53-year-old Mike Cleary is not your usual property portal chief. He still runs his own business, nine-branch Midlands estate agency Sheldon Bosley Knight, which is one of the region’s leading independent firms with offices in Worcestershire and Warwickshire, and doesn’t have a background in tech.
But if Cleary’s plans for his soon-to-launch portal – called We Are The Market – come to fruition then Rightmove and Zoopla may soon have a powerful competitor with deep roots in local agent communities.
Rightmove may also rue the day it made a mess of the initial pandemic price discount offer – as We Are The Market was thought up by agents who had gathered under the #SayNoToRightmove umbrella.
Clearey says it will be a portal built by agents for agents initially in Coventry and Warwickshire (and later Gloucestershire and Northamptonshire) and launched without the consumer razzamatazz or huge tech investment of other portals.
“We can make it a success by working together as agents and collectively creating a better, more local and less expensive alternative to Rightmove,” says Cleary.
The plan
His plan is relatively simple. Build a property portal just for independent agents that taps into their loyalty, enthusiasm, local contacts and staff to create a ‘local’ portal in each area it operates within, all for £150 a month.
“We’re not going to launch in areas willy nilly or just because one agent wants to sign up – we will only make it a success in an area once we have achieved the necessary density of independents.
Although it hasn’t launched yet, the enterprise has 35 agents and 50 branches signed up which, along with money raised to start up the business, means it will break even at launch in mid-February.
But agents can be forgiven for being sceptical – there are at least six ‘challenger portals’ already in existence. So, what makes We Are the Market different?
Ambassadors
“The real value is that the agents’ staff will be ambassadors for the portal and register applicants on it and also add our logo to their For Sale boards, both of which has never happened before,” he says.
Also, we will offer house hunters a stripped down, easy-to-use property portal not clogged up by advertising and calculators.
“We are also going to be intensely local and have pages where agents can offer the best businesses, charities and organisations in their area a place to advertise or promote their activities.
“Everyone says it is these aspects of the portal that make it an absolute player.”
Cleary says his portal will have enough properties to attract house hunters because in most towns and areas independent agents hold between 85% and 100% of the stock.
“That does leave out the online agents, nationals, corporates and house builders but that’s fine because the bulk of the houses in most areas aren’t sold by them,” says Cleary.
“So far we have the required density in the areas where we will launch – and many of the agents I’ve talked to who haven’t joined say they will once we launch.”
Excellent idea, the vast majority of buyers are looking only in the immediate area, so national coverage (and the cost involved in subscribing for it) is unnecessary.
Hi Kelvin
Thank you for your comments and you are right. We seem to be stepping into adjacent counties and will continue to do so. Current portals have become obsessed with their shareholders. We will be the same but the difference is all of ours will be the quality Independent agents in the communities we serve. We will all own wearethemarket.co.uk.
Individual agent sites, that collaborate at individual activity centre level (3 agents is enough for an activity centre so some large villages) town, area or property type niche all the way up to a national or global aggregator is now possible with the generation 5 technology that has been developed.
The best bit about #PSP technology is that it allows agents to cost where their engagement is coming from.
I have been recording engaged sessions on 49,000 properties across various platforms for the past 3 months. it is interesting that an average branch of agency who spends 74% of its marketing budget on Rightmove was rewarded with 73% of it engaged traffic coming from Rightmove, 21% was generated by the CRM system and measured social media activity, 3% from another portal it uses and 4% from its own website.
When the time of engagement is compared to the cost Rightmove fares exceptionally well against the other portal and the agents’ site.
That said, what is notable, Rightmove manages to charge £10 per engaged minute more that it would if it had proper competition.
Both the digital strategy and the technology has moved on from the original regional agents’ systems pioneered 12 years ago by Radar.
Great local initiative by Mike. I think this could be the way forward to break the RM monopoly
Divide (the areas LOL) and conquer!
All power to you Mike
#saynotorightmove
To be fair CW Homes was an early version of this in Coventry and Warwickshire but never took off – I really hope that now that tech has moved on that this can work!
Hi Adam
Good to talk to you the other day. The tech is now the easy bit. The hard bit (initially) was getting the Independent agents to believe that there is an alternative. Our model with ownership, ambassadors, looking locally and brand awareness with Boards means that we are a viable player. My inbox has some brilliant agents wanting to be a part of this message. Bring it on!
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