Industryquake 2014 - Seismic Forces Shake Rightmove/Z...

We recently ran an article about Agents' Mutual that, based on some of the comments posted, was one of the more controversial articles we have published, ever.

We raised many serious questions, some of which we address further here. Given the subject and audience, it is not surprising that some of the comments we received were less than flattering and in some cases were, dare we say it, paranoid.

Clearly by asking hard questions and giving our opinion we are going to court controversy but our viewpoint is objective, even if provocative and that's what makes the job worthwhile and interesting.

We also conducted a survey as part of the article and here is a snapshot of what we know so far:

If the Agents' Mutual one portal rule' survives, Rightmove unsurprisingly fares better than ZPG by about 2:1. This could well change over the course of the next year as Zoopla seems to be gaining ground all the time.

Less than four out of ten agents (39%) who voted in our survey support Agents' Mutual. Almost one third (30%) are definitely not supportive and another third (31%) remain on the fence. This poses somewhat of a problem for Agents' Mutual with what looks like less than half the inventory in the market behind them.

On the question of whether the one portal rule' is a good idea, the results are a dead heat with half of respondents saying yes' and the other half saying no'. This is the most controversial aspect of Agents' Mutual and given the support levels above might be something they think about changing if they really want to gain traction.

If you haven't yet done so, complete the survey below. Obviously the more of you that complete it, the more accurate the picture will become. At some point later in the year we will invite everyone who votes to do so again, so we can see who has changed their minds!

Take the survey now

These results seem to confirm that the Agents' Mutual train has left the station. However, if it is to have any chance of reaching its target destination, it will need to think hard about dropping the 'one other portal' rule. Obviously a lot of agents don't want to risk damaging their existing business by supporting Agents' Mutual and having to drop a major source of leads that could hand a market advantage to their competition, not to mention disadvantage their own clients.

For what it is worth, we think that the rule is unfair, anti-competitive and regressive. The reason for this is that this exclusivity' rule stands to damage both market competition by handing even more power back to Rightmove - one of the main reasons Agents' Mutual was born was to combat this - and damage the agents who agree to it by removing the flexibility to follow market forces from them.

On the other hand we think Zoopla has been a bit of a white knight to the industry. If they had not burst on the scene when they did, then Rightmove would have had an even freer hand with agents. Zoopla have already provided a real alternative to Rightmove and one that in our opinion offers a superior user experience, giving agents a real choice in the market.

To be clear, Zoopla is not a contributor in any way to the EAT or LAT coffers, although, given our support, perhaps they should be. Yes, we are pro Zoopla. We know this will bring in the shouts of bias but let's look at why we are pro Zoopla!

The reason we are backing Zoopla is simply because we think they offer the superior user experience and have miraculously emerged as real competition to Rightmove, their success to date has been a true David versus Goliath story. It would be a tragedy if a well-intentioned Agents' Mutual were allowed to stop them in their tracks.

Zoopla has achieved what must have seemed impossible to most in the past 5 years. It has created a credible alternative to Rightmove, an alternative that we at EAT have long believed would eventually replace Rightmove as market leader.

In our view Zoopla takes the property search experience to a whole new level, it is fun, interesting and informative to use and its clever user driven algorithm makes it stronger and more compelling every day. In some ways, we see Zoopla as a kind of Facebook or Google; its success is user generated and barring unforeseen circumstances we felt its success and eventual market leadership was assured.

Now to deal with the 'unforeseen circumstances' in the form of Agents' Mutual. We think the idea behind Agents' Mutual, to give agents some control of their digital destiny is a great one, in theory at least. But like many theories before it, like communism, socialism and fascism, in practice we don't think it will work in most smaller-agent's interests at all, far from it. We think it could set back estate agency and lead to a dominant establishment elite. An elite that could control the market and even introduce free, market stifling regulation through the back door - sounds a bit like communist Russia doesn't it

Of course we support the idea of controlling portal fees and avoiding unfair spiralling costs. The free market can do that. Zoopla have proven that a new player can enter the market and make waves without stifling competition. What we do not support is a rule that effectively damages the consumer proposition, puts smaller agents at risk, restricts the freedom of agents to spend their marketing budgets as they see fit and goes against the basic principles of a free market. It sounds from the survey results to date that at least half of agents agree with us!

So that's enough from us, let's hear more from you; if you haven't already, take our survey, and make your opinion count, who knows we may even change our minds if we hear a persuasive enough argument.

Take the survey now

In the meantime the controversy rages on. In our next piece we hope one of the big players, Agents' Mutual, Rightmove or Zoopla will step up to the plate and make their case for why they should end up the victors in the Great Portal War of 2014. We would also like to hear from you guys running the smaller portals, what do you think about being faced with extinction