A new lettings portal planned for the end of March aims to break the mould by giving agents more chances to ‘monetise’ their relationship with tenants.
U-rooms has been founded by Mike Peirce, an American who was formerly chief technology officer at lastminute.com, and Mark Davies, who was head of online at the student accommodation landlord Unite.
Peirce explained: “The current portals list rental properties, but that is it. They assume that there is only one point at which agents can make money from tenants, and that is when the property is let.
“However, we will be adding products and services, before, during and after the tenancy, which will change this.
“For example, just one of the things we will be doing is offering a maintenance service. The tenant might have a burst pipe. If he takes a photo of it on his mobile phone, he can ‘ticket’ it online. The job will go to one of our bidding contractors, and the agent will be paid commission.
“We will have plenty of other examples to talk about as we get nearer to launch.”
Peirce said that a significant number of agents had already joined the service, and he promised that from day one, there will be good inventory on the site and healthy volumes of traffic.
“We are using very clever marketing, and we understand how key words work. The technology will also enable agents and landlords to target their properties at the exact type of tenant they want.”
The site will cost from £50 to £200 per branch per month, depending on how many additional revenue-generating services agents want. Landlords will pay £12 per property per month to use the site direct, and will also be able to use the extra services.
Peirce added: “We will welcome Google Real Estate when it launches. We think it will be a Trojan horse to break the stranglehold of exclusivity that sites such as Rightmove have.
“Our own site will benefit, because whilst Google will be free, it will only be a listing. Our site, which has been four years in development, will do a lot more.”
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Comments
your all jealous!
"I can't understand why people post such negative comments.....In my opinion, they have a huge hill to climb" LOL.
Naturally they're going to be bullish about it. This fella is living in some kind of utopian property bubble. It'll burst soon enough.
Sounds like they want agents to get the site going so they can then generate private instructions. I assume that is what "pay £12 to list properties direct" means. Or are they having a laugh!
I'm not advocating this property site (not enough clear info to do so yet), but I wanted to say that I can't understand why people insist on posting such negative comments about new products and for that matter any news posted here. All professions need new companies that bring fresh ideas, but the amount of negativity posted in response is appalling. Personally I think they have a huge hill to climb in making this successful and also to confirm if it is exclusive to agents, but without innovation the current providers will not be pushed to improve their offerings.
“We are using very clever marketing".
Yes, you are!
Any agent that pays for this wants their head testing.
Like many other 'bolt ons' to the profession it will probably cease in a year.
This takes me back a year or two ! As articled pupils we took turns to go empty the meters at the nurses flats.
If this site incorporated live video rather than just photos of burst pipes, it could become a winner.
All agents are THIEVES and should be locked up Steve!
so ...they get the pipe fixed and pay the agent commission ...plus they make money out of the job as well....ummm so its just the poor landlord who pays them and the agent and the plumber....think thats called a rip off...any agent doing this should be locked up.....
Go away, we don't need more thieving middlemen inflating prices and pretending to do something important. Tenants don't need you nor do landlords, bye