A new call has been issued for PropertyLive, the NFoPP portal, to challenge Rightmove, FindaProperty and Zoopla head-on.
It has come from NAEA members in Surrey, who say they want to see PropertyLive mount a proper challenge to all the major portals by listing every single UK property for sale and rent.
To do this, it would have to open up to non-member agents
NAEA Surrey chairman James Wyatt said: “Our local Surrey members want to see every single UK property on PropertyLive, which will require our national board to alter their stance considerably.
“We see this wholesale change as a gangway to a large number of new members and a profitable property portal.”
In a letter to the board, Wyatt and his committee are demanding that a ‘commercial’ stance be taken to PropertyLive to ensure better results.
Wyatt claimed that Surrey members are already deserting the major portals in support of PropertyLive, but he added: “We’re up for the fight, but our association has to be brave and support our move.”
Comments
It's not the public who need educating........it's the agents ! ! !
The public will find our properties - it's up to US where we put them. If one morning there is nothing left on RM they will look elsewhere until they find where they have gone.The public don't care about RM, they just want to look at properties.
Perhaps by using social media etc we should all set a' jump' date - a couple of months in advance - send out some press releases etc
RM are taking over our industry taking away our independence - something needs to be done !
@Regional Agent You are so right well said .....whos for pulling out then?
Why don't we all drop RM altogether pay £150 to zoopla job done, and save lots of money!! its all a case of educating the public..................
Why don't we all drop RM and produce a magazine? Thats forward thinking!
The quickest way to kill Rightmove is to force them to take for sale by owner properties. Then we will all pull our subscriptions and kill off the site! Sounds twisted logic but I guarantee it would work.
Gosh - how can David (PropertyLive) kick Rightmove (David) down you can't and above all - YOU SHOULDN'T. Why.
Rightmove gets critiscm for high costs - the answer is if you not happy - then leave, likewise other portals. BUT there are 100's of agents out there who cross list on other portals for other agents. makes sense to leave a main portal and put saving into your choice portal and yet work with other agents who can list for you on portals youve left.
All portals have restrictions to bringing data in. PL is a members site and ranks very low. RM ranks high but has commercial barriers in that its become and for others becoming toooooooooo expensive. Whilst others see it as good value. In other areas RM isnt king, instead FP, prime and zoopla are.
So what happens when the next 4-5 big portals come along - well it fragments even more.
In a London Polish area a surveyor told me he gets more lets from a pen and postcard add in a local Polish shop notice board. in other London community areas Gumtree is king, because people search there in the week for pets, secondhand things, cars and also see homes there.
Your all short of properties - wake up and work together, it gives you the ability to sub to every web outlet out there and access more listings and as one agent spends £x000 on one portal - they could be saving £0000 by pulling off other sites and working with other agents who pay other portal bills.
So PL wont be bigger than RM, Prime, finda and zoopla, but hey work together and your listings might just be found on all of them.
@sceptic on 2012-07-13 09:55:17
A lot of what you say is of merit.
However, the NFOPP is not a Brand. At its inception was never meant to be - it was to be the backroom admin for the divisions. Unfortunately the "powers that be" lost their way and caused great confusion for the public and members, but that is now to be rectified - whether it will be successful is another matter. The main Brands are NAEA (sales) and ARLA (Lettings)
@TREVOR KENT on 2012-07-13 09:55:52
Unfortunately I have to agree with most of what you say.
Unless there is a revolution within the profession it will possibly come to pass.
Interestingly, our website has a higher ranking than Property Live. We have 107 links. Property Live has over 2,700!
The fact is, links from lowly ranked sites have little real value.
We don't spend a penny on SEO - but we know how it works.
Propertylive is national - we aren't, we are just in parts of London. Content and keyword frequency relevant to search criteria is the key. Link are of value, but really they need to be links for trusted, high ranking, high traffic sites.
The changes with Googles search results mean that fresh, current and pertinent content is what is needed.
If you want to see what's wrong with propertylive - try this:
http://www.submitexpress.com/analyzer
Cleverly, you cant analyse RM's stats as the results are 'forbidden' -- but compare Propertylive to Primelocation
I could honestly improve PropertyLive ranking in a day. It really isn't that difficult - there are so many articles on the subject on Googl and spending just a few quid on the submission service on the site above pays dividends in about 3 months
"crucially have created the most links. This is what puts them at the top and has given them their position in he market." - not quite accurate,
This is one factor and not as important as content. Links are one thing, but its the quality of the links which is key. Hundreds of Links from agents have little importance compared to one link from, say, BBC.
Content, keyword frequency and density, current content, page views all build rankings.
Yeah - with a few hundred million in investment. Propertylives web rank is worse than mine! And we have less than 10 branches
Their bounce rate is over 40% and people spend an average of 2 mins on the site.
How much money the portals spend on marketing is irrelevant. It is a well known fact that almost all homeseekers commence their search on Google or a similar search engine.
They type in their search requirements and guess who comes top? Yes, it's Rightmove (RM) -why, because they have the most properties, and crucially have created the most links.
This is what puts them at the top and has given them their position in he market.
Once this happens, RM have 'captured' that homeseeker. Therefore, it is us who have put them at the top, not their marketing. They just do this to make it look like they're doing something!!.
All the time this remains the same, RM will be dominant, and charge what they like.
What we need is a viable alternative so that we can actually REMOVE our properties from RM. Believe me, if they had NO properties, they would go out of business overnight, and those homeseekers would then be googling & finding someone else.
Alot of work is going on behind the scenes (by agents who are not being paid) in order to talk to the NAEA about ways to motivate member agents & possibly others to list their registers on Property Live (PL) & help create this viable alternative to RM that we all so badly need.
If you can, please support PL by listing your homes NOW & creating those crucial links to PL from your own websites, it's free - don't expect results overnight, but your co-operation will be invaluable.
If we can get PL top of Google, it's 'job done' because that means we will all be off RM ( and have our independence back again)!
There is an old adage "If a man invent a better mousetrap, though he live in the middle of a wood - the public with beat a path to his door".
Sadly, RM not only tempted us initially with cheap cheese but then used our money to perfect the killer trap and, worst of all, placed it, not in a wood, but outside every office in the land.
Within a year or two RM will be selling property to our 'public' themselves, we all know that - and I doubt there is much we can do about it now. But then it is Friday 13th, what does one expect? BiG T
PropertyLive will not succeed for two reasons:
1. There is no consumer brand awareness.
Look how long and how much money it took Rightmove to achieve their current position.
2. The backing of NFOPP means nothing to the man in the street. As above NFOPP has no consumer brand awareness.
NAEA/NFOPP need to stop being so intraspective and start communicating and promoting the benefits of their organisation to consumers (hmmm, perhaps that's the real issue here). If they were worth their membership fee then vendors should be seeking out NFOPP member/certified agents instead of using the cheapest/most convenient. But displaying an NFOPP/NAEA sticker in an agency window is basically a waste of window space as nobody looking through the window knows what it means.
Where were they when all the confusion about EPCs was (and still is) happening? Not only was guidance to their membership pitiful this was a great opportunity for them to have shown a public face and provide commentry and guidance for the house-buying public.
Alas, whilst we would all like PropertyLive to be a credible alternative to the mighty Rightmove most agents are not going to risk biting the hand that currently feeds them.
Talk about waking up and smelling the coffee! Can anyone seriously imagine all agents even agreeing to a commercial suicide pact - let alone carrying it out. "On the count of three, we'll all leave the one portal that everyone's heard of...." Yeah, right.
I've said it before and I'm more than happy to repeat myself (after all, I do rather like the sound of my own voice...)
Rightmove is causing us all a huge problem (along with FAP, PrimeLo, Zoopla, etcetera).
Your BRAND is vanishing.
I have been told many times this year by vendors and buyers alike that "You agents are all the same aren't you?"
Rightmove has sapped all the individuality out of agency AS FAR AS THE GENERAL PUBLIC are concerned.
The internet has destroyed customer loyalty: the things that are important to vendors are price, fee and service in that order. All agents know it should be the other way around but the long discussions about overvaluing on this site over the last few months prove that although vendors SAY they want service, asking price and fee are more important in choosing an agent.
PropertyLive in it's current state or in it's Beta version is not even close to being a suitable competitor to RM, FAP or Zoopla.
Someone's going to need massively deep pockets or a REAL USP that they can make sure that other websites can't copy to even have a chance of thinking of competing.
Zoopla is popular because it started the Home Value section (flawed as it is). That's why they're number 2 now and FAP is a poor third place.
All of them though are not interested in agents in any way.
You must realise that the latest Rightmove Micro Site offer is actually REALLY, REALLY bad for you...
Why?
Because google will rank your microsite on Rightmove higher than your own real website.
Why is that a problem?
Because we will all then look even more the same.
Happy days!
We know some big portals allow private sellers and private landlords properties in via budget agents for pounds. So agents have built mega portals to sit their listings next to budget listings.
I see no reason why agents shouldnt do the same and list on ALL portals via fellow agents. Why have one main portal when you can list at low or no cast on all. Many big portals have directors from large corporates on their boards, so save money showing listings via other independents and it puts less pounds in corporates coffers, yet increases independents property exposure to more buyers.
Vendors will also pay more for more exposure. The upsell pays any sub fee to fellow agents.
this is the most PONY news story ever.
- Like a previous post says, this is pretty much a repeated story for a millions years ago
- Why keep using the "Take Rightmove head on" type headlines all the time. NO ONE is coming into the market to take Rightmove head on. The only challenge they have is Zoopla/FAP...END OF STORY until some some is ready to spend 20mill on a new site.
- People need to stop trying to back cheap/free websites!! Money talks and money wins!
Maybe the reason Globrix swift rise stopped because it wasnt a subscription model for the DPG, the cash cows agents fund are going to get highlighted over groups freebie websites.
PropertyLive doesnt have the funding tht big portals have, so even being on pages 6-7 on google doesnt cut the grain. Lack of listings from non members is a massive seo problem, yet having professional agents that can value giving content is better than Other main portals allowing Micky Mouse Marketing to add overpriced Olympic lets and the £49 joke agents to list overpriced crap.
Best way to USE big portals that take £100s to £1000s off agents each month is to link up with other agents drop some portals others are on, thus reducing your portal costs, yet increase your portal exposure to more buyers and tenants.
Rather trust another agent than a portal. Time to wake up guys.
Have we gone back 5 years and published an old story, this is what oldies call a broken record! Same story same posts.
i think its about time agents up & down the country woke up & smelt the coffee! if we all listed our properties on one portal, regardless of which one it is, thats where the public would start their search.We the agents created the R.move monster & still keep its heart beating by feeding it with more property, stop the supply & it would be dead! its nothing to do with big marketing budgets anymore,its more about every agent joining ranks & taking control. the alternative is rollover & accept 13% increases every year!
PropertyLive is not going to mount of credible challenge to the likes of Rightmove or Zoopla, if they are not prepared to spend millions each year to market the site.
Just listing every agent on site and having all current 'for sale' and 'to rent' stock is not going to be enough. Globrix became a free to list website and they had the agents on board with all the stock but if the consumer hasn't heard of it, whats the point! This quickly got sold on.
In my view this is a non starter.
It goes against everything the NFOPP is supposed to stand for - confidence in using a member agent.
One of the problems with Propertylive is that since its inception very, very few members have advertised it themselves - preferring to advertise RM etc. (look around your own area)
It is still almost totally un-known so having more properties will not help. Unless something drastic is done to ensure its visibility to the public and use by members it may as well fold!
Considering I've not had a single lead in the last ten years the portal has a long way to come!
They need to take a commercial stance to membership to! They have lost many good members like myself with 20 years plus experience, it's time to sharpen the act all round.