A portal has launched with what appears to be an impressive number of agents advertising on it – and offering search engine optimisation for agents’ own websites.
Hot-houses has almost 22,000 estate agency offices plus some 20,000 letting branches – making it highly likely that you and that maybe at least some of your properties (past and present) are on it.
Altogether, as of yesterday, it says it is listing about 180,000 properties.
We could not find any indication on the Hot-houses site as to where it is based, its company number, or who is behind it.
However, a number of the agents advertising properties on it would appear to be – perhaps unwittingly – in breach of the ‘one other portal’ rule that is still in place at OnTheMarket.
The portal also appears to have set up in direct competition to Rightmove, Zoopla and OnTheMarket.
Under a section titled “information for estate agents and letting agents” it says: “Does this sound like you?
“You have invested heavily in your own website. You also input all your property details into other property portals.
“These portals charge you to do this. They then keep property buyers away from your own website by keeping them at their own site and then charge you for every email enquiry you get through them and every phone call you get via them.
“If instead there was a portal that charged you nothing to upload your property details, that charged you nothing for any leads, that drove users to your own website, would you be interested?
“And what if the upload was done automatically – computer talking to computer, rather than employees typing away all day?”
The information says that for each property on the site, the agent will get three links to their own websites.
It also says that it does not link to other portals.
When EYE searched the site for a specific location known to us, we found properties listed that were well past their ‘sold’ date. One, listed with Hamptons, advertises an open day in January of this year.
The site does give an email address as its only point of contact. EYE used this and asked Hot-houses to make contact with us, making plain that ours was a journalist request, but so far we have had no response.
We asked Knight Frank, whose properties appear on the site for a response; we also asked Rightmove, Zoopla and OnTheMarket. OnTheMarket replied to us specifically declining our invitation, but Rightmove, Zoopla and Knight Frank have yet to give any kind of response.
The domain name appears to have been registered by Ian Murdie, of Harrogate back in 2014, but was updated in February this year. There is an IT consultant called Ian Murdie who says on his LinkedIn profile that his hobby is his house sale website.
Last night, the website was showing that some properties – listed by the Connells’ brand Sequence – seemed to have been made invisible.
Genuinely not even worth the article, Ros.
If his hobbie is his house sale website, I’m glad it’s just a hobbie;
1. That’s the worst mobile site ever
2. The search is awful
3. He needs to be careful if he’s scrapping Agents data
4. Got a feeling it’s just a little project that this guy was working on in his spare time
Happy Friday, all!
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Mr Rowe
I genuinely think it was worth publishing.
My guess is that the main ‘advertisers’ on this site – who include a big chunk of the OTM main board by the way, and are therefore in theoretical breach of the OOP Rule (which is still in force whether they like it or not) and a rather large two-part Corporate – either don’t know they are showing or do but have turned a blind EYE in the hope nobody noticed.
Think ‘Houser’. Think all the others – el-cr@ppo portals… miracle widgets and gidgets for the Agency world… and all the other snake-oil salespeople that have stuck their ugly heads out of their respective burrows over the years – we wouldn’t have known the half of it if it wasn’t for Ros.
Of course it’s a splendidly 5h!tty offering – it seems to be the way forward these days to wrap 5h!t in Christmas paper but this guy clearly didn’t have any of the festive variety so just used budget bog-roll instead.
Quite fitting, I’m sure we can agree on that! ;o)
No doubt certain ‘budget’ players will see this as an advertising opportunity and upload their properties immediately, as clearly their current claims of listing on all the main portals is now one short of truth…
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Interesting to see that a hot-houses Google search seems to bring up a nice list of greenhouses but no portal!
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A Playschool Project
Would have been more interesting in plasticine
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It’s cold in our house – please remove this mid-leading title or I will report you to the ASA
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when agents moan about a ‘free ‘ site and with quite valid reason to use it,, with this attitude why use onthemarket? give rightmove all your money. i dont agrree with crawling bots pinching stock though..this just annoys the customer and makes agent look bad to customer if deemed to be advertising fake stock.
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I’ve just a pleasant nostalgic trip back to the late 90’s looking at this site, I suppose there may be a market for retro sites at some point.
Now is not that point.
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I see I am listed as an estate agent which I am not. I am solely a buying and relocation agent, do not sell or let properties so they have obviously just cloned the information from somewhere and not checked it. Others listed are purely surveyors.
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Not worth an article, just makes Property Eye look bad publishing something that clearly has not been properly researched.
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Please explain that comment? I fail to see how alerting the industry to the existence of this site can possibly reflect badly on EYE.
Why take a cheap shot at the messenger?
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Leave Rod Jane and Freddy alone they are Peter Butlers friend.
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dom-boy – let’s get a few things clear here, shall we?
It isn’t my fault – or anyone else’s – that you can’t handle a debate.
It isn’t my fault – or anyone else’s – that you’re rapidly making a famous ‘moment’ appear to be a superb sales pitch by Gerald Ratner.
It isn’t my fault – or anyone else’s – that you are now known by the readership of EYE and an awful lot more folk on Tw@tter as a #bunnyboiler.
And it isn’t my fault – or anyone else’s – that your ridiculous #fanboy crusade is causing constant, excruciating embarrassment to the company you so dearly want to protect from anyone having the audacity to say or even think nasty-pasty thoughts about.
But…being the obliging sort of guy I am I don’t hold any of your previous vitriol against you, and am quite happy to point you in the right direction.
if you can bring yourself to look in that mirror – you’ll maybe catch a glimpse of the right ‘someone’ to blame.
You’ll just refuse to accept the reality.
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Again off topic waffle, maybe getting a little senile?
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I hate it when you take the fun of proving you to be a prize p!11ock away.
That being said – there is no-one better at the job that your goodself.
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Not sure what the hobby is ?
Complete waist of time and effort
The properties I looked at were not only sold but no longer available to view error 404 !!
If he wanted a hobby he should try kite flying or jelly mould moulding!!!!
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many industries are witnessing the rise of the Bots – whilst this is a low grade entrant – it won’t be the last and could be an interesting disrupter to the current status quo
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What “if” though…A free “proper” website/portal were to exist entirely paid for by 3rd party advertising and traffic driven to and from it, popular with twitter followers etc. Rightmove’s strangle hold could start to look a little weak?
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There already is a regional portal covering Yorkshire doing exactly that, called ‘movinorth’
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But it’s soooo pretty! And free, forever, for nothing- that’s always legit and sustainable. Surely, however, there is legislation to prevent any use of data without consent.
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This site will be valued at 2 Billion by next week
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Only has properties advertised by the corporate agents in my area. Also many of them are no longer available and haven’t been for many months!
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