Campaigner Chris Wood has said that there is work still to do on the anti-juggling campaign – and has pledged to see it through.
Wood welcomed Rightmove’s change as of yesterday afternoon, extending a two-week to a 14-week period in which previously listed sales properties cannot be re-entered as ‘new’ to the market. Zoopla yesterday evening also emphasised its own anti-juggling rules.
But Wood told EYE: “I do not see where Rightmove has got its 14 weeks from. I have no idea.”
He said that the actual advice is that the period where a previously re-listed property cannot be re-listed is six months.
Yesterday evening, Wood was quoting from what the ‘primary authority’ partnership says.
Warwickshire County Council Trading Standards is in that partnership with both NFoPP and TPO.
It means that agents, Trading Standards and consumeers up and down the country should be able to rely on this advice in the absence of anything else they are advised.
The primary authority advice reads as follows:
“New instructions’ should be interpreted as meaning new instructions to that estate agent. If existing instructions are amended, they are not ‘new’; they are ‘amended’ or ‘revised’ instructions. The terms ‘new’ and ‘new on the market’ would appear to be synonymous, and should only be used when the property concerned is in fact new to the market, and not when it is just new to that estate agent or subject to a new or revised instruction.
“Any guidance on the length of time for which the description ‘new instruction’ is appropriate can only be very general. Material considerations such as the advertising medium, the buoyancy (or otherwise) of the market and the method of sale and perhaps even the nature of the ‘average consumer’ at whom the marketing in question is targeted will vary greatly and only the courts will be able to decide based on all the individual circumstances.
“Use of the terms ‘new instructions’, ‘new on the market’, ‘new price’ etc, for a period not exceeding one calendar month is unlikely, in the general course of events, to be considered misleading. Additionally if a property were removed from the market and then placed back onto the market, we would expect the property to be off the market completely for a minimum of six months, before the phrase ‘new on the market’ could be used.”
The primary authority advice, due to be revisited next year, can be found here
A spokesperson for Zoopla last night told EYE: “We have always had extensive automated rules in place for both sales and rental listings that require them to be off the market for an extended period of time before they can be re-listed as new.
“This is precisely to prevent this type of practice by a limited number of agents.
“Where any agent deliberately attempts to circumvent these processes and manipulate their listings to mislead consumers, we have a dedicated compliance team whose job it is to identify these rogue agents and remove them permanently from our platform.
“We take this issue very seriously and Zoopla has led the way in providing accurate and transparent data to consumers to help them make smarter property decisions.”
OnTheMarket, which has never shown the date of first listing, saying that it does not help agents sell properties, said it would assess the change announced by Rightmove.
CEO Ian Springett said: “We installed a robust set of procedures prior to our launch to ensure we could quickly identify any attempt to re-list properties as new” says a statement from OTM chief executive Ian Springett.
“Any apparent examples of gaming identified by our internal procedures or flagged externally by other agents will always be thoroughly investigated. We constantly revisit the measures we have in place to ensure that they remain robust. We will be assessing the announcement by Rightmove in this context.”
Comments (37)
Over on yesterday’s article, ‘femaleagent88’ raised an extremely good question which I believe should be pasted here for comment/debate:
“But what happens to the consumer who is tied into a contract with them?”
What say you, people?
The contract should be null and void (is that the correct terminology) as the practice is putting the consumer at disadvantage through no fault of their own. Simple as that.
Perhaps if the powers that be (NTSEAT etc.) ruled to the effect…that undertaking portal juggling will null and void contracts and require repayment of any up front fees charged, people would stop doing it!!
The question in law, is the contract legally fair and freely entered into? Just because their is a tied-in period doesn’t make it enforceable, particularly if the customer agreed to the terms after receiving false, misleading or by criminal behaviour by the first party.
“OnTheMarket, which has never shown the date of first listing, saying that it does not help agents sell properties…”
OTM again showing a lack of consideration of the site visitor, the renter or purchaser. Yet another reason why there site visitor numbers remain so abysmal. Do site visitors want more or less information???! There is a reason why RM and Zoopla display this. Welcome to the 21st century!
1stTimeBuyer
“OTM again showing a lack of consideration of the site visitor, the renter or purchaser.”
Completely and utterly wrong.
They are providing sufficient information to allow said “site visitor” – who MAY go on to become “the renter or purchaser” – to make a reasonably informed decision as to whether to request certain other information from the Vendor/Landlord’s Agent about a particular property.
Why give date information when, from what I have observed, var nigh 50% of those displayed is an incorrect date?
What “consideration” is that giving to those individuals?
Welcome, by the way, to reality… to fairness – and to a more level playing field.
What is the relevance of the date? When you start to look at the property is it has been on the market one day? Far to much innuendo is considered incorrectly why a property was been on the market for as long as it has.
Agree completely, woodentop.
One man’s meat is another man’s poison, and all that…
While one bad apple or in this case a few bad apples always rots the rest certainly a high profile newspaper investigation is surely needed and would be welcomed by those, the majority, of agents with nothing to hide. Name and shame. As one correspondant has mentioned above if the portals were required to remove the publically available statistical ability to provide pie charts etc problem ended.
Has anyone any evidence that the general public are influenced by this portal juggling or are the arguments being well presented through the discussions here on PIE ? The public are actually brighter than we often take them for and probably know the local market and who is the better agent and those to avoid?
What is fact is that the industry until there are minimum enforceable standards to practise in place will always be open to those who behave dishonestly.
I was in the market as a buyer last year and there were certain properties that repeatedly appeared in my email alerts over a 6 month period but were referred to as ‘new’.
The public may not know what it’s called or why it is wrong but they would be able to see that something is not quite right.
Unless of course they don’t get to see a lot of the juggled listings because they are on and off the various sites within the space of a few hours.
Can I just say
A: Well done to those involved pressurising the RM and the industry as a whole to act responsibly.
B: I think this is a subject to be re-investigated in mid February to see just how much the landscape has moved on or not.
C: The perpetrators who continue this low cunning will by then have their heads high up above the parapet.
Slightly tangential to the headline Bricks go to great lengths to disguise the number of instructions which are actually “new” .When asked how many new instructions they have taken on or completions in a month they feign ignorance. Current instructions have dipped below 9,000 The 10,000 ceiling which looked threatend last summer is looking far off the horizon despite the bullish statement by Brucey
In fact they just wont tell you . In November it slipped out I guess by accident with their call centre that in November that it was only 500 – a clifffall .He quickly added that was taken by Head Office alone which of course doesnt add up as the LPE always takes the instruction from Head Office This month unsurpisingly isnt faring any better by the 10th December this month they had taken on a paltry 116 which indicates that December could possibly be below 400!
December of course being a poor month for the industry but what must be worrying for Bricks is that it looks well below last year when they had considerably less LPE.s. It looks like very much like they are slipping back down the beanstalk.The spectacular growth seems to have come to a grinding halt!
I find it hard to understand why they don’t know how many completed sales they have when;
a). They claim on their website ‘your own local expert from valuation to completion’
b). In their final results from April 2016 Michael Bruce, chief executive, stated they had “sold and completed on £2.8bn of property this year and a further £1.7bn of property in the pipeline sold subject to contract.”
So if they are not confirming the numbers when asked, why not? Why don’t they know or what are they trying to hide?
Hillofwad71, it would be good to talk to you directly about your article. Is there a way you can be contacted?
@Hillofwad71/ Sain@vision,
Your December figures don’t appear to be correct. According to Zoopa they have listed 836 properties so far this month. I would guess they will end up doing around 1,200-1,500 this month. Since September I agree that their numbers have been way down. They will need a huge tv advertising spend in January to bounce back to where they were in July/August.
Even then they are still way off where they need to be in terms on delivering on their initial promises according to the Hardman report 12 months ago.
Keyser, Sain is my Welsh cousin! Quite possibly they arent .These were the figures given on their chat line they advised me that on the 10th December they had taken116 instructions so far in December Another chatwitha different operater on Monday confirmed that they had taken 500 in November.As of today they have a total of 8934 Who knows what the actual figures are It seems Bricks dont want us to know.
Might be worth your while conducting your own mystery shop to esatblish the figures certainly as apropsective vendor Ii would want to know before handing over £800+
As you say the winter freeze has started early for Bricks and a country mile from those figures boldly forecasted in the Hardman report I keep an eagle eye on instructions in my immediate locallty and with fairness I live in an area which is fairly rural and sparsely poulated so marginal territory for the Bricks but even so 3 of the 7 have been on for over a year and they havent taken any new ones in 2months
The chat line operaters must be under strict instructions to avoid discussing numbers where posiible understandably so when the reality doesnt match the hype
They certainly will have a lot of ground to make up in the Spring if H2 is going to show a profit
There is one way to establish the amount of new instructions accurately…….. have all the existing ones on a database (?Excel), and add the new ones each day after checking they aren’t just re-listings of existing property. It would mean adding up to 100 a day (or maybe a lot less?), but if we had a few people doing it…taking it in turns to do one day each, it could surely be done. I would volunteer to do it one day a week at least…any others want to help?
Or perhaps Robert already has some of… or all of this information and could help.
We would all then know the truth, rather than having to speculate.
It was suggested after the 88% exchange to listing claim by Bruce on Radio 4 that there should be a full audit of fee paying listing and actual exchange of contracts.
“New instructions’ should be interpreted as meaning new instructions to that estate agent” It then goes onto say that the term “new” can only be used when it is new to market and “not when it is just new to that estate agent.”
I wished these two sentences weren’t both there in the first paragraph as they appear to be conflicting with one another, giving people the chance to claim ‘the guidance is not clear’.
If I list a property that has just left another agent, is it classified as new or not? If it has to be a six month break, how do I tell the portals it isn’t new when I launch? Or is it up to them to spot and police? If the latter I just don’t think it will happen, and if the former ……I suggest most agents will not comply…..or the really honest ones will and the unscrupulous ones definitely won’t, once again allowing them to gain advantage.
There was an OFT Estate Agent practice order in the early 1990’s that made it clear what is “new on the market” and “new instruction”. The latter was brought about when vendors went joint or change agents. I seem to recall 4 weeks was the limit as being sufficient exposure to the market. I wouldn’t disagree then or with that today. Back then IT was in its infancy and the much slower systems of that day managed well in getting property exposure, so why is it today with instant notifications does one need exposure to be 3 months plus. Goes against the grain.
The thing I find most interesting is that whoever you speak to including everyone who comments on here claims to never do anything wrong with their portal listing but it’s a huge problem so why is this a bad new story, surely it’s a step in the right direction?
There are 7741 firms who have been identified as actual or potential portal jugglers still active since the clampdown on 1st October
The top 30 branches are those where the effort is being concentrated, firms that juggle individual properties 22 times in 24 hours to bump up exchange stats, those who price change 222 properties up and down day after day just to get their listings noticed.
The net is closing, either portal juggling stops or the firms doing it will be removed from the industry by a withdrawal of redress. Once one redress supplier withdraws redress there is a very effective communication systems that prevents firms getting redress from another supplier, the portals don’t carry listing from firms with no redress. If anyone sets up a new firm tells the portals they have redress but haven’t the technology exists to identify non compliant advertisers within 3 hours of a rogue listing.
The wonderful thing is how Father Christmas does come to those who’ve been naughty. I’m not sure a prohibition order from James Munro would be high on their list of pressies but that’s what they’ll be getting; a wonderful gift that will last a lifetime.
Merry Christmas naughty boys and girls!
Except that the portal DO appear to have allowed this and continue to allow this in some cases I have seen..
In the absence of evidence of legal compliance, we are still awaiting Purplebricks PLC to confirm whether the vast majority of their LPEs prior to June of this year were registered with an approved redress scheme and or with HMRC for anti-money-laundering purposes and, the Information Commissioners’ office for data protection issues. Either they did, or they didn’t. Just supply the evidence to Ros at PIE for independent verification.
(Purplebricks LPEs reading this, you might want to ask your franchise holder why they are not issuing prompt denials or evidence to show that they ensured you as LPE franchisees were/ are legally trading and protected from possible criminal and civil action).
Rightmove and Zoopla also need to answer why they did not carry out fundamental basic checks that they are contractually bound to do and, by failing to carry out those checks, left the public using their website open to dealing with agents who either were not and still may not in some cases be able to offer any form of legal redress.
Robert May – I think it speaks volumes that this news is all over the property centric media, yet this volume of companies still continue to abuse the system. That means they either dont care, dont read property centric news or both. If they dont know what is going on in their chosen professional arena then surely they are not worthy of being in it?
There is no safety in numbers and that goes for those being duped by said numbers!
When I call agents and mention portaljuggling many have never heard of it, when I mention Property industry eye, I end up sending them a link.
Now the portals are being forced to acknowledge these breaches of CPR and BPR are occurring it is down to them to email all of their users telling them that the practice is being independently monitored, it is illegal and it will lead to a banning order from NTSEAT
‘A spokesperson for Zoopla last night told EYE: “We have always had extensive automated rules in place for both sales and rental listings that require them to be off the market for an extended period of time before they can be re-listed as new.
“This is precisely to prevent this type of practice by a limited number of agents.
“Where any agent deliberately attempts to circumvent these processes and manipulate their listings to mislead consumers, we have a dedicated compliance team whose job it is to identify these rogue agents and remove them permanently from our platform.
“We take this issue very seriously and Zoopla has led the way in providing accurate and transparent data to consumers to help them make smarter property decisions.” ‘
I have Tweeted @zoopla this morning pointing them to only three of today’s apparent failures of its’ system.
I wonder what the response will be…?
The response, by the way, came back as
“Hi, thanks for this. We’ve passed your Tweets on to our compliance team to investigate. Thanks”
We’ll just have to watch this space, then. Further updates to be provided through EYE.
Good to see you’ve shoehorned in a quote from Springett into this story
And yet TPOS and NTSEAT are endorsing RM decision?
It was suggest 14 months ago if the “added to” date was removed, the problem goes away.
If the portals didn’t promote price change, gamed, bumped, listings, the problem goes away
If the portals stop producing easily manipulated, easily falsified performance pie charts the problem goes away
The motivation for portaljuggling are twofold; 1. breaches of CPR where scammers try to hoodwink the public: using the portals as a surrogate mailing system in place of any meaningful applicant management system and basic estate agency skills. 2. Breaches of BPR where the scammers make out they are performing better than they are, listing more property than they are, achieving higher prices etc again making up for a lack of ability.
Portaljuggling isn’t a massive crime but it is a crime, it is practised by people who shouldn’t be in the industry and is aided by service suppliers who up til now have turned a blind eye to the practice.
The detection of portaljuggling is a bi-product of a system that has developed to catch criminals, catching a few spivs and chancers along the way is a bonus.
As Robert says, portal juggling by itself isn’t the crime of the century, but it is a crime, what IS a serious crime is using the false data that #PortalJuggling produces to win new business or deceive investors which is fraud.
Agents who deliberately portal juggle to jazz up their Rightmove and Zoopla stats and the portals and other service suppliers who facilitate or turn a blind eye to this practice are committing fraud and may be facing a criminal record and potential jail terms.
Do you work for a firm that is asking you to break the law? Contact the police, me, Ros Renshaw or Alex Ralph of The Times and tell your story in absolute confidence.
The shame about this is how in one firm there are some really quite decent people, agents who are estate agents who can do the job and do it better that some of the property retailers. There are people who have invested time and money and their own personal local reputation in setting up as a block in a scheme that is very likely to destroy their whole career and reputation because of the way others in the firm continues to openly defy NTSEAT and TPO.
I feel sorry for the 20 year veterans whose fate and future is being handed over to people with little experience of the industry and with seemingly little understanding of business , morals or ethics.
There are people already wealthy out out this, if portaljuggling and the withdrawal of redress forces businesses to cease trading some good people will suffer along with the scammers, the spivs and the chancers
Surely the only statistic that should ever be shown on market appraisals is how many an agent has actually sold! Listing multiple properties without selling them shows you are not an effective agent, or am I missing something? I list approx. 21% of properties in my geographical area (I am competing against 6 other agents) and this year I have sold 26% of the properties in that area. This shows how effective we are at what we do and that is the information I show to potential clients, if I continued to re-list the same properties, then it would not look good at all!
What you do is list a property twice, identical in most respects, when it does sell the pj agent gets two sales for the price of one.
That’s right we spotted that one too!
Hi Robert,
I am sure that you are anyway, but please keep a really good record of double listings with the same agent. Everyone knows that doing this is counterproductive to the best possible sale price because it sends a subliminal message to potential buyers that the owners are desperate to sell…which leads to lower offers overall.
So anyone doing it is putting their own potential gain above the interests of their Vendor. Don’t think that would be great publicity for the culprits!
Vendor is king! …..The ‘V i king’ strategy
We should not forget the behind closed doors encouragement i.e. turn a blind eye attitude by all web portals who are guilty of manipulating their own stats to remain number one or be more successful than they really are for a number of reasons, share price is the number one for £’s in their eyes.
League tables by RM initiated a culture of fixing results by portal juggling as in my opinion the root cause of the problem. They should be forced to withdraw the tables. Agents never asked for it in the first place and unless you are number one on the local list, is despised by all the other agents.
The city watchdog should also be brought into the frame, to investigate those web companies that have encouraged juggling and false/misleading data to support their share prices. It is a direct link and criminal.