Five top portals to face Question Time with legendary...

Representatives of Rightmove, Zoopla, OnTheMarket, Boomin and OneDome portals are to be quizzed in an industry Question Time session next month.

Russell Quirk - founder of the original Emoov agency and now a Keller Williams agent and co-founder of property public relations firm Proper PR - will be the host of the live online event on the afternoon of September 23.

It will be a face to face event broadcast live on the Unissu PropTech platform and available to watch back thereafter.

Quirk says he hopes the event will be a frank and constructive exchange of views on what a portal really offers to agents and consumers, what the future holds for portal innovation and technology, and where the portal/agent relationship will be in five years’ time.

“Senior representatives of each of the top five property portals have all been invited to this important event and most have confirmed their attendance. This will be no Punch and Judy show but instead a reasoned debate amongst the sector’s main players to probe their business model, their success and their overall approach to property search.

“We’ll ask how they think about agents and consumers and where the future lies for them and their stakeholders.

"We will be asking grown up questions, the type of questions that the estate agency industry would like clarification on and not least how the relationship between portals and agents is likely to develop in the coming years. Given the enormity of the portal space now, with its value at close to £10 billion, this is an opportunity for the property portals to sell themselves and to justify their propositions and indeed their value”.

There will be a live chat facility during the session for viewers to ask questions online, while anyone wanting to suggest questions in advance can email russell@ProperPR.co.uk.

You can sign up for the event here.