As the Radar Homes portal gears up for launch in the West Country on Monday, expressions of interest have been pouring in from agents.
Estate Agent Today broke the story on Wednesday. Radar founders are planning to take on Rightmove and the other paid-for portals, telling the industry: “It is time to stop feeding the hand that bites you.”
The Radar site will be run by agents for agents, who will become shareholders, sharing any future profits.
The West Country launch on Monday, when the site goes live, is intended to be the first phase of a national roll-out.
Since our story two days ago, Radar say their phones have been ringing off the hook.
They have also received hundreds of emails and had over 700 agents visit their holding website.
Director Jon Williams said: “We have received inquiry forms from agents all over the country – Bristol London, Kent, Manchester, Wales and Scotland – with agents from most other regions registering their interest too.
“We have been absolutely delighted with the response from estate and letting agents who certainly appear to have the appetite to take control of their future internet marketing.
“Agents love the fact that they will actually have ownership and control of their own portal and are realising the true potential of this together with the value of their own listings.
“We will be running a West Country TV campaign very early in the New Year and moving into other regions as quickly as possible.”
The three directors behind Radar Homes are all former estate agents, each with over 20 years of agency experience.
Williams said: “As such, we have an excellent understanding of agency and the challenges faced by agents today, which include paying the ever rising costs of some national property portals.”
Comments
Competitor portals must employ people just to spend time looking at these sites and then writing negative comments to try and put agents off supporting what is potentially a really good thing.If you are a real estae agent ignore these comments.Our company has just joined this site as members and shareholders and we are going to do everything we can to help make it work down here in the South West.Most of my competitors/fellow agents in the area are also on the site and together we will make this work.A little message to you other portals who are making the comments on this site.I am only one little agent but together with my other members in this site I am now one of many,which now makes me much stronger.We have done this with papers in the past we can do it again.
had a look at the radar details and it was interesting to see that all the selling was about Rightmove and other competitors not about getting me results and making me profit. Rather than tell me why I should not use them when they deliver results I'd at least like to know why radar will at least do the same and how they are going to do it! I read this is is a spin off from the technology used for the homewswap website and from what I understand from one of my network colleagues it is dead in the water just after a year. so fill me with confidence I'd like to know this is because it will make me money but not because they have a failed business and all the redundant infastructure. As for helping bring rightmove down by taking the rightmove sticker out of my window I suppose in balance having a window full of properties means we can bring down the internet as well!
Hilarious. Registering applicants in Plymouth one day, running a Rightmove competitor the next. Why does this industry attract so many space cadets? Save your redundancy money for a rainy day and stick to what you know - flogging houses. Building a portal takes resources and skills that you chaps (and token bird) just don't comprehend. YOU WILL LOSE YOUR MONEY! You have been warned.
Rightmove 743000 visits per day, radarhomes 43. Source Cubestat.com. Good luck Radar but if you can get your visits up to 10000 per day then you have done extremely well. As for toppling rightmove you have no hope, even if you got every agent behind you, you will never have near the advertising revenue. Its about as likely as my greengrocer toppling tescos.
That's not true Mr Aceofspades. As much as you try to big them up, Rightmove should be in the agents pockets and not the other way around. You need us (assuming you work for them) more than we need you - if you weren't around we'd get our leads elsewhere. If all the agents organised themselves and decided to remove their properties in one go - the public would have to turn elsewhere to find properties. Its not hard to see how instantly this could change things. If you do work for them I suggest you relay this information on..because sooner or later mate change is coming.
Stephen, 95% of the public will go straight to Rightmove to search for their property, before any agents websites or other portals. With or without these links on your sites, RM will be number one and these people will still use RM. Rightmove is the biggest and best name out there, especially for the public and that is why one way or another, they will always end up on the RM site.
So how many agents send internet surfers from their own web site straight back to Rightmove? Displaying their logo or linking it back to the RM site? No wonder they can report stats that show them to be number one on the net. With these other sites it may keep RM under control.
It is articles like this that make me want to stop visiting this site. Let's take a look at the detail: "expressions of interest have been pouring in from agents" - Evidence? Have you heard this from agents and if so how many? "The Radar site will be run by agents for agents" - and what qualifies these 'agents' to run a portal that seeks to topple Rightmove? Do they have much experience with enterprise IT delivery? "Radar say their phones have been ringing off the hook." Seriously? "and had over 700 agents visit their holding website" - tell me, how do they establish that 700 agents have visited their site? Total fabrication. We have literally heard all of this SO MANY TIMES BEFORE, that when EAT so obviously promotes an entirely new, unproven and unknown business, it rather makes me think you are either incredibly naive or cynically trying to secure advertising revenue. Either way, it is insulting to your readers.
I saw in an article from EAT the other day that Rightmoves charges varied between £3,500 - £7,000 a year for most agents. Yet ours seem to be well over £12,000 a year and that is based upon around 240 properties. Are we being sharfted? Or is that similar to what you are being charged?
The general public like Rightmove. It is the first site they will typically visit, if not, the only site. It works for the viewer, its excellent. It generates enermous volumes of leads and for the subscription cost, it is a bargain. If you sell ONE £300k house, your commission will cover you for the whole year at your office. What an absolute bargain. Radar might well develop something the agents like (despite RM providing a great service) but no way will it deliver the same service that RM does for the viewer. Never. If you want the best, you have to pay for it.
Roger that is naive thinking. If you look at it impartially then you will see that Rightmove have all the options, the local agent is shafted. Most local businesses will succumb to 3 or 4 national brands, its already happened to the food industry and the interent has now made it possible for the Rightmoves of the world. They will milk us agents for its worth now and then when they have finally broken our backs they will take our place and be worth billions. ITs as certain as night following day my friend
To clear one point up is every agent listed with Righmove getting the same deal. I noticed on the last tax invoice we received that they had inflated the monthly gross fee then 'Applied' a discount to reduce the nett to our normal rate, what is that all about? Another price hike on the cards? I agree that as agents we should push the other sites we display our properties on as it is assumed that we are all on Rightmove.
So that's it then is it Monkey Tennis? Just rollover and let them take all estate agents for fools? They would never do what you are suggesting as it would be damaging to their image and they would become less of a serious offering to Jo public. I agree with the others we should stand up to them together. If we didn't exist they would have nothing - if they didn't exist we'd get our leads elsewhere. We should have them by the cojones not vice versa.
Rightmove is too far out of its cage to be held back, The company is worth hundreds of Millions and if it wanted too could morph into an estate agency itself and render many existing agents extinct. It could offer a private listing service overnight which on its own would kill off many of our instructions. They know this so expect subscriptions to squeeze further.
Better than not being smart enough to solve the problem sheep boy. If everyone had the ballz to act at the same time Rightmove wouldn't have a choice - the press would jump on the fact that Rightmove had lost almost all of its properties and people would start turning away in their thousands...
Blimey if the NAEA is the answer we are in trouble! Lets buy some more initials.
So funny to see the same peolple not smart enough to see they were putting rightmove into such a strong position now whine about it! Agents act like sheep and do what everyone else does. Bah! Bleet!
Someone with enough time needs to start a nationwide strike against Rightmove - it would get a huge amount of press and would force Rightmove to lower their prices...We'll need a website and for every agent to sign up (for free of course) and then on a certain date every agent hand in their notice to Rightmove in demonstration against their fees. They will have to come crawling back with a decent cheaper or even free offering.
For heavens sake look at joining the NAEA PropertyLive Portal, this could realy have legs if more members got behind it - and it's free!
Not another portal !
I agree with John S. Why pay when there are so many free portals out there with established traffic, like Globrix.
My view, watch out for Google which will ultimatey be the category owner in this space.
They've gone to press with their launch in Australia and US and I'm surprised about how many properties they have on googlemaps uk already - just click the real estate button under 'more'.
The key is for every single agent to start recommending just one property portal to search on. The truth is at the moment you probably ARE directly or indirectly recommending Rightmove - which only makes them forever powerful. We need people to start to look to the free portals like Globrix etc. and as soon as that portal becomes where we all get the majority of leads from, then we can drop Rightmove and its ridiculous charging...
It always amazes me how keen agents are to jump on a new gimic as if it will cure their problems overnight. Even if this new portal does have potential to take on the big ones, it will be many years before it is in a postion to do so. And the big portals with real money will have had just as many years to show how much better they are. The very essence of this portal just displays the naivety of agents and what goes into embarking on something like this. Why not get on board with a portal which has already done something to establish itself?
Cannot see why any agent would want to pay money into this when there are dozens of FREE portals already out there (Globrix, Nestoria, PropertyFoyer.com, Houseladder, etc, etc, etc) to take on Rightmove et al. Any of these could just as easily offer shares to agents without much ado - thus creating any number of "agents own portals". This scheme is dead in the water!