Challenger property portals offer free features to help crisis-hit agencies
Residential People and OneDome are both offering existing and new estate agency customers services as part of their platforms.
Two of the UK’s challenger property portals are offering agents free services and functionality in a bid to help agents get through the Coronavirus crisis.
Free-to-list portal Residential People is offering its premium services both to its existing 1,600 estate agents and those who sign up to join the portal during the crisis.
These premium services include featured property promotions, videos and microsites.
“The Coronavirus has had a drastic impact on the livelihood of estate agents and businesses across the UK,” says Residential People Sales & Managing Director, Roy Bartolo.
“At Residential People we are also in a similar situation and one thing that has been made clear in the last few weeks is that we all must do more in terms of supporting one another if we are to survive as an industry.”
Virtual viewings
The other the industry’s other free-to-list portal, OneDome, which has launched a free service that enables and agents to arrange and conduct virtual property viewings via the main video platforms including Zoom, BlueJeans and Skype.
Babek Ismayil, Founder and CEO of OneDome (left), says: “We are going through unprecedented times. It is very hard to predict how long the current crisis will last but we would like to help as much as we can.
“In response to the lock-down, we have built a solution that allows consumers to request virtual viewings.
“This solution is currently available on any listing on OneDome and we would be happy to offer the same solution to agents’ website completely free of charge to help them to manage their business from distance.”
Read more about property portals.
Great initiatives, and it will be interesting to see when things are normal again if agents continue to adopt services and applications that can save them time and money. For example virtual market appraisals, in 1985 when I was an agent you needed to visit the property to get an idea of value.
In 2020, there is so much data, most owners have maybe three values before any agent contacts them, and local agents who have marketed and sold hundreds if not thousands of properties, sometimes the same property several times, can to a degree not only recommend a marketing price, but can also engage digitally, video conferencing etc with the tech savvy vendors and secure the instruction. After all we are now with mobiles all tech enabled.
Yes, no human contact or viewings, but in time normal rhythms of commerce will prevail.