Nethouseprices has pulled out of the two-horse race to become an agent-owned property portal.
Its decision leaves Agents’ Mutual as the only such offering, intended to put up credible opposition to the duopoly of Rightmove and Zoopla.
Nethouseprices, which had said it would go live with an agency-owned portal this autumn, will continue as a house prices sold data model. It also carries property listings.
As such, it could fall foul of Agents’ Mutual business model, which is to allow its advertising agents to use only one other portal.
The Nethouseprices decision, while not unexpected, also comes against a complicated background.
It is understood – from unofficial briefings and not from Nethouseprices – that it was Nethouseprices that had been running the PropertyLive portal while NFoPP wondered what to do with it. Another company believed it had actually won the contract to operate PropertyLive.
NFoPP last week announced that it was ditching PropertyLive in favour of backing Agents’ Mutual.
Nethouseprices managing director Catherine Lamond said: “We have been extremely grateful for the support we have received from almost 2,000 agents registering interest in our agent-owned portal, but regret to announce that we will not be taking this forward now, due to the viability and risk of having to completely change our business model.
“Whilst it will be difficult enough to stand up to the current duopoly, it is totally counter-productive to confuse the marketplace with two very similar agent-owned offerings.”
She said that Nethouseprices, which has always specialised in sold price data and allows agents to sponsor their own postcodes, will continue as a free-to-list portal providing a suite of marketing products for its agents, at an affordable price.
Lamond added: “Whilst we naturally support the concept of an agent-owned portal, to give the agents control and rein in the costs of the big two portals, we feel that agents should not be restricted from listing their properties with other portals – particularly free and low cost ones – as this does not benefit either the agent or ultimately the consumer.”
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Comments
@Trevorestateagent.me
Firstly we are already handling nearly 5000 agents from all over the world free of charge.
And yes, we intend to build the site to such a size that the traffic we receive is enough to attract advertisers to us who wish to expose their products to our site visitors.
The trick however is to gain enough popularity and visitors to the site in order to attract the blue chip companies (not just 10 a penny gambling links) who will pay to add a logo or banner.
It is of course important not to ruin the user experience by covering the site with cheap advertising and that is precisely why you need to hold out for top rated blue chip companies. It is better to have one or two logos on each page from quality companies who will pay for the traffic, than dozens of adverts which are impossible to navigate through.
And before you ask, we are 14 months in and we know this could take a minimum of another year to reach the target we are aiming for but the site is privately funded by independent investors who are fully aware of that fact.
@Scott
That is silly to charge £000, if you were handling over 10k agents how the hell could you charge nothing?
Please explain how you make money, which you need to exist? Would it be a site covered in advertising? Terrible.
Forget the noise, you need Rightmove and if honest, you know that.
@Trevor@estateagent.me or why not,
I think a good pricing option for agents marketing properties would be £0 per property per month, on average say 80 properties, so £000, but as always you need a massive selection of properties to make it work, not that hard to do as you could easily accept and feed format, it needs most importantly logo advertising on paperwork, brochures and window advertising to support the new site. I would say it IS possible.
I think a good pricing option for agents marketing properties would be £5 per property per month, on average say 80 properties, so £400, but as always you need a massive selection of properties to make it work, not that hard to do as you could easily accept the RM feed format, it needs most importantly logo advertising on paperwork, brochures and window advertising to support the new site. I would say it IS possible.
@lestweforget - for us smaller agencies, that argument doesn't work since with the newspapers if we only had two properties to advertise then we only paid for two properties. If we had no properties this month then we paid nothing this month.
The agency community has a short memory. We can all remember the days when we spent £400 to £500 per week on newspaper advertising (20K per annum +). Rightmove offers great value and far better results.
As Paul rightly says, it's OUR stock. WE control where it goes. And that "control" is the ultimate control.
RM will look pretty silly in the morning if they have no property listings.
Incidentally when are Savills, Knight Frank, Strutt & Parker, Chesterton Humberts, Douglas & Gordon, Glentree Estates and Thamesview de-listing all their properties from one of the big two?
Sorry I haven't got time to check your mistakes for you, I'm having to make money so that I can afford a third really expensive portal :)
Thanks for picking up on the incorrect version of herd, it's tricky playing computer games and responding to you on my iPhone at the same time, my brain is slightly limited!
I am now in no doubt that you are supierior to me as you have taken the time to find fault in my writing and thus highlighting to the EAT world and beyond that my opinion can count for nothing due to this heinous crime!
He without sin should cast the first stone......
I don't have an issue with rules or criteria and don't see them as people telling you what to do? You are not being told, it's just part of the membership and the strategy.
If you believe in it join, if not, don't, but don't sl@g it off because you won't be joining, it's almost as if you want it to fail, so you can justify your viewpoint?
If everyone joined, RM is dead, fact.
If people keep on doing the same thing because everyone else does, nothing happens. You stand still and other people come along and overtake you, fact.
My original comment was prompted by you saying that you don't want to line others pockets.
I made reference to the original founders which you dismissed as irrelevant?
Connelly sold their stake for £30million - fact. It's rellevant.
That would be worth £425million today. Countrywide, another competitor, are doing quite (took me some time to work out the correct word there!) nicely, thank you very much. - fact.
Everything else is opinion.
The rightmove founders took a punt a few years ago and no doubt had its knockers, but look at it now.
But please do not forget, it is nothing without us. We can kill it in an instance and make it bigger in the same time. Don't underestimate what the many can do against the few.
What other website you can list on become 'irrelevant' when the public know that their is only one website to list on, and that website is AM!
Just a thought......
(Please excuse any typo's, grammatical errors, spellings, poor choice of words, but if you do feel the need to look for them, crack on!)
herd / heard ????
I have never shouted about RM being bad, but AMuppet will fail.
The point is 'AMuppet Old Boys Club' won't take their own properties off the listings so who are they to say who we can and can't advertise with. If my business is successful enough to sustain the cost of three expensive portals why should someone tell me I can't. Will they step up, no of course not, why would they.
Will they tell me what I should eat for dinner next or if I can shop at Sainsburys or Waitrose!!!!
If they truly believe in the idea then they wouldn't need to place any restriction on it.
Irrelevant?!!!!
Not sure Connells think it was irrelevant when they sold their shares for £30m. You have already help then line their pockets?
If all the agents joined in, all would benefit. You wouldn't have to explain anything to the public when there was no one advertising on RM? RM is an agents website, without any upside.
People have been coming on here for years moaning about RM fee increases, but do nothing. The heard mentality is staying on rightmove because everyone else does, because people are scared.
Rather than moan about RM and do nothing, some people have shown the way and decided to go for it. Creating an alternative that is powered by the agents.
And all people do is shoot it down.
If it fails it will be with no help from some of the people on here that will continue to moan about how RM is so bad and costs too much.
This is your chance, so take it.
It's best to regret something you have done than regret doing nothing at all!
RM is listed so irrelevant now, but even if AMuppet was a success why would I want to contribute to helping them float. They offer nothing that RM and Z don't already and it is naïve to think that they won't crank the rates up as soon as they have a hold if they ever get there!
The concept won't work it is idealistic just like PropertyLive was. Regardless of what the industry say (which is normally hot air) how are the public going to switch over-night from the familiar RM and Z to a completely unknown site that is officially and publically run by estate agents who they hate already!
Line the pockets of the competition?
Do you know who the founding members of rightmove are?
On RM, win listing, not on RM dont get asked to pitch for the work.
At least they have no self interest like your cometitors on AM, dangerous game I think.
@AgentMutual show us the way - Here Here.
Couldn't agree more. To show they mean business, all of the old boys club that founded Agents Mutual should be abandoning both Rightmove and Zoopla as a sign of good faith.
If they did so and announced it publicly they may get a lot more support.
Not doing so but expecting the rest of us to agree to cut off one of our marketing limbs, smacks of a lack of conviction and believe that their idea will actually work.
Come on fat cats, lead from the front and remember you can't have your cake and eat it.
If the big players of AgentMutual are man enough why don't they take themselves off the Zoopla now! Lead by example..... but no - pathetic herd mentality that will fall flat on its face. If rightmove and zoopla banned us listing on AgentMuppets RM and Z would win. And why would I want to line the pockets of the old boys club who are my competition.
@Trevor - Surely if it's agent owned you as agents can decide where you want to advertise.
Exactly what I was thinking. Surely those agents who have invested so far to produce the £3.6 million start up figure that has been banded about, have a say. And as you say if each agent gets one vote, then they should (if they work together) be able to tailor AM to what they want.
"SO WHAT HAPPENS IF RIGHTMOVE OR ZOOPLA BAN AGENTS"
Now that would be an interesting scenario.
I think the only way the AM model can pose a threat to either RM or Z, is if agents themselves spend a lot of time re-educating their clients about the benefits (whatever they may be) of using AM and just one other portal . How effective that re-education will be with RM and Z upping their advertising campaigns to drown AM out, and how long it will take remains to be seen.
I really do feel that if AM is successful and the majority of agents decide to use them, their one portal rule will send a ripple through the industry as a whole which will affect, not only the likes of us as a free portal, but the masses of estate agency data feed companies who make a living feeding to multiple portals.
For example, XML2U who over a hundred agents in the UK use to feed listings to us, also feed listings to a further 350 portals in the UK and Europe.
Market competition drives advertising costs down and fuels the need to embrace modern technology and advances in marketing techniques.
The Duopoly have already proved that when you get to the stage that you rely on just one or two companies, they can very quickly become dictators and set prices and restrictions which their users have no choice but to put up with, or shut up.
Agents Mutual will no doubt, by restricting agents to list with one other portal, advise their agents to list with RM and not Zoops. They are not going to take a swipe at the big boy but will go after their smaller friend. It would be unwise to take the both of them on at the same time.
By restricting listings to the smaller lest costly or free sites, Agents Mutual will be looking to gather up all those agents that choose not to use RM and Zoop. Again strengthening their position against Zoop. And leading to these portals demise.
Limited choices even before the site has been launched? Will agents really be any better off as they are facing limited choices now because of the Duopoly and would appear to have less when Agents Mutual start.
SO WHAT HAPPENS IF RIGHTMOVE OR ZOOPLA BAN AGENTS
So what would happen if Rightmove or Zoopla ban agents who use Agents Mutual
If that happens what will those banned agents tell clients of who's marketing was to part include rightmove and zoopla. Guess agents would have to right and tell clients that they are no longer there.
But can't see AM having enough funds. White Elephant. Will make anyone question their NFLOPP membership when they back another white elephant.
I won't be renewing NAEA membership
Surely if it's agent owned you as agents can decide where you want to advertise.
We are already signed up at "Bronze" level with Agents' Mutual, but nevertheless remain concerned at the restriction on listing properties on other portals. We feel restrictions should only apply either to the likes of RM and Z, or otherwise to "paid" sites generally. Leave the free ones out of it.