Marketing
News covering the marketing of residential property, lead generation, buying and selling and business development.
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allAgents reinstates ‘majority’ of negative Purplebricks reviews after negotiations break down
Reviews website allAgents has reinstated Purplebricks’ reviews on its site including “the majority” of the negative ones and half of the questionable ‘five-star’ postings that sparked a two-month spat between the two organisations. allAgents says it has not reposted half of the ‘five star’ reviews after the people who originally wrote them failed to respond to checks by the reviews website’s team, and that it will in future only be accepting reviews from vendors who have sold their homes via Purplebricks or “withdrawn from the agreement with Purplebricks”. “We will continue not to allow duplicate postings by the same client for the same transaction. This will give a more complete picture of Purplebricks’ service, as customers may feel very different at the end of the process, than they do at the pre-sales stage,” says allAgents’ Martin McKenzie. This would appear to end the three-month long dispute between Purplebricks and allAgents, which saw the hybrid agent threaten legal action over 26 negative reviews posted on the agent reviews site. Negative reviews Purplebricks claimed the negative reviews were fake and, after allAgents investigated each one, only three could not be verified as real. A further five were also taken down by allAgents…
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OnTheMarket flotation confirmed alongside sweeteners for agents to sign long-term deals
The long-awaited OnTheMarket flotation on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) is to proceed, it has been confirmed by parent organisation Agents’ Mutual. It is now four months since the vote to demutualise Agents Mutual which was to be followed by the creation of a new company OnTheMarket plc prior to an Initial Public Offering (IPO) on AIM. Agents Mutual has yet to announce the new company or IPO, but has revealed that it will introduce “appropriate incentives” to persuade new members to commit to five-year deals with OTM. This will include giving share options to “selected” agents joining the portal if they commit to long-term listings agreement. OnTheMarket flotation But agents who receive equity in OTM following the flotation are to be prevented from cashing in their shares too soon to “align their interests as shareholders with the success of the Group”. OTM has already begun the process of securing five-year deals in return for promises of shares in the company including, most recently, deals announced with Arun Estates, Chancellors and Hunters. But, as previously announced, the £50m it hopes to raise from the City will be spent on marketing and PR to drive traffic to the site and to…
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allAgents to make ‘significant’ announcement about Purplebricks next week
Estate agent reviews website allAgents.com has said it is to make a ‘major announcement’ next week about its battle with Purplebricks and has confirmed that talks with the online agent have broken down. Martin McKenzie (pictured, below), Director of Business Development at Glasgow-based allAgents.co.uk, says the talks fell apart because “our negotiations with Purplebricks broke down as we feel their business ethics are not in line with our own”. “However, there’s been a lot going on behind the scenes and we plan to make a major announcement early next week. We will not be bullied into submission by them, or anyone else.” The row between the two sides kicked off in September when allAgents.co.uk refused to take down reviews that Purplebricks considered to be ‘fake’ or ‘could not be justified’, according to Purplebricks founder Michael Bruce (pictured, right). But allAgents.com refused to back down despite repeated threats from the online agent if the reviews were not removed and, after replacing the Purplebricks account page on its site with a message decrying the company’s actions, began a crowdfunding campaign to raise £50,000 legal fighting fund. It reached £45,380 before its closing date. Peace talks allAgents said at the time that it would…
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Escalating Purplebricks vs allAgents spat goes global
A year ago the story about a spat between Purplebricks and the UK largest agent reviews site would have stayed a specialist concern for agents and perhaps regulators. Similar stories about the company’s multiple run-ins with the Advertising Standards Authority in the past have hardly stirred much interest overseas or even within the UK’s national press. But Purplebricks’ recent expansion in the US and Australia means its minor scrapes with UK regulators and review sites now make global headlines. The latest clash between the online agent and – this time – allAgents.co.uk has been so far reported in the Australian Financial Review, The Times, and the New York Times. among others. The story broke late yesterday after allAgents removed Purplebricks’ profile page following “repeated threats of legal action”, the review site said. The arguments started after Purplebricks noticed that approximately half of its reviews on allAgents posted by users were the lowest, one-star rating and asked the review site to remove them. Purplebricks told Reuters that “Purplebricks is proud of its reputation and the quality of the service that it delivers.” The company appears to have taken legal action against allAgents, which is based in Glasgow, and the reviews site…
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So that’s why sales are slowing down! Brits now move home every 23 years
The time gap between people moving home has increased from nine to 23 years since the late 1980s as high house prices have made moving up the property ladder more expensive, research by market analyst Hometrack has revealed. This may explain why property transactions have not recovered their pre-financial crisis crash. Before the global banking meltdown approximately 120,000 properties were sold each month, a figure which is currently running at just under half that number, according to latest Land Registry figures. Scottish movements Hometrack, which was purchased by ZPG recently, says the average Brit moves home every 22.7 years. Those in Scotland are the most frequent home movers, changing address every 19.6 years followed by the South West at 20.6 years and the East of England at 20.9 years. The Welsh are the most reluctant movers, changing home every 26.8 years on average. Residents in Powys, mid-Wales only move home once every 33.1 years, the data shows. On a very local level, Midlothian in Scotland, which covers the area south of Edinburgh between East Lothian and the Scottish Borders, is where people move home the most frequently, or every 14.9 years, five years faster than the rest of the UK.…
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OnTheMarket agents vote overwhelmingly to demutualise and float
OnTheMarket is to demutualise and float on the stock market following a vote by its agent members. It is also to drop its controversial ‘one other portal rule’ and will now attempt to raise £50m from City investors. Nearly 90% of agent members of the website’s operator Agents’ Mutual voted to convert their existing membership interests into shares in a new company called OnTheMarket Ltd. Agents’ Mutual says 70% of members voted in person at the meeting in London yesterday or by proxy. After the vote is approved by a court hearing early week the demutualisation will then proceed on 12th September, and following an initial IPO on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) it is expected that some £50m will be raised by offering investors a minority stake in the new business. Advertising campaign This will value OnTheMarket at between £200 and £250 million. The money raise is to be used to take on Rightmove and Zoopla with a huge national advertising campaign on TV, digital and print media as well as significant radio and billboard activity. “I am very pleased at such a resounding demonstration of broad Member support for our strategic proposals for the business,” says Ian Springett,…
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OnTheMarket to end mutual status and float on AIM
The parent company of OnTheMarket.com, Agents’ Mutual, is to raise £50m by floating on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) of the London Stock Exchange 30 months after the mutually-owned property portal launched. The flotation will value OnTheMarket at between £200 million and £250 million, a sixth the size of nearest rival Zoopla. Much of the money raised from the City will be spent on a huge TV, radio, print and digital advertising campaign to raise awareness among consumers and, no doubt, stop agents jumping ship back to Zoopla. OnTheMarket’s flotation will also require existing agents who list on the site to convert their membership into ordinary shares in the new company, and commit to a further five year agreement to list their properties on OnTheMarket.com. “This is the beginning of a very exicting new chapter in our development,” says Agents Mutual Chief Executive Ian Springett (pictured, left). “For consumer and agents alike we are committed to creating a genuine agent-controlled alternative challenger business and brand to the two leading incumbent portals.” A minority stake will be offered to investors as part of the Initial Public Offering (IPO) of new equity which will be used to give OnTheMarket the sort of…
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Advertising watchdog censures Houser over ad, but is anyone at home?
Hybrid property portal Houser has been criticised by the Advertising Standards Authority after it ignored efforts by the watchdog to investigate a complaint about one of its listings. Agent Newton Fallowell, which has over 30 branches across Lincolnshire, Staffordshire, Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire, had complained to the ASA about a property listing on Houser that was for a house that had been sold two years ago. The ASA said that potential buyers would have understood from the ad that the property was still on the market when it was not, and that therefore it was misleading under rule 3.1 of the CAP code. But when contacted by the ASA, Houser did not respond to its enquiries, and the watchdog says it is “concerned by Houser’s lack of response apparent disregard for the Code”. “We remind them of their responsibilities to respond promptly to our enquiries and told them to do so in the future,” the ASA says in its judgement. Property hunting reinvented Houser launched in January 2015 after buying the assets of failed property search engine NeedaProperty, describing itself as “the one you didn’t see coming” and that its service is “property hunting reinvented”. The company offers agents free listings…
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Former commercial property giant Movehut sold for £55,000
Movehut, the commercial property portal once tipped to be the next Rightmove which at one point had Rightmove founder Harry Hill as its chairman and was backed by TV presenter Carol Vorderman, has had most of its assets sold off by the administrators for £55,000. The payment, by a company linked to the website’s founder Gary Stuart, includes £20,000 for its customer database, £2,500 for fixtures and fittings at its Newcastle-under-Lyme offices and £12,500 for the intellectual property attached to its software including the website and domain name, and £5,000 for its existing customers contracts. Unsecured creditors are owed £207,900 says administrator Kevin Lucas of Lucas Johnson Insolvency Practice, who also says Movehut Ltd will soon move from administration to liquidation. AIM listing Movehut launched in the early noughties and by early 2013 was claiming to be the largest commercial property website in the UK with over 100,000 listings and soaring web traffic. It also had plans for an AIM listing that would have valued the company at £10m. But then the Movehut story began to fall apart. Harry Hill (pictured, left) and Chief Executive Justin Bates left the company in October 2013 and, although Carole Vorderman fronted ads for…
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Newspaper giant fights back against portals
The UK’s largest regional newspaper and digital publisher Trinity Mirror, is to “fight back” against the increasing slice of agent marketing spend taken by Rightmove and Zoopla.
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