OnTheMarket: agent reveals how it banned him from meetings after criticism
Another senior agent has revealed how, he claims, OnTheMarket treats businesses who don't toe the corporate line.
Another estate agent has spoken out to complain about his treatment by OnTheMarket.
Simon Shinerock, who is chairman of 15-branch estate agency Choices, has claimed that he was banned from public meetings held by the portal after writing critical opinion pieces for a trade newspaper.
Shinerock says during an interview with Christopher Watkin published over the weekend that he spoke to the portal’s CEO Ian Springett when he was preparing to launch OnTheMarket and immediately disagreed with his strategy of targeting Zoopla rather than Rightmove, and his insistence on a ‘one other portal’ rule.
He also says he opposed banning online agents.
“My FD and I had been invited to a public meeting held by OnTheMarket but we ended up being refused entry to it because of my criticism of OnTheMarket’s strategy,” says Shinerock.
“I felt that targeting Zoopla would just make Rightmove stronger, which it has.”
He also claims during the interview that the sale of some estate agencies has fallen through after a potential purchaser has seen the five-year contract the agency has signed with the portal.
“Effectively, if you had 100 branches and you bought one small agent which had signed up for a five-year deal, you could end up having to pay full price for all of the 100 branches,” claims Shinerock.
His experiences resonate with those of London estate agency James Pendleton who, The Negotiator reported last week, was ejected from its ‘freebie’ contract with OnTheMarket after saying it was reluctant to pay for its service at the moment.
Am I missing something? When he says the “One Other Portal” (OOP) rule was “unfair” … unfair for who exactly? People have questioned and argued about the OOP rule for years and it’s been settled – in the courts. OTM were allowed to do it while they got established and that’s it. Now they are more established, the OOP rule has been dropped. It just wasn’t an issue. When exactly was Mr Shinerock “banned” from these meetings? I can’t help feeling there is more to this than the article lets on.
I must have attended at least 8 OTM meetings from the off, and I don’t remember OTM “targeting Zoopla”. In fact, from memory Mr Springett’s graphic was predicting a 50 / 50 split between Rightmove and Zoopla. As it turned out, if more agents ditched Zoopla than Rightmove, then it just goes to show that the agents themselves thought that Zoopla was the least efficient of the 2 competitors. I can’t see how OTM made Rightmove “stronger”. If it genuinely had made Rightmove stronger, you could bet your shirt that the subscriptions would have increased proportionately – and they didn’t for me at least, but we are in a strong OTM area.
Why was Mr Shinerock so keen on including “Online agents”? Part of the reason OTM was set up was to combat online only agents – which is why one of the OTM conditions was that members had to have a physical office. What was the issue with that? I must admit, I still don’t quite understand why OTM wanted to float; it was effectively a not for profit organisation. The people who set it up and paid for it (ie normal High Street agents like myself) weren’t EXPECTING OTM to “make a profit” – we expected it to compete with the big portals and to cover its costs. I can only speak for myself but unless I’m missing something, it did both of those.
As for the sale of businesses “falling through” because of an OTM 5 year contract, how is that any different to any other contract? If you had signed a 5 year contract with say a local newspaper, and were trying to sell the business, then the newspaper commitment would be passed on to the new buyer. The buyer would know that before signing and could revise his offer accordingly if he / she wanted to. I suspect there were other reasons why prospective buyers pulled; without far more detail we will never know will we. Will we get more details? Probably not.
Allowing homeowners to advertise their property on OTM? What is that about? Why would a site set up and owned by ESTATE AGENTS let private individuals advertise their property on our site? We want to encourage them to use estate agents not discourage them. I was a Gold OTM member from the off to protect my business – not undermine it.
Hi Julian – yes, the very same Mr Shinewater! I realise Simon isn’t OTM’s greatest admirer but the point he makes about the tricky terms in some of its contracts is an interesting one and worth reporting on.
The same Simon Shinerock, who writes on Estate Agent Today, who has moaned at OTM from day one about how it will never get off the ground? It’s like Corbyn turning up at the Tory conference, what do you expect them to do?