A new property portal which has launched claiming to be regulated by the RICS has been told to remove the references.
PropertyPortal.com says on its site that it believes it is ‘the ONLY UK and international property portal in the world to be regulated by RICS … We chose RICS regulation because we believe it guarantees our members and the visiting public professionalism, integrity and business ethics as well as an international reach’.
But the RICS said in a statement: “The website is advertising that it is ‘Regulated by RICS’. As at June 27, we can confirm that although an application was submitted, and is being processed, the firm is not currently ‘Regulated by RICS’.
“RICS Regulation takes the conduct of its members and firms very seriously. It reviews and investigates complaints about members and/or regulated firms and, where appropriate, takes disciplinary action in cases where members and/or regulated firms fall short of the standards expected of them.
“RICS Regulation has written to the proprietor to ask that the logo ‘Regulated by RICS’, and any other reference to being regulated by RICS, is immediately removed from the website and other stationery.”
The portal, which is run by RICS member Andrew Goldthorpe and is Oxford-based, also displays the logos for the NAEA and ARLA.
The portal, which features a language translation service for international users, is inviting listings from agents and claims already to feature hundreds of thousands.
Many of the listings that EAT has seen do not carry the name of the agent, although one that is named is Harrison Murray. It is not clear what the costs are, although the site does say these are ‘transparent’.
Nick Salmon, managing director of Harrison Murray, said his firm had not signed up to the site, and did not know the costs, saying that it was not his company’s policy to pay to go on new portals.
Andrew Goldthorpe was invited to comment but was unable to do so. However, he invited us to talk to him next week.
https://www.propertyportal.com/
Comments
Tonight's winning Euromillions numbers are:
08 11 22 28 42
Lucky stars are: 05 07
He stands for half an hour, waiting for his bus.
Happy funny Fridays everyone
I'm not 'bad-mouthing' you, I'm pointing out what I've found on your site, which is bad data; you acknowledged this to be so, and you also acknowledged the technical error that I found within 1 minute of first accessing your site.....
Everything in my last post is a question, to which you appear not to have any answers, except to stomp off in a huff.....
What do you 'stand for' ???
Friday's Child
You do seem very determined to anonymously bad mouth me, my business and everything I stand for so I shall take your advice to no longer post to this comment section and concentrate on trying to assist property professionals.
"Why not come on board and I will do my best to work with you to improve the service. "
Why would I want to do this? What are you offering that isn't offered by Rightmove, Primelocation, DPG, Findaproperty, s1homes etc? I'm not convinced that anyone who is looking for property in my area will go anywhere near your site, so what benefit would there be for me?
Translation? Most, if not all, of my buyers are British...
QR Codes? I can generate them myself, and direct traffic directly to my own website, rather than sending traffic through you for 'full analytics' (whatever that could be....)
Andrew, give up now, you are not going to make any money and you are wasting your time.
I am a positive guy but for gods sake, there is a new portal "launched" every week and they all end up going nowhere.
You're site offers nothing different than any other search engine (apart from QR codes which are a short lived fad, regardless of your made up japanese statistics)
Unless you have millions of pounds to rival rightmove, zoopla and findaproperty with advertising, you are completely asting your life.
Don't post here again because it doesn't do any favours for your site. Just give up and move onto the next project.
The public won't care less whether you're site is associated with the RICS, because most won't know what it is anyway, and if that's your only selling point, well I think that says it all.
Consider this market well and truly monopolised.
Looking at a few towns around me, and all I can find on PP.com are listings which were sold in 2010/11 .....
Friday's child
Like all portals, to some degree we are at the mercy of the content we are provided with. If it is poor data, I apologise and will look into improving our data cleansing. We are starting a marketing campaign to bring on board as many members as possible. The only way to ensure top quality results is to have top quality data. Why not come on board and I will do my best to work with you to improve the service.
Also, we are looking into the technical glitch you identified and I am sure will have it resolved soon.
Thank you for the feedback.
Mr Goldthorpe - populating your site with listings which sold at auction in early 2011 is not a good way to attract business.......
Having navigated away from the letter search to the free text search, I found that the first listing to show up in the selected town is one that was offered 2 or 3 years ago by an agent who went out of business at roughly that time.......
Not a good start
I routinely expect a simple, easy-to-find interface from a property site.
I want to be able to enter, specify the area I'm looking for, and home in on properties quickly.
I've just looked at the site under discussion, and after I'd navigated past the promotional blurb, past the feature property, which is at the other end of the country from me, I clicked on Buy. This gave me a list of towns beginning with A, and an alphabet to choose an alternative first letter. I clicked E before I started composiing this entry, and as I write this line, a spinning wheel on the webpage tells me that pp.com is still searching for entries beginning with 'E' .....
Not fit for purpose
'3 out of 4 Japanese use QR'
Breaking news!
dave starts property portal!
sorry couldn't help it.
Paul D
We are simply trying to give you guys an independent alternative that is not in corporate ownership, and that is owned and run by professionals for the profession, so I will not aplogise for trying. I guess you would be unhappy about the 21% Rightmove price increase but what are the alternatives other than PropertyPortal.com which is willing to give it a try?
We are also not exclusive to the UK residential market. We list residential, commercial, rural, developers, roomshare and flat share, anywhere in the world.
You also pay for what you use and if you really want to see a ROI for a new Portal, why not use our QR codes on your boards or our stand alone smartboards? They drive qualified leads straight to our website giving you auditable ROI. Now that is traffic worth having, and I would argue of equal value to 100,000's of casual browsers who look great statistically but don't actually do anything.
3 out of 4 Japanese use QR codes every day and the technology is taking off in the UK. Oakley, the fashionwear brand, have given us our first retail contract so why not give us a try? When someone scans one of our QR codes or NFC tags on your board, in the local newspaper, or from your window, you have instant notifcation of a lead, whether or not someone was just looking, or has qualified it by opting personal information. You also have full analytics to determine the most profitable channel.
Why do people bother with new property websites, unless you have a spare £20m to hit the TV and papers you are only going to make a few quid a month.
Its like that datingdirect guy who sold for £30m then lost about £5m doing propertyindex, he's now doing online estate agency, why bother!
Anyway im off to work on my new comparethemarket, moneysupermarket, gocompare site, im sure theres room for one more.
PLEASE no more property sites.
Good for you Andrew, I hope you are successful. Typical EAT reporting, i.e. bad timing, miss information, negative writing.
Fed up with the rubbish stories on this site. be nice if they actually reported a real story for a change unlike the 'government to change law but we don't know what, where, when or how'. Its like saying football team to win Euro but we don't know who, by how much or when.
With respect, IHS, no one is lying here at PropertyPortal.com.
We are an independent start-up and I am a chartered surveyor who qualified in 1987 and, as such, believe I am entitled to be regulated by the RICS as long as I do not do anything to break the rules. I am proud of being a chartered surveyor and feel that the words 'Regulated by the RICS' can indicate to the public that we aspire to the principles of integrity, ethics and professionalism. Nevertheless, we do not wish to be seen as an exclusive club and wish to work with UK and International property professionals no matter the name of their regulating body.
I would term the RICS issue a misunderstanding. I have an email from the RICS Brand Manager approving the use of the logo and the use of the words 'Regulated by the RICS' for the website dated 25/01/2011 when I first started the beta development of the website. I have spoken to various senior members of the RICS over the past two years keeping them appraised of the development of the website.
What has happened is that I have 'fallen foul' of a request to use the newish online registration process for regulation. The RICS advised me to use this channel in February 2012 but I found that it does not intuitively handle the regulation applications of start-ups or businesses with an 'unusual' business model such as my own. I have been remiss in not concluding this process in a timely fashion but, having regard to the previous discussions and correspondence, was unaware that a 'situation' was brewing.
With regard to the story circulated in Estate Agent Today, I contacted them a couple of months ago to enquire about a measured roll out of an advertising campaign using their newsletters. We are a startup offering free property listing of any type of property anywhere in the world - pretty transparent I would have thought. There are premium services which agents can 'Pay for as they use them', such as a fully integrated QR code and NFC tag marketing service. This contact with EAT prompted the Editorial Director to get in touch asking about writing a story on the Portal. I asked EAT if it would alright to get back to them next week as I am currently struggling with a personal health issue. She indicated that would be OK.
EAT subsequently contacted the RICS, who then contacted me, asking me to re-submit my regulation application online which I have done. Yesterday, I was told by the RICS that they are doing all they can to expedite my application and that it should be resolved in "the next 24 hours". I really cannot see why EAT felt compelled to run this story, with all the negative connotations it is implying, and not wait a few days until the RICS had resolved the situation.
Finally, I ran a free advert for Harrison Murray because I have spoken to them on a few occaisons about my plans for the development of the portal and thought it would be a return of the favour. I confirm they are not currently listing properties with us but I would be delighted to welcome them onboard, as well as any EAT subscribers.
Andrew Goldthorpe MRICS
Owner and Managing Director
PropertyPortal.com
The RICS have a very expensive partner program, they will make companies jump through hoops, spend years and a fortune getting to the stage where RICS will approved the product.... but then only with a hefty endorsement fee which, at the time (2008) was £40,000 per year.
This will probably the best publicity the site ever gets! There seems to be one of these sites created every week never to be seen again. They all claim to be the best, the most used, the only etc etc - how easy it is to lie on the web.
Why the hell would anyone want to be associated with RICS?
And now the website seems to be down with a critical error.
the site is just showing a "A critical error has occurred.An unexpected error has occurred" message at the mo