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Latest property news
Agent makes lone stand against landlords who advertise direct on property portals
Newcastle-under-Lyme letting agent Rocket Homes Rentals has locked horns with the two largest property portals over listings by two local student lettings companies. It says they are advertising on the big portals even thought they are landlords who only market their own properties. Hybrid agent/landlords like these are springing up across the UK at the moment to enable a single landlord, or group of landlords, to bypass letting agents entirely and advertise their properties to rent directly on the large portals. Rockett Home Rentals, which has a single branch in Newcastle-under-Lyme but covers Crewe, Stafford and Stoke on Trent and has been in business since 2003, says its two rivals are advertising on Rightmove and Zoopla. “I’ve talked to both portals and no matter how they want to dress this up, they seem happy to let these ‘agents’ list because they have paid money and that’s it, regardless of how their business works,” says director Bill Rockett (pictured, below) “The only properties they have are the ones they own – they’re not an agent for anyone and they don’t service any customers except themselves. “It worries me that in the small area around my business I’ve seen ‘agents’ like this…
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Sales stock at its lowest for over two years, says Rightmove index
The average number of properties for sale with each estate agent in the UK has fallen to its lowest level for at least two years, according to the latest Rightmove index published today. The portal says each agent that lists with it on average had 52 properties during February including those under offer or sold STC, down from 61 in August and two fewer than February last year although it’s at least two years since it was this low. And Rightmove data from previous months suggests the number of months that the traditional winter shortage lasts for is lengthening. Average stock During 2016 the average stock per agent sank from 66 at its peak in July to 53 in December but by March has recovered to 57, a trend which is less obvious this year. Rightmove says the shortage is largely responsible for a sharp increase in the average UK house price last month, up by 1.3%, a monthly rise that has only been exceeded once since the financial crash of 2007/8. “Since the start of the decade, the average March price rise has been 0.9%, so this month’s 1.3% uplift is an indicator of a shortage of suitable property…
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Latest property news
Rightmove shares slide as agents grumble
Rightmove announced full year results on Friday 24th February, reporting further success. Pre-tax profits rose from £137.1m in 2015 to £161.5m in 2016, up by almost 18 per cent. Revenues rose by 15 per cent to £220m. So why, on that day, did their shares slide down a steep hill – down 5.8 per cent to £40, wiping over £200 million off its value? Rightmove Chairman, Scott Forbes said, “Our audience, best in class platforms and significant property inventory advantage coupled with our focus on innovation at the core of our business drives our value proposition for the benefit of both our trade customers and consumers. Property data has always been at the core of what we do and we are excited about continuing to harness the power of our data to drive further transparency and efficiency in the property market, predict market opportunities and drive success for our customers and consumers.” There’s no doubt that Rightmove is doing well for its investors, so it is possible that the fall was due to the announcement of Nick McKittrick’s (pictured right) forthcoming retirement, as the national papers deduced, but could there also be growing unrest among Rightmove’s 20,121 Agency and New Homes customers? RIGHTMOVE…
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Rightmove’s CEO Nick McKittrick to retire in May
Rightmove’s CEO Nick McKittrick is to retire and leave the company at the forthcoming AGM on 9 May this year, although he will remain until June ‘to ensure a smooth transition process’. This brings an era to a close at the company, as McKittrick was one of the company’s founding executives. McKittrick worked as a technology consultant at Accenture before joining the team that began Rightmove in 2000, helping see off early rivals such as Assertahome and Propertyfinder. He was appointed to the board in 2004, made Chief Operating Officer in 2005, Finance Director in 2009 and Chief Operating Officer in 2013. The current COO, Peter Brooks-Johnson who like McKittrick is a board member, and has been in role since 2011, will take McKittrick’s job. “Nick has served Rightmove with 16 years of leadership, as remarkable for his success as with the modest way he has achieved it,” says Rightmove chairman Scott Forbes. “I speak on behalf of the Board and Rightmove employees when I say that we will miss Nick on both a personal and professional level. “We have greatly appreciated his contribution to Rightmove’s success and we wish him the very best for the future” McKittrick can afford to…
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Rightmove sends out portal juggling reminder
Rightmove has sent out a reminder to agents reiterating the 14-week rule it introduced in December last year to combat portal juggling by sales agents. The email (see right) reveals a little more about how Rightmove’s policing system works. It highlights how properties that are re-listed during the 14-week period will not change their date or be sent out in property alerts. Rightmove now has what it calls a ‘growing team’ of tech experts and new software trawling its listing for errant listings, and also recently held a meeting with leading anti-portal juggling campaigner and former Jupix boss Robert May, who has built a software suite that can spot errant agents when they ‘play’ the listings game. “When you’ve got 25,000 [listings] movements a day on a portal like Rightmove then it’s always going to be a challenge for them to see what’s going on and police it,” says Robert. He says the techniques that some surprisingly well-known names in the industry use to juggle their listings is getting ever more sophisticated, including ‘zombie listings’ when previously sold properties are re-listed as ‘SSTC’ and ‘bat out of hell’ listings where properties are listed overnight and then withdrawn in the morning.…
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Why did Northwood withdraw circular that used commonly-used Rightmove data?
Franchise network agent Northwood GB, which was acquired by rival Belvoir in June last year, has been reported to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) for making an unsubstantiated claim in a circular it distributed to clients, even though the information is widely available elsewhere. Northwood had stated within it: “Did you know that between Christmas Day and 1st working day in January last year Rightmove had a 195% increase in their visits to their website”. The complainant challenged whether this claim could be substantiated and, after the ASA contacted Northwood, was told the circular had been withdrawn and the matter was resolved informally. Links to the circular on the company’s Facebook page have also been taken down. “We told them to ensure in future, they held robust substantiation information for any claims made in their advertising,” the ASA said. Northwood’s reluctance to substantiate the claim is odd, given that the ‘195% increase’ statistic has been repeated in several local newspapers including the Hampshire Chronicle, and is therefore likely to have been based on a Rightmove press release. Also, Northwood is not the only agent in the UK to have repeated the ‘195% increase in visits’ claim. Hamptons International (see left)…
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Property dating app for vendors and agents launched
A cupid couple in Lancashire have launched a property dating app for vendors and agents that, they claim, integrates Rightmove with the functionality of dating app Tinder. Husband and wife team Rachel and Mark Worrall’s service is called, perhaps predictably, Love2move which, the couple says, enables high street agents to offer fixed price online property sales of £895 alongside their existing sales operations. The service will enable agents to compete with their corporate competitors such as Countrywide, which in its case is currently rolling a similar dual-fee model across its network. The Worralls (pictured, above), who between them have experience in property and marketing and are both 30, say they had their lightbulb moment last year when they moved house. Mark, who works for his mother’s property marketing agency MovingWorks, and Rachel, who is a career marketeer, realised when they moved house that others in their age group were being attracted to cheaper online agents but losing out on the valuable local knowledge offered by traditional agents. Love2move is designed to fill the gap between traditional and online agents, the couple say, and is aimed at what they describe as “internet-savvy millennials looking to save money by taking control of…
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Big three portal traffic approaches 200 million visits a month
Both Zoopla Property Group (ZPG) and OnTheMarket have reported record traffic during January while Righmove appears to have stopped reporting its traffic entirely, although total portal traffic to the three sites is likely to be just under 200 million visits a month. But both ZPG and OnTheMarket have at least stopped throwing brickbats at each other and neither of their traffic reports mention each other, a change from recent times when both sides have questioned their competitor’s figures. ZPG says visits to its property sites Zoopla and Primelocation increased to a record of 53 million during January driven largely by mobile-based searches, which now constitute 72% of its traffic. The company also says the number of leads it generated increased by 73% year-on-year which, it says, are worth £50 million to its partner agents. “This is a great start to the year for both the business and the property market,” says Mark Goddard, MD of ZPG’s property division (pictured, left). “The numbers demonstrate that we continue to deliver incredible exposure, value and results for our partners.” OnTheMarket also had a record January, it says, receiving 11.2 million visits, an increase of 85% on the same month last year, when just…
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Instructions website rails against ‘too much’ Christmas
As the big retailers queue up to release their Christmas ads and spread some rather early good cheer around the nation, Folkestone-based instruction leads generator NetAnAgent.com has settled on a much harsher message. The website launched in 2012 promising to turn the world of estate agency ‘on its head’ by enabling anyone selling a property to anonymously receive agent quotes to sell their home. It also offers a similar service to landlords. But a blog published by the firm’s managing director Alex Thorpe (pictured) asks vendors to undertake some extraordinary actions during the run-up to Yuletide to bag a festive sale; by keeping their decorations austere and to the bone. He urges vendors to buy the smallest tree possible to prevent their lounge looking cramped and that Christmas decorations should be kept to a minimum because they make a room look ‘busy’. The blog also suggests NOT hanging decorations from the ceiling or putting them on tables. Also, it says that decorations should be in keeping with the property’s style and that for example a country house should have traditional tinsel and baubles while contemporary homes should not. But NetAnAgent is not alone in its call for property sales to triumph over…
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Latest property news
22% of public recognise OnTheMarket, says Zoopla research
The marketing mountain that OnTheMarket must climb to catch up its two main rivals has been revealed today after Zoopla published its latest brand awareness figures. Parent group ZPG paid market research firm Harris Interactive to quiz 1,100 people about which of the three main portals – OnTheMarket, Zoopla and Rightmove – they recognised. It found that 22% recognised OnTheMarket, an increase of 1% compared to May this year, while 90% recognised Zoopla and 83% Rightmove. The responses from the research were prompted – meaning the people surveyed were shown the portals’ logos and then asked if they recognised them – but Zoopla in addition asked them to recall the main portal brands unprompted. Zoopla says this research revealed that 47% of respondents recalled its name while 39% remembered Rightmove and 3% recalled OnTheMarket. The fruits of Zoopla’s ‘always on’ promotional activity is clearly bearing fruit. In recent years it has often outspent Rightmove on TV and, for a time, had a virtual monopoly on London’s black cab advertising. Also, in July this year it wrapped an entire fleet of London buses in purple. Gareth Helm, Group Chief Marketing Officer for ZPG (pictured), says: “Our ongoing investment in brand resulting in consumers…
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