An agent who says his firm is one of the few in the area to be on Zoopla says that it is working in his favour.
Michael Riley, director of online firm Capital & Coastal which operates along the south coast, said that since the launch of OnTheMarket with its ‘one other portal’ rule, there has been a 300% increase in inquiries for Capital & Coastal properties via Zoopla.
Riley, a former head of head of sales for Savills and head of operations for Romans, said OTM does not generate enough traffic to the site to take a meaningful position.
Meanwhile, he said his business is benefiting from less competition and an abundance of house hunters, as it remains one of the few agents in the area listed with Zoopla, giving it a distinct advantage over its competitors.
Riley said: “The success of a website is not just determined by stock, but traffic coming to the site to visit that stock.
“If you are a vendor, you want as many people as possible to be viewing your property to ensure you find the right buyer.
“There is a risk to vendors that they will end up not achieving the maximum value for their property, as inquiries via OTM will be fewer and vendors may end up agreeing a price too early just to secure a sale.”
Riley went on to say that Zoopla could decide to change their business model altogether and become a direct selling agent.
He said: “Obviously this would be a bold move for Zoopla, but it’s worked in the US so there’s no reason why it can’t here too.”
Lawrence Hall of Zoopla Property Group said in response: “The latest data clearly shows that since the launch of OTM in January, the average number of listings and new instructions for ZPG members has grown whilst for OTM members it has fallen, which is the clearest sign that OTM members are losing instructions and hurting their businesses.
He says’ There is a risk to vendors that they will end up not achieving the maximum value for their property, as inquiries via OTM will be fewer and vendors may end up agreeing a price too early just to secure a sale.”
Does he think that buyers who don’t come from Zoopla don’t pay the right price. The price is about expert local knowledge coupled with tough negotiating on behalf of clients. If may come as a shock to Zoopla that buyers who don’t arrive from them do pay the right price. It’s becoming quite stomach churning the pathetic,relentless daily mud slinging that Zoopla engage in about OTM. Zoopla need to grow up and take a leaf out of Rightmove’s book and get on with running their own business. These constant rantings and interpretations of statistics only serve to demonstrate the anxiety they feel about the threat of OTM on their business. Well done Rightmove If there was a prize for elegant management of dealing with a new competitor you should win it.
PS as they (agents’ names will be in the public domain anyway, let’s ask Zoopla to publish their EXTENSIVE list of returning agents leaving OTM. “Show us the evidence don’t tell us the truth Zoopla.”
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If you truly believe that the price dictated by an agent actually determines the price that is ultimately paid by buyers and that buyers are sufficiently gullible to simply to be ‘negotiated’ on, then your traditional business model really is vulnerable
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If it is then it won’t be by yours. There’s space for one player and frankly PurpleBricks are kicking your a**e! I would concentrate on that Russell rather than telling others what they should be doing.
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Either way, they’re both embracing the need of the consumer. Very much unlike OTM agents, who are embracing their own need.
One side is the future, the other isn’t.
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No, one side would like to THINK it was the future!
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Russell Quirk has lost sight of the fact that from wherever the buyer emanates, the price agreed is negotiated by the estate agent. Unless of course you are an online only agent, in which case the poor seller is left to do it themselves! And as an online agent they have their fee up front, so where is the incentive to add anything else to the equation.
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Typhoon – see my comment down below somewhere…
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As soon as you say something as ridiculous as ‘there’s space for one player’ you loose any credit you may of had. So, is there only room for one high street player on a high street, town, county etc then too? Where there is actually less audience. My goodness…
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So when you get an asking price offer was that price not “determined and dictated” by the agent or owner?
When a buyer offers and the agent says “nah, you need to offer more as we have other offers” and that buyer increases; is that not a price “dictated and determined” by the agent?
Have you ever had a vendor say (for example) I will take the offer of £200,000 but still you go back with the deal agreed at £203,000?
I agree a property is ultimately worth what a buyer is prepared to pay, coupled with the offer an owner will accept, but a decent agent will ensure the negotiations are exhausted before giving up.
A decent agent knows how to negotiate and when to accept the deal is maxed out! A decent agent would know this and not suggest they cannot influence what a buyer pays.
Surely Russell you have managed to negotiate a couple of grand extra for a vendor! Your post kind of confirms the thought process, what you can save on fees with Online Only may be a lot less than the gains a good traditional High Street Agent with local knowledge and passion for getting the best deal will get you on a sale price.
Odd comment Russell, do you plan to base your next round of advertising on “we have no influence on what a buyer will pay”
Good luck with that.
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Hello again, Quirky. Only me! 🙂
As I posted yesterday – you haven’t the faintest idea of what you are talking about….
It states on your website, very clearly:
1. “Our team negotiate a great price”
2. “Emoov outperforms UK estate agents for price achieved”
Perhaps you could remove that ever so small part of your sales pitch from your website, after the comments you’ve made above…?
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Funny the agent in question would not be able to join OTM as they do not fit the criteria!!!! All these stories are making Zoopla look a tad desperate !!!!
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oh my oh my! Whatever next.
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300% really? From where? Perhaps he got some of his staff to send in emails from their I phones….”we can count this one too boss”.
Zoopla are desperate.
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Where do you think these leads are coming from? People still visit RM & Z in their millions – OTM hasn’t affected this in the least.
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“Where do you think these leads are coming from?”….Everywhere and anywhere that enables Mr Riley to to warn all other agents not to advertise on a web site that he himself can’t advertise on.
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Presumably the reason all the other agents left Zoopla (instead of Rightmove) is that they were getting better leads from Rightmove….. and still are.
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I think when someone comes how and says how great something is then it generally means the opposite. He has set his stall out as online so can’t advertise on OTM and I suspect that will hurt him because say what you like about OTM but if you are selling a large property you WILL NOT be happy seeing your property on the Daily Mirror equivalent of portals, Zoopla. OTM is the only portal that if you were not selling with KF or Savills that you would want your property on……and this guy knows that!!
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You have lost me there RA, are you saying OTM is great, or do you mean the opposite?
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Quite. Extraordinary level of contradiction and denial on here.
Makes one think it’s a bunch of OTM reps metaphorically holding each other.
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Really DE?, and of course your posts are often found on articles not related to Zoopla aren’t they.
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I appreciate a typo in the first line might have thrown you D, just try and concentrate on the second part of my post.
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It was the second part that threw me!
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It didn’t throw you, you just disagreed, but I do accept that you need to be a good estate agent to know what motivates sellers.
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To be fair RA, I disagree with most that is posted on here. If its not some agent saying Z inquiries have increased by 300%, its another agent saying OTM has turned his office around. Its all extremes, I just average it out and I don’t think ill be too far wrong, OTM is doing alright, no better, no worse.
Im not anti OTM, just anti bullsh!te!
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Sorry Disillusioned, but where have you read an agent saying that OTM is doing a good job away from these anonymous forums?
The only person that I have seen actually saying anything positive about AM (apart from Springer who is paid half a million quid so is pretty motivated to paint the positive), is Paul Masters from kinleigh, who said that OTM was rapidly moving into 2nd place.
From what I have seen they are rapidly going no-where, fast, so is a complete load of rubbish. The only agents signing up now to OTM are tiddlers who are being offered crazy deals to sign up. On the other hand agents are moving back to their original choices (I heard rumours that a multi office London firm was in teh process of rejoining Zoopla).
Won’t be long until January 2016 and Springer will be judged against his claim of making it to number 2. What if he is a distant 3rd at that point – I guess the numbskulls who post here will continue to bang on about how it will make it?!
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First off this boy is an onliner, second nice job from him pointing out Zoopla is done on the south coast…….and then the resident angry man Quirky Boy pipes up with a bit of dribble about price achieved. So, couple of weeks back one of my lot went to se a nice 3 bed semi, we’ve sold loads in the area over the years, I remember selling them for 65 grand, anyway fast forward to spring 2015 and the owners opening comment was ‘we think it’s worth 400’ – my guy disagreed, it was 450 all day long. Ring round, 1/4 page news paper ad (yes, the phone rang off the back of that a lot) and an Open Afternoon later and the owner had gone through all the offers With us in the office and settled on someone in rented, in no rush to move in at a price everyone was happy with.
What would the result have been if they didn’t have us representing them and perhaps chose a budget lot with a grand or so paid upfront? – Jonnie
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Actually it is a facsimile copy of Taylor Underwood, they have spotted someone doing local hybrid agency well and are trying the exact same thing to the same target audience. Jane will be flattered!
Don’t be too quick to knock a good traditional agent who doesn’t have an office.
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In fairness, Robert, Jonnie was referring to ‘yer average’ onlinie model rather than the type of Agent you are referring to – TAWAO or some similar acronym, innit?
Not a million miles away from what we use to refer to the model Jonnie’s on about, then…
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“there has been a 300% increase in inquiries…” Good for them!
Hopefully ONE of the FOUR enquiries they now get will be looking to actually buy or rent something within three light years of their office location.
“Riley said: “The success of a website is not just determined by stock, but traffic coming to the site to visit that stock.” WRONG, Mr Riley. It is THE RESULT OF that “traffic” that determines the success.
You need to read my ‘lesson for the uneducated’ on site traffic that I posted here yesterday. Might help you a little with your current misconceptions…
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Well, I was one of the last in my area to move to OnTheMarket from Zoopla and, to be honest, during the first few months I noticed no difference, I was still getting the same number of useless leads from Zoopla as I always had, hence deciding to put my money behind something I believe in. Of course, the only boys that haven’t moved are the agents owned by the corporate with a vested interest in Zoopla now and they certainly don’t seem to be letting anything any faster than they were either. I do wish Zoopla would put their handbag away, it really is getting rather boring!!
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Property Eye needs to stop giving this a story. Let the OTM bashers just fizzle out in their own desperation somewhere far away from us. Agree with an earlier comment about Rightmove being elegant (for once) in just getting on with their business.
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“Agree with an earlier comment about Rightmove being elegant (for once) in just getting on with their business.”
I disagree, gbh11 – big time. They are simply letting Zoopla do all the chicken throttling at the moment. Why waste effort when someone’s doing the donkeywork for you?
Trust me – YOU WILL KNOW when RM enter the ring…
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Elegant? nah! they are the fortunate service provider, they can’t afford to say a word! There is nothing elegant or worthy about that.
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For once Robert, I agree with you.
Nothing elegant about their approach. It profits them to say nothing – I hear the latest rate rise letters have gone out…
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HarryN – by the way you say the above do I take it that you are not a RM subscriber?
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Somewhere above, The Quirkster states “If you truly believe that the price dictated by an agent actually determines the price that is ultimately paid by buyers and that buyers are sufficiently gullible to simply to be ‘negotiated’ on, then your traditional business model really is vulnerable” Interesting comment when you read it in conjunction with the claims on his website – “We’re achieving an average of 98% of asking price per sale compared to 95% by the typical UK agent (Hometrack)*” and “Our team negotiate a great price… eMoov outperforms UK estate agents for sale price achieved”
YET MORE conflicting ******** from the greatest producer the world has ever known…
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Sat on the fence when OTM was first introduced as had wasted my time and energy in trying to help keep PropertyLive afloat. Contacted OTM marketing with a question about their fees but did not receive a reply. Recently spoke to a local agent who is with OTM who told me that they are not getting the leads they hoped for and, if things do not improve, will not renew at the end of the two years. Rightmove can be ‘elegant’ as they not being affected – but wait and see what happens if OTM does take off!
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Capital & Coastal are only on the one portal – zoopla, nothing else
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I check the monthly leads for my branches every 4 months…. the last 4 months (Jan to April) – gross leads from Rightmove and Onthemarket (together) have gone up 287% (average for all branches) compared with the previous 4 months. I truly believe that leads across most of the UK have increased dramatically in, say, the last 6 months or so, wherever agents advertise. I’m pretty certain that enquiries don’t only rise if an agent is on Zoopla?
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Russel Quirk posted;
“If you truly believe that the price dictated by an agent actually determines the price that is ultimately paid by buyers and that buyers are sufficiently gullible to simply to be ‘negotiated’ on, then your traditional business model really is vulnerable”…..either that or you are not very good at maths and don’t understand supply and demand.
Sorry to be dull but y(t) = a × e (power)kt says you are wrong, if you don’t understand the exponential decay curve of price/time it is probably best not to post as you just did.
Effectively Agents have applicants, can determine demand and therefore price, reactive applicants view a property after a price has been typed in off Zoopla so I can see why you are saying what you are. That isn’t valuation or anything like the proper way to exercise a duty of care.
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“Sorry to be dull but y(t) = a × e (power)kt says you are wrong”
You’re right, that really is dull!
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Here is the irony I do dull once in 10 years, you guys do that formula 3 or 4 times a day but Russell Quirk never gets to do that bit.
That one dull as anything formula is why central office online agencies is vulnerable, traditional agency is not.
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Zzzzzzzzzoooooooplaaaaaaa!
Booooooooooooooorinnnnnnnnnnng!
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