Sarah Beeny, founder of For Sale By Owner website Tepilo, is aiming to topple Rightmove off the top perch in the next five years. And she says all estate agents will have to change their business models.
Speaking to website Luvthecity, she says: “If I had shares in Rightmove, I’d be very worried right now.”
She says that Tepilo or a similar site will rule the property internet world by 2015.
She does not believe that either Google or the new iSold site will take the lead. She says Google will enter the market in a different way from portals, and that Tesco (which publicly backs iSold) doesn’t have the right branding, but that Marks & Spencer might have been better.
She says of her own private sale site: “Some people have suggested that owners are at risk by selling their own properties and that people simply don’t understand the risks.
“One company suggested that owners may accidentally photograph a kitchen with their bank statements lying around – it’s nonsense really. Do estate agents do background checks on people they show houses to? No. At least online you have an an email address and a contact detail.”
She goes on: “I think the property market will go the same way as the travel agent market. A few years ago it was paper adverts in travel agents windows advertising cheap holidays. If you mention this to young people nowadays they’d just laugh. The travel industry has successfully reinvented itself and I think the property industry has to do exactly the same thing.”
However, she adds: “There is always going to be room for good agents who know their market and who do their job well. I just don’t feel estate agents should have a complete monopoly.”
Sarah Beeny sets sights on toppling Rightmove
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Comments
Tepilo properties now appear to be on Nestoria which means loads of people will be looking at them - free good publicity!
… cant believe over 30 posts on this and the £48m Leaders sale hasn’t had a sniff……
Can't believe 30+ posts and no one has twisted it all to be rightmove's fault, everything else seems to be.
ZZ is right?
My mates garage costs £25k a month to run, how do Autotrader think they can sell cars better than him. Or ebay for that matter. They need to get themselves some big overheads to succeed. Amateurs.
I'm not in support of beeny's business venture, but this comment is stupid - "it costs agents around 12k a month to run an office. So to sell your house as well as we do it would cost the same...." Quit your jibber jabber fool.
I really do get fed up with whingeing agents who do not have the balls to change the way they operate. Do they ever sit down and work out how much money they lose by working a no sale no charge fee system and then apply this to what they actually receive in real terms per sale ? Charge for every instruction , charge less and keep the Sarah Beeny's out of our hair . I guarantee you will earn more long term , not have proprties poached from you and reduce the likelihood of these halfwits thinking they can tke away our living .
it costs agents around 12k a month to run an office. So to sell your house as well as we do it would cost the same....how can you think a random advert on a tiny little website can get the best price ,,,shutup and stop using rightmove to get branding.
Nat, this sounds like a Jackanory to me!
Sarah Beeny is 100% right. I laugh at the usual EAs in here huddling together and whinging. That'll be their downfall. This industry's gonna change very soon and very radically.
I agree 100% with Darren.
This post has been removed by site admin
Some interesting facts about Ms Beeny's website. 9.9% of her site visitors are from India. 35% of visitors arriving at Tepilo from Google have searched for "Sarah Beeny". None of the top 10 search terms that bring visitors to Tepilo relate to specific property search. Last month, almost 50% of visitors 'bounced' - that is to say, they arrived and then immediately left the site. Rightmove's daily number of visitors is approximately 10,000 more than Tepilo's. Rightmove's bounce rate is half that of Tepilo. Tepilo's traffic is in the bottom 5% of all property related sites in the UK. Tepilo's traffic trend is downwards over a rolling quarter. The top 5 portals are all increasing their traffic over the same period. So in summary, Tepilo is a failed vanity project being kept alive by the dwindling celebrity of Ms Beeny and periodic anti-agent sentiments she expresses. To list a property with Tepilo would be a mistake unless you want to show your home to an ever decreasing number of people that weren't even looking for a home when they viewed the site. But don't worry, 25% are overseas and half of the rest will bounce and never see your home. There may be no charges to use Tepilo but as the site has not a single satisfied vendor so far, in this case, you get what you pay for. Source: Alexa.com
Sarah Beeney ought to wash her hair when shes's on TV - she always looks a sight -and stick to specc-ing which is all she is good at!! Arf Arf!!
When Sarah Beeny was working with buyers and sellers on TV no one ever listened to her advice. No reason to think anyone will take her seriously now!!
:-)
Oops - except that now we see LuvTheCity was quoted. Sorry!
@Beavis well said!!
Problem with Sarah Beeney is that the only people who know her website are agents. She is very good at getting herself in the trade media because all she does is talk bad about agents and...what happens...EAT post up a story that gets viewed 1300 times in a few hours. Unless she re-directs her focus and efforts to the customers she is wasting her time.
Furthermore for her to compare the SALE OF A HOUSE to a HOLIDAY is ridiculous. The purchase of a house is generally the single most expensive, most important and most sought after purchase in the average persons WHOLE LIFE...and you want to compare that to a 5 day holiday in Ayi Napa for £299 including hotel!!
Well done for getting the coverage though...just in the wrong place!
Im no agent...but i know agents do a lot more than stick a picture in a window and sit around waiting for the phone to ring!
This is a straight rip off of an article we contributed to for LuvTheCity.com. Shame on EAT for not quoting sources!
luvthecity.com/2015.aspx
Martin
So an email address and "contact detail" are in depth character profiles for an applicant ? ? ? All viewers are fully registered: name / address / phone numbers / email details etc etc etc - what is this woman talking about ? Beeny - work in an estate agent's office before you judge ! ! !
Give me Kirsty anyday.
excuse me Mr vendor, would you mind if i take a picture of you looking happy for my wall?
Agents get better prices.
I wouldn't want to negotiate directly - never do in the football business because agents get more money for clients.
But you have to make visual what it is you do for clients. People can't just listen - they want to see what you do. (Most people are tabloid/TV watchers with a short attention span).
I have a visual of how you can explain EVERYTHING you do for clients which you are welcome to adapt. Might help you. Might not. But you are welcome to have it because simple things help.
I rarely see a visual of how many ready buyers agents have.
I rarely see a visual of number of enquiries generated for properties.
I rarely see the hundreds of smiling faces from loyal clients as photos on a glory board in agent's windows.
All this helps people like you and feel confident. And most people are just fearful of making a mistake.
Give them a guarantee and you'll get all the listings you want.
I agree with Trevor. It is time for agents to take control, but history has shown us that a lot of agents just aren't proactive enough to do so. The main reason people instruct agents is for SERVICE. People have always been and will always be prepared to pay for good service. Not enough agents focus on great service (eg the basics like returning phone calls and calling clients more often). If agents clubbed together to say, as an industry, that they provide personal service backed by local expertise, people will want to use them. Whose fault is it that some members of the public believe that Private Sale websites do the job of agents? It is up to agents as an industry, (no one else is going to do it) to communicate better the fact that you aren't selling houses, you are selling a service. Why do wealthy people with expensive houses instruct agents with higher fees? Because they are stupid? Because they have more money than sense? No. Because they are intelligent people who understand the value of great service. So, focus on giving the best service, and you won't be affected by the online agents or private sales websites. Only poor agents with bad service are likely to lose business to the online players.
She demonstrates two good points though:
propertyinvestmentproject.co.uk/images/sarahbeeny/sarahbeeny23.jpg
Its time for agents to take control. The OFT are always keen to push the protection of the consumer so lets see the self sale market with regulation in place that real agents have to abide by. Lets start pushing for Private sale regulation whereby vendors who want to do the job of the agent who breach UK law are fined as an agent. Consumers need protection from self sale as well as agents abiding.
Sarah Beeny is boring, change the record
"Agents do nothing but put a picture in the window then sit back and wait for the phone to ring and take all the commission just for that "
What's Ms Beeny going to do apart from "just put it on her website" ....?
I am quite offended by the sexist and dismissive attitude from the estate agency industry every time this articulate, highly successful and inspirational property professional provides such valid input into an important subject that she knows so much about.
Ms Beeney clearly has a full understanding of the job agents do during the process and knows it is completely irrelevant and the public, left to them selves will be able to get along just fine and resolve any issues that arise during a sale and the negotiations without the need for a money grabbing agent to stand in the middle and mess it all up with there glass fronted offices and flash suits.
Agents do nothing but put a picture in the window then sit back and wait for the phone to ring and take all the commission just for that – I love Sarah and she is right no matter what you nasty people say, she is not a self publicising z list half wit and if you put your house on her wonderful website you will enter a draw and could be lucky enough for her to come to your house!
There is two great things about that Sarah Beeny.
As usual people are missing the point, the property business is ripe for re-invention, and its the perception that the man in the street does not get value for money from an estate agent.
Now how the re-invention will manifest its self is still up for grabs, many ideas will fall be the wayside until some thing new emerges, whether it is from the traditional agencies smartening up thier act or something new coming along from the left field. With people living thier lives on line, and the Google generation coming into the business and property markets, something will change.
Stick to your TV job love, the last time I looked you wasn't very good at that either.
Where is the proof though. To make absurd statements like this without backing them up with any sort of proof or research whatsoever is a complete waste of time. Instead of talking about it, do something impressive and then show us results otherwise you and your site look like a joke. I could sit here all day and say that I am creating a site that i think will topple rightmove, anybody could. Lets see where you actually are in 5 years and if any of my customers have heard of you then, because they don't have a clue about tepilo now!
zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
I didn't think april fools day was for another couple of weeks?