Rightmove and Zoopla challenger Rummage4 launches after nine years in development
Founder Robert May and new CEO Anthony Codling talk about their now officially launched venture.
Robert May’s long-awaited venture Rummage4 has officially launched with the backing of Barratts, Bovis and Redrow as well as 30 estate agents nearly nine years after it was first conceived.
The company’s launch coincides with the first day at work for its new CEO, Anthony Codling, who recently finished working his notice at City analyst Jefferies.
May says the company aims to be a membership-based platform that will compete with the big property portals both on price and with new technology, offering an alternative way for house hunters to search for their next home, and for agents to generate leads.
“We are putting the focus back on the individual agents, so if someone is very good at selling a niche type of property in a village and that’s what they earn their living from, we can now give them the opportunity to be at the top of search on Google,” say May (left).
Rummage4 is charging agents £100 a month per branch compared to Rightmove’s £987 and Zoopla’s £350, and its platform is significantly different to that of the mainstream portals, offering a way for agents and their geographic and property-related specialisms to be discovered more easily via Google by house hunters.
“Our search is a whole level up from what you currently get in the market,” says Anthony Codling (right). “Google’s whole reason for being is to organise the world’s data and to help people find what they’re looking for, and we will help Google find what agents have got.”
Codling also told The Negotiator that his company’s pricing is designed to offer both a transparent and level playing field as well as a fee structure linked to local house prices; Rummage4 will share both the “gain and the pain of the housing market,” he says.
“We see the same opportunity as OnTheMarket; to offer agents a membership-based technology platform that offers an alternative to the current duopoly.” The company says it is expecting to grow organically through word of mouth.
Read more about Rummage4.
A lifeline for any Estate Agency. Rightmove and Zoopla are no devotee of Estate Agents. They view them as a commodity to attract consumer data. The portals have allowed agents to operate in a comfort zone.
The start of something better.
Best wishes.