Boomin launched its new MortgageMaker service yesterday, designed to potentially drive mortgage leads to agents signed up to the property website.
Boomin has introduced an optimised, agent broker branded, interactive mortgage calculator that appears on every agent listing for sale, with a view to driving mortgage leads. Boomin says that it does not receive a fee for this service.
According to Boomin, other property portals either sell agents’ mortgage leads to Nationwide and NatWest and pocket what they say is likely to be in excess of ten million pounds of referral revenue per annum, or charge a per branch monthly premium for a low converting banner link.
Michael Bruce, CEO and founder of Boomin, said: “Agents have reached out to me following my earlier open letter [see below] highlighting this industry-wide issue, to say that they are fed up with portals pocketing all of the income from mortgage referral leads generated from their listings.
“If portals earn over ten million pounds a year just for referring the leads how much actual sign up and protection income are agents losing across the industry as a result. We estimate that it is in excess of £50m a year. Portals justify high annual increases based on so-called increased traffic but then use that traffic to sell agents’ mortgage business.”
Since launching in April last year, new features, unique to Boomin, including SmartVal, ChainMaker, MatchMaker, and now MortgageMaker.
Bruce added: “Agents finally have a credible alternative [to the main property portals]; no longer do they need to give up tens of millions of pounds of mortgage income to portals and pay unfair, inequitable and unaffordable annual fees for so-called increases in traffic that are neither unique nor create more annual transactions for agents.”
Boomin’s Michael Bruce pens open letter on the state of the portal market
Comments (3)
Bruce added: “Agents finally have a credible alternative [to the main property portals]; no longer do they need to give up tens of millions of pounds of mortgage income to portals and pay unfair, inequitable and unaffordable annual fees for so-called increases in traffic that are neither unique nor create more annual transactions for agents.”
Err I haven’t given up millions let alone tens of, to portals and neither has any other agent.
Now where have I heard someone say they can increase my traffic? Better still, try and can steel my traffic. Answers on a postage stamp!
As for create more annual transactions …… someone needs to get out more often and stop shooting themselves in the foot.
I really don’t know what to think about BOOMIN!
SmartVal is just a way of getting agents to work longer hours communicating with out of office buyers asking for valuations on homes they done own, not one vendor had replied to our calls from Boomin..
I think most are also Re mortgages & Break ups needing to buy out and require valuations.
so far I see nothing great with Boomin only a lot of work double doing,
Zoopla is the best prices with the best services.
Righmove is a joke with 21K fees and listings of 20 been classed as High levels warranting this charge “ wow “
I’ve spent a fair while analysing traffic flow; I know, to the penny, the cost per engaged minute of portals, crm mailings, social media and search engine traffic. I know what generates traffic, what works and what doesn’t. What happens when services are turned on and what happens when they’re turned off. I know what property consumers are looking at and what doesn’t interest them at all
By defining traffic in such detail its possible to compare apples with apples and see that once cost is divided by time or user engagement, expensive can be good value and cheap isn’t worth bothering with, how some fads & trends of social media can be distractions and gimmicks that don’t justify the time or expense.
Now its possible to see in day by day detail what’s going on the portal landscape is likely to change. What ought to definitely change is the discussion between agents and portal reps. “‘Sorry I’m not interested in the BIG numbers you’re quoting me, how much of that traffic is MY traffic. How many applicants, potential vendors and landlords are looking at MY listings on your portal? What do you mean you don’t have those numbers? I have!”