Property data firm ‘shocked’ about level of online trolling it receives
Start-up Homesearch says it was not prepared for the level of abuse it would receive after launching its online data service.
Homesearch, a property data company that launched earlier this year with an introductory free offer for estate agents has told The Negotiator that it was unprepared for the level of online trolling it would face once it went live.
Co-founder Sam Hunter (pictured, above) has been so shocked by the level of abuse his company’s service has received that his team have created a ‘Mean Tweets’ video (see below) to highlight some of the more aggressive comments about the company.
These have been made on industry forums and on social media and include accusations that the company shares agent’s data with Facebook, that its staff have been uploading fake positive online reviews and are paid to do so and that any service which is free must be ‘fishy’.
“It started out with us wanting to do a wrap up video of the year and showing off some of the good feedback we’d received,” says Hunter.
“When we went back through some of the articles comments and tweets we’d received we all thought the, shall we say “less than positive” ones, were pretty funny in retrospect, though some of them did get to us a bit in the early days.
“December’s a fun time of year so hopefully this gives people in the industry a bit of a laugh and reminds everyone not to take the naysayers too seriously. If you believe in what you’re doing, keep doing it.”
Homesearch claims to be the UK’s first ‘all-in’ residential property data solution and is now being used by 4,800 estate agents working within 1,450 companies, and recent struck a deal with the Federation of Independent Agents.
It launched in June after three years in development and offers a range of property data about an address including transaction history, boundary and Title information from the Land Registry, planning information, a valuation and demographic data about a street or area.
