THE MARKET

Yorkshire has an annual GDP of £88 billion, which is nearly seven per cent of the UK’s total GDP and it is both a thriving economy and property market in its own right.

With castles, mansions and beautiful estates, the wealthiest part of the ‘county’ – and the most profitable for agents there – is North Yorkshire with an average house price of £180,000.

That’s followed by the East Riding of Yorkshire at £136,759, West Yorkshire at £115,446 and South Yorkshire at £108,065. It is not surprising that that North Yorkshire wins out. Ever since the industrial revolution it has been where the moneyed classes have taken their profits (made in towns and cities such as Harrogate, York and, Leeds or Bradford) and escaped to the country. North Yorkshire is blessed with both the Yorkshire Dales National Park and the North York Moors National Park, but it also has beautiful coastal stretches and towns such as Scarborough, Hunmanby, Whitby, Staithes and Robin Hood’s Bay.

At the moment North Yorkshire’s property market is motoring along adequately but not as spectacularly as other parts of the UK. House prices have risen by 2.9 per cent over the past 12 months, less than the national average of 6.1 per cent.

But just over 180 sales and letting agents do battle in this market ranging from the prime national players such as Savills, Knight Frank, Strutt & Parker and Jackson-Stops & Staff ,to the big franchise chains such as Martin & Co and the mid-size multi-branch operators such as Dacre, Son & Hartley. And then there’s the rump – THE one-to-five branch independents.

THE WARRING PORTAL FACTIONS

North Yorkshire makes for a lively place for the portals to do battle. So how is it going? All except five of the agents with offices in the area are signed up to Rightmove but the battle between OnTheMarket and Zoopla for No.2 two spot has split the ‘other portal’ choice down the middle.

Zoopla has 73 sales and letting agents with offices in North Yorkshire while OnTheMarket has 75. So, predictions that the launch of OnTheMarket would hurt Zoopla and strengthen Rightmove have, it would seem, come to pass. A year before OnTheMarket launched, Zoopla had significantly more agents listed in the area.

North Yorkshire is a lively place for the portals to do battle. All but five agents are with Rightmove, while the No 2 spot is split right down the middle.

But a closer look at the figures reveals some interesting portal choice trends that may be unique to North Yorkshire. One is that 46 or 25 per cent of all agents are only with Rightmove, no doubt highlighting a core of agents who think one portal is enough, whatever the price. By comparison, only one agent is just with Zoopla, a situation that’s the same for OnTheMarket.

Another feature is that the more successful the agent in North Yorkshire, the more likely they are to be signed up with two portals, with independent agents being more likely to sign up to OnTheMarket than Zoopla. Also, Zoopla has many more of the smaller lettings agents than OnTheMarket, many of whom are only with Zoopla – a reflection of the lower price that Zoopla charges compared to Rightmove.

AN AGENT’S VIEW

Ben Hudson of Hudson Moody in York set up the company twenty years ago after working for Savills and it now has three offices and twenty employees. It operates in both sales and lettings in both York and in the ten miles around the city. Its market is the “middle range from £200,000 to £500-£600,000” for sales, says Ben.

I remember Rightmove launching and we put up money for Ian Springett to start Primelocation, so we’ve been there since it started. Ben Hudson, Hudson Moody.

“I remember Rightmove launching and we were also one of the agencies who put up money for Ian Springett to start Primelocation so we’ve been there since the start of the internet services, really.”

Ben says when he first opened for business he didn’t have email or the internet. But during the late noughties he started using email and the first enquiries started coming, primarily from academics (who were the first users of email).

“We sold our first house online in 1998 when we emailed a professor some details of a property in York to him in Manchester which he then bought,” says Ben.

“Soon after that Rightmove launched and since then the portal has grown and grown and it does a good job in my view. They give us a lot of information, assistance and are very helpful – they visit us regularly.”

Ben says that he was contacted in 2011 when Zoopla, PrimeLocation and FindaProperty amalgamated and offered their service for “practically nothing in a bid to get crucial mass, I suppose,” says Ben.

“I’m a chartered surveyor and I try to do a professional job but I feel that [before OnTheMarket] the internet was starting to water down what agents were doing. We’d find that one day someone was selling advertising to us and the next they had opened up a competing agency.

“So when Ian Springett approached me and other agents about setting up OnTheMarket I felt it would be a way of differentiating between the traditional, qualified and experienced agents and the ones who want to offer the ‘Autotrader’ approach.

“I’ve got nothing against that and if people want to sell their own homes then that’s fine but ultimately we offer professional advice and a good service and there are quite enough people prepared to pay us to provide it.

“So we left Zoopla and joined OnTheMarket while retaining Rightmove. It wasn’t a difficult choice to stick with Rightmove – it’s so strong in Yorkshire and also, I’ve got a lot of time for Rightmove; they’ve done a really good job in the past helping us work our stock.”

Ben says he’s pleased with the progress of OnTheMarket thus far and that from the start he realised it was not going to happen overnight – and in his head it’s going to take five years, he says. “For me, it’s a better quality of lead that we’re getting from OnTheMarket, and it’s slowly building.”

HOW IMPORTANT ARE THE PORTALS?

Portals and both online and offline marketing of any description appears to be irrelevant if observations made by Savills recently are accurate.

I have faced the argument that it doesn’t matter which estate agent one uses as, ‘everybody just looks at the internet. This is not the case. Ben Pridden, Savills.

Savills’ Head of Residential in Yorkshire, Ben Pridden, says that a “significant number” of houses sell discreetly or ‘offmarket’ because “sellers don’t want their personal affairs or their much loved house, widely publicised.”

And Ben took several pot shots at the portals within his comments on the local market.

“In this internet era it may be of some comfort to hear that we still believe in old fashioned estate agency; combining modern marketing methods with those personal contacts built over many years,” he says.

“It is incredibly satisfying and rewarding looking after buyers and helping them find their perfect house, and equally meeting our client’s expectations – getting the job done in the way they feel comfortable with.

“I have faced the argument that it doesn’t really matter which estate agent one uses as “everybody just looks on the internet,” but this is not the case.”

Ben says that while cost is a consideration, other factors such as track record, advertising spread, reputation, personal recommendation, market knowledge, geographical coverage and experience are more important.

“In the property market it’s about both what you know and who you know,” he says.

HOW’S THE NATIONAL BATTLE GOING?

Rightmove
The latest strategic report from Rightmove report on 2015’s business revealed that it had 19,752 advertisers which includes sales, letting and new homes. Revenue increased by 15 per cent compared to 2014 and profits were up 16 per cent. The average revenue from each agent increased by 10 per cent from £687 in 2014 to £754.

Zoopla  
“The launch of a new portal by Agents’ Mutual negatively impacted the Group’s number of UK Agency partners at the start of the calendar year [2015],” Zoopla’s most recent trading statement says. “But as the year progressed, churn levels slowed significantly and the Property Services division returned to positive partner growth in May. After five consecutive months of UK Agency growth, the Group ended the period with 12,702 UK Agency partners (30 September 2014: 16,373).”

OnTheMarket
OTM claims to have over 6,500 sales and lettings offices across the UK and most recently signed up Hampshire, Dorset and Wiltshire multi-branch agency Goadsby. This was not a defection from Zoopla to OnTheMarket as the firm only advertised on Rightmove until now.

The company recently took action to stop some of its member agents advertising on Zoopla, agents who were with Rightmove but had signed up to the ‘one other’ portal rule but not implemented it. It is not clear how many of the 6,500 are included in this.

Methodology
This snapshot of the North Yorkshire market was completed by looking at the listings of all three portals and comparing them to see which agent is signed up to which portal or portals. Agents were included as long as they had a branch or head office in North Yorkshire which by definition excluded many of the Teeside and Middlesorough agents who ‘cover’ North Yorkshire but don’t have offices or branches within it.

The research also excluded commercial property agents and, because of the office rule, most of the online-only agents, although PurpleBricks and Esale were included because they have offices or agents with local telephone numbers within North Yorkshire.