It’s not a portal! BestAgent to launch prospecting ‘marketplace’ for agents and vendors
Charlie Wright's tech platform will provides easy, fast and direct contact between agents and their movers, with next to no data entry for all parties.
Tech platform BestAgent has revealed that it intends to launch a marketplace for home hunters next year that will go live following a series of 12 regional consultations with estate agents starting on September 25th, but has denied that is will be a ‘portal’.
To be launched under the tagline ‘Find your agent, Find your home’ it will be a prospecting site where vendors and landlords can find local agents to instruct.
Also, agents will be able to source instructions via the BestAgent Property Marketplace’s platform via its ‘Vendor Tendor’ service which will enable home owners and landlords to invite agents to bid for their business.
Asked whether it would be a portal, founder Charlie Wright told The Negotiator: “The portal market is already saturated. No one needs nor is asking for yet another new portal.
“One of the biggest problems the industry suffers from, as per the Jefferies report from 2017, is that sellers choose the wrong agent 50% of the time, on average.
“This translates into a very poor start to the sellers move, and tarnishes the whole industry’s reputation. This happens partly because it is too time consuming to contact every agent in your area and repeat your story, i.e. reason for selling, description of property and circumstances etc, so typically sellers pick three at random, meaning they often miss out on the best agent for their personal circumstances.”
“Portals are property advertising sites which agents normally pay to advertise properties on. They’re great for property dreamers, browsers and window shoppers. They offer no value-add features when it comes to helping individuals choose the right agent to sell or let their home.”
Launch
The launch announcement follows June’s launch of the BestAgent supplier marketplace to nearly 80 industry service suppliers of which 24 including one CRM provider have so far signed up to. These include AgencyExpress, Kremer Signs, ValPal, Yomdel, Viewber and TenantShop.
“To date, only one CRM has connected, but it has allowed all the existing users of that CRM system to benefit from automatic applicant importing from all three major portals,” the company says.
“Other CRM’s have declined to connect as yet, some stating that they would ‘lose control of the relationship’ with their agent clients if they connected.”
