only advertises when they have property available to Let, An agent with nothing to let will keep the presence just to stay in the public eye.
Very, Very stupid move on behalf of the Standard, but it is a very good opportunity for Alex to show that he has got the manhood to show where his loyalties lie.
Agents affected need to give Zoopla a choice, pull out of the deal or we will withdraw our support of both the Standard and Zoopla oh and Finda Property and Primelocation too.
As soon as someone at DPG realises that the lucrative Pimelocation trade in that area is in jeopardy this deal will start to feel a bit of resistance.
To big for their boots, springs to mind! what they are doingis giving agents an excuse not to use them, and giving Rightmove an upper hand! very silly as they were just starting to gain momentum