The advent of the cheap as-chips online Estate Agents since 2014 (the year PB started), in many ways, is a reflection of the public perception of Estate Agents and the wariness they have of the Estate Agency industry.
With the average fee at 1.6% in 2004 (according to the Home Movers Survey by the Sunday Times), yet now somewhere around 1%, the industry’s incapability to create value and worth around what we do, and then communicate that to potential house sellers that there is talent and skill involved in marketing a property correctly and negotiating the best consequence to the best conclusion for the client.
One of the reasons as a cause of that is our over-reliance on the portals.
Have you ever wondered why Zoopla bought uSwitch? Did they see Zoopla as a huge dragnet to bring people to their switching site uSwitch? Remember, Zoopla has millions of people's data inputted into their system, they know their name, telephone, email and where they live, and what stage they are in life .. talk about a goldmine of info ..and info is everything nowadays
Rightmove have become the dominant over-arching layer in the Estate Agency industry, and as part of their procedures, they too have data-mined in the background since 2000 the name, address, email, and telephone number of landlords, vendors, buyers, and sellers who have been on their site for email alerts ….and that data is marketing-gold to the portals.
If you have ever signed up to Rightmove, they send you mortgage offers, removals quotes, free val enquiries …. It wouldn’t take two seconds for Big-Dave in IT at Rightmove Milton Keynes (HQ) to change your logo to theirs?
Yet instead of becoming utilities switching service, they could become an Estate Agent?
So, envisage what would happen if Rightmove chose to make their own, branded estate company with the only purpose of sell and let property?
Continued in Part 2 in the comments …
With the average fee at 1.6% in 2004 (according to the Home Movers Survey by the Sunday Times), yet now somewhere around 1%, the industry’s incapability to create value and worth around what we do, and then communicate that to potential house sellers that there is talent and skill involved in marketing a property correctly and negotiating the best consequence to the best conclusion for the client.
One of the reasons as a cause of that is our over-reliance on the portals.
Have you ever wondered why Zoopla bought uSwitch? Did they see Zoopla as a huge dragnet to bring people to their switching site uSwitch? Remember, Zoopla has millions of people's data inputted into their system, they know their name, telephone, email and where they live, and what stage they are in life .. talk about a goldmine of info ..and info is everything nowadays
Rightmove have become the dominant over-arching layer in the Estate Agency industry, and as part of their procedures, they too have data-mined in the background since 2000 the name, address, email, and telephone number of landlords, vendors, buyers, and sellers who have been on their site for email alerts ….and that data is marketing-gold to the portals.
If you have ever signed up to Rightmove, they send you mortgage offers, removals quotes, free val enquiries …. It wouldn’t take two seconds for Big-Dave in IT at Rightmove Milton Keynes (HQ) to change your logo to theirs?
Yet instead of becoming utilities switching service, they could become an Estate Agent?
So, envisage what would happen if Rightmove chose to make their own, branded estate company with the only purpose of sell and let property?
Continued in Part 2 in the comments …