As the portal wars hot up, Mouseprice, the free-to-list property site, is announcing today that it now receives direct uploads from more than 3,500 estate agency offices. It is understood that more big wins are in the offing.
While agency numbers are around one-third of the branches that list on Rightmove, Mouseprice began accepting uploads only six months ago. It says it is now working with most leading national estate agents, and is working hard to support smaller local agencies too, by working with software suppliers to provide easy and free uploading.
A report on Estate Agent Today last Friday focused on Rightmove’s plans to roll out a new campaign, worth £10m, that will be its biggest yet. The article attracted around 40 comments from our readers.
Zipporah Morrison Baker, communications manager for Mouseprice, said: “Some of the paid-for portals are busy promising more money for TV advertising, but this builds their brands, not those of the estate agents that pay the portals’ bills.
“Why should agents keep paying all this money to support someone else’s advertising if it isn’t benefiting them directly? One look at the comments board on Estate Agent Today should tell them to cut their fees or they face losing their customers’ loyalty.
“We know that the property market is difficult at the moment and so we’re working hard to bring the public’s eyes to our estate agency uploaders’ properties at no cost to them.”
Mouseprice also said that it has taken a slower route to building its property databases – eschewing the ‘screen scraping’ used by some free portals in favour of direct feeds. It says this ensures that agents are in control of how their properties appear, and that the listings are more regularly refreshed.
Paid-for subscription portals are under threat from free online services, including Globrix and Propertylive, the NAEA’s new offering, and the pay-by-lead newcomer, Property Index.
Mouseprice begins to make its mark on free portal market
08 December 2008
Comments
you won't get any leads sent from Globrix - they send people to your website like Google does....you need to check your weblogs to see how much they send to you - some agents get sent stats - I think that you can sign up...
Too many portals will utimately create "seeker fatigue" and diminish the internet as the place to find property. Part of the reason for it's attractiveness to seekers was the power of rightmove with the perception that all properties were available in one place. This may well drive traffic back through direct channels
Not sure about mouseprice. Cheesy name by the way.
Our leads from Mouseprice and the other free portals increased substantially when we came off Rightmove. Buyers are clearly using more than one portal, so I'm glad we took our listings off the paid portals.
is that a two nest hole in the skirting board or three?
Has anyone checked the price of a hole in the skirting board lately?
Indeed 5 months and no leads is not very good! I wonder if anyone one knows about mouseprice and Globrix up here in yorkshire as I have no leads from either nor have a seen them advertise anywhere
inea.co.uk? you email me about five times every day!!!! stop it! as for mouseprice, what a stupid name and five months with not one lead isnt very good really is it?
I have been with mouse price for 5 months and not had a single lead yet! But I must say the INEA is a great instruction winner as we advertide buy one agent get over 40 free!
I'll give Rightmove 6 months, tops. Governments can bail out car manufacturers and banks, but they aren't going to help an advertiser.
We are currently building a feed out to mouseprice, globrix and home.co.uk so soon by inputting into INEA mls agents properties will be automatically uploaded. The advantage with inea is that we also allow you to share your input listings with other inea members.