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Written by rosalind renshaw

A new feature has been added to the free property website, Mouseprice – and Estate Agent Today would be extremely interested to know what agents think of it.

Just take a look at the example, and you will see why we’re so interested in your opinions.

Basically, the new feature shows how many properties each agent has in each area, and what the average time on market is. As a result, it shows some agents looking brilliant, others in the decidedly ‘could do better’ category, and the rest looking ‘oops’.

Jonathan Upton of Mouseprice says: “We know that agents are always looking for additional information about how they rank against their competitors, and members of the public are always looking to work out which agents work hardest on their behalf. These metrics go some way to helping to make this information available, and in typical Mouseprice style, it’s free.”

The new feature is one of several planned this year by Mouseprice, which handles the statistics for the Land Registry reports and offers free listings to estate agents.

Upton tells us: “We’re talking to estate agents and seeing what tools we can introduce that will genuinely help them.”

Mouseprice currently has 26m pages, one for every property in the UK, plus pages for every location. Almost every property in Britain is listed on the site, each with a valuation.

A ‘Tempt Me’ feature allows would-be sellers to enter on the site what price they might accept on their property, but this information is fed as a lead to agents.

Upton says that Mouseprice has a tiny staff, including just six in London plus three web developers in India, and a handful of consultants, but feels the site is punching well above its weight.

“Our challenge is not getting it in front of estate agents, but consumers,” he says.

https://www.mouseprice.com/area-guide/estate-agent-directory/SE1/Southwark


Comments

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    "Agent orange (whoever he is) seems to be on so many of these walls, commenting on everything in a typically cynical manner." .......... Why not? Any reason why I shouldn't? ....... "do you understand how the world works? this is a journalist written article about a service that is trying to make the industry move forward." .... if you're still referring to me, then yes - I realise it's a journo-written article, but since the mouseprice people arrived, most of my comments have been addressed to them, and - they don't seem able to address them without assuming me to be an agent, asking me to send them a 'feed', etc etc. ......... "orange seems to yearn for a by gone era of 3% fees and totally unsavvy clients. grow up, look forwrad and move on with the world instead of fighting it. you will get left behind unless you embrace change" ......... how on earth do you derive all this waffle from me asking mouseprice to provide a clear picture of what their limited subset of agents means for the general public?

    • 15 January 2010 20:34 PM
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    im an estate agent myself and ive just got a few pointers. i want to be ranked. there are so many low quality agents out there, something like this might actually get rid of them. Agent orange (whoever he is)seems to be on so many of these walls, commenting on everything in a typically cynical manner. do you understand how the world works? this is a journalist written article about a service that is trying to make the industry move forward. orange seems to yearn for a by gone era of 3% fees and totally unsavvy clients. grow up, look forwrad and move on with the world instead of fighting it. you will get left behind unless you embrace change. i want to hear more. mouseprice pleae contact me, i want to work out how i become numvber 1 in my area.

    • 15 January 2010 17:58 PM
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    Well said Agent Orange. Your points are well made and seem unanswerable by Mouseprice. Why should I have to list my instructions on this website to be seen as a leading agent in my area? The only reason for offering a free upload is so that Mouseprice can increase their user numbers to inflate their virtual value. As for David, what do you do?

    • 15 January 2010 07:28 AM
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    And as I quoted verbatim from mouseprice earlier - "there have been no sales of 2 bedroom flats in (postcode) in the past 12 months" - this doesn't say "there have been no sales.... (by the subset of agents we have listed here) in the past 12 mths" - it says there's been NO sales, and that's not true, and possibly misleading.

    • 14 January 2010 14:56 PM
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    Despite my pen name, I have no properties to upload and no 'feed', but I'd urge mouseprice to look at this from the general public's point of view, as I'm suggesting - is it clear to the public that mouseprice's comparisons of agents are based on a limited subset, and not on all agents? This is all I'm concerned with - the article above touts this feature as a supposedly reliable method of drawing comparison between agents - in light of the comments we've made here - is it?

    • 13 January 2010 19:32 PM
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    Hi, Hannah isn't available to answer your queries this afternoon - I'll do my best whilst I'm having a well deserved cuppa.

    ?? - If your property stock is out of date on Mouseprice, please get in touch with us. We take uploads directly from agents and via software suppliers. We update them as frequently as we are allowed (typically each night). Therefore, if you have old properties on the site, there must have been a breakdown along the data chain somewhere, so let us know and we'll look into it.

    Agent Orange - the FAQ's are occasionally out of date in places (forgive us - Mouseprice has 26 million pages!), we do cover Scotland, but perhaps we don't have as many agent relationships there as we would like. If you'd like to upload to Mouseprice (and even invite some of your colleagues north of the border!) then you would be most welcome. Uploading is free, and generally pretty easy.

    We can't force agents to upload to us, and we don't scrape Agents' data because our mothers taught us to ask not take, and in our opinion scraping can lead to out of date listings for the general public. Our rankings make it pretty clear that we are comparing agents who upload to us. If you want to upload, you would be most welcome - we work with most leading software suppliers. Agents who don't upload can't be featured - but since the upload is free - I don't think that it's altogether fair to complain if you think others are gaining an unfair advantage who are uploading.

    We want to bring as much transparency and information to bear on the often times bewildering process of moving home. We disagree with David Collingworth, a good estate agent is worth their weight in gold and is a huge help to hard- pressed home movers. We'd like to help guide him towards the best agents in his area in future, and hope that our rankings can perhaps help a little bit.

    • 13 January 2010 16:18 PM
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    ...besides which, I/we aren't 'bitter' about anything - we just don't see the value in promoting a league table based on a small subset of agents (regardless of whether I/we are agents or not....). There's only value in this if mouseprice carries data for all agents, which it patently doesn't in my area, nor even in the whole of Scotland, apparently (Hannah seems to have gone quiet on that point)

    • 13 January 2010 12:08 PM
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    David, if all agents were as bad as you make out, we wouldn't be in business. Just because you have had bad experiences doesn't mean all estate agents are the same. I know plenty of people that have been very pleased with their estate agent. I also fail to see how you can base the lack of updates on the agents themselves as you clearly have no knowledge of how uploads work. If it makes you feel better about yourself by insulting hundreds of hard working people, that is fine but if you're going to make remarks, please at least get your facts right.

    • 13 January 2010 09:27 AM
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    Not a surprise that all agents are bitter about this one Hannah. Anything that shows them for what they are (useless parasites) will always recieve attention. Finger in the air valuation, followed by sales and lies to get the seller down and more sales and lies to get the buyer up. Totally useless function. I suspect that the real reason any properties are out date on any website is because the agents cant be bothered or forgot to update them. Too much time on the phone lying and chasing commission.

    • 12 January 2010 18:00 PM
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    Yes, but even the properties from the agents that do advertsie with you are innaccurate. You have properties listed that havn't been available for months, and a lot of them at that. Surely this is a case that your upload is faulty as it does not update your own site properly, therefore, there is no way that the data can be accurate. I suggest your sort out your own feeds before you showcase inaccurate figures.

    • 12 January 2010 10:47 AM
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    Hi Andrew Roberts - yes, clearly we can only include data where agents have given them to us. However, we do not charge agents anything at all to advertise listings with us. We try to make this clear on the site so as not to mislead anyone. If there is anyone out there who wants to be included, please get in touch! Kind regards, Hannah

    • 12 January 2010 08:58 AM
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    If firms like Mouseprice are going to make these services available to the public, they surely must ensure their accuracy. I just searched my area and out of 9 estate agents in the specific post code area, only 3 were listed. The total number of properties listed is also well below the real number. Maybe it is because they can only include data from agents that advertise with them. Not a fair view of the market! Fortunate then that most consumers have never heard of Mouseprice.com and prefer to use more reliable indicators of agents success, either on the web, local advertising, local board presence or reputation.

    • 12 January 2010 07:23 AM
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    OK, I've found it now - from mouseprice's Local Area Guide page - "Mouseprice.com provides property market statistics for the entirety of England & Wales".... So Scotland is a 'regional pocket', then?

    • 11 January 2010 17:26 PM
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    I wasn't commenting on inaccuracies with 'my feed' whatever that might be, but ace said he hoped that the accuracy of these findings (the ratings of the agents) were accurate - I'd suggest that with only two listings on mouseprice out of over 50 currently active in the marketplace, the ratings have a long way to go before they'll be anywhere near accurate....

    • 11 January 2010 16:32 PM
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    70% coverage - barely two-thirds coverage, and almost a third of the country isn't covered, then? Can this really be described as 'regional pockets'?

    What do you regard as 'the country'? England and Wales, or the whole of the UK?

    • 11 January 2010 16:28 PM
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    Dear all,
    Thanks for the feedback, I'll try and answer all comments in turn. If there are any agency specific questions please contact us directly and I'll deal with all concerns individually.

    (??) We are excluding SSTC and not available property from the listings.
    (Richard)Thanks!
    (Agent Orange) Nationally our coverage is around 70% of agents and there will be regional pockets where coverage is thin. We are completely free to upload to so please get in touch if you'd like to be added. We do not scrape listings.
    (AceofSpades) Thanks! We are hopefully very accurate where we have the data, but there are obvious gaps from agents who are not yet uploading to us.
    (Agent Orange) Sales data is from Land Registry, email us with the postcode and we can investigate why Land Reg may not have listed it for sale.
    (Agent Orange) If there are any inaccuracies with your feed to us please let us know and we'll investigate.
    Thanks again everyone!

    • 11 January 2010 11:58 AM
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    "Hopefully accuracy for these findings is adequate"

    Not for my neck of the woods, it isn't.....

    • 11 January 2010 10:43 AM
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    mouseprice also tells me 'there have been no sales of 2 bedroom flats in (my postcode) in the past 12 months'

    Wrong, wrong, wrong.

    • 11 January 2010 10:42 AM
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    Fantastic idea. Hopefully accuracy for these findings is adequate. It is about time that performance related information was provided to the public. Selling a home is a foreign language to most users, but this new data is useful and easy to digest. Well done Mouse Price.

    • 11 January 2010 10:39 AM
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    In a town close to me, there's well over 50 properties for sale.

    I looked at mouseprice, and it has just TWO properties within this town's postcode, taking in some hamlets and villages surrounding it. From there it shows houses in towns in other postcodes, some up to 10 miles away. There's no value in reliance on the data on mouseprice when it covers such a small section of the market. Also, what's that word next to the logo on mouseprice's homepage - 'beta', is that? Is this a working site or a test (beta) site?

    • 11 January 2010 10:34 AM
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    I like it. Tools like this may help prevent agents stating that they can get an over inflated price to win the instruction.

    • 11 January 2010 10:10 AM
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    I wonder whether all of the properties that are no longer available, sstc etc which are still being advertised as available on the site (of which there are many) will be included in these surveys. I don't think it will be a very reliable source based on this.

    • 11 January 2010 09:18 AM
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    We have had lots of positive feedback already from agents about the feature, together constructive criticism. We are still very keen on Estate Agency feedback.

    To correct the quotation, we have no problem getting in front of consumers, it is the agents we would like to develop further relationships with.

    • 11 January 2010 08:57 AM
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    Let me guess, not many agents will like this new offering. There will be a stream of reasons (excuses) why it is wrong / misleading.
    A vendor however will value such information highly when selecting an agent.

    • 11 January 2010 08:45 AM
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