Rocky Mirza, founder of newcomer Houser, has admitted: “We landed in the middle of a war.”
Meanwhile Savills says its lawyers have told Houser to take down its listings without delay.
Mirza told Eye in a phone conversation that Houser has been “swamped” by emails from agents and said that some had been playing “silly games” – pretending to be rival agents asking for their competitors’ listings to be taken down.
He said that as a result, each request is having to be verified.
Yesterday evening, however, Mirza seemed to be suggesting that only a minority of emails from agents have actually requested removal.
Mirza told Eye by email: “We have had thousands of emails from agents and a very small percentage of it was for those who want to remove their listings.
“The challenge being faced is that there are people who are also asking removal of other people’s properties by pretending to be them.”
Mirza gave Eye this link for agents who want their properties removed.
According to the link, there have been genuine removal requests alongside “fake or malicious ones”.
The link also seems to make it clear that while agents can remove a single page or listing, it will not be possible to have all listings removed until some time next week at the earliest.
Houser launched on Monday after a press event a week ago at the Hilton in London: there’s a new image below.
It is aiming to build up inventory by taking properties from agents’ own sites, generally without their consent.
However, a number of agents have expressed their anger – including those who are being told that listing on Houser will put them in breach of OnTheMarket’s “one other portal” rule.
One agent, Mark Rowe of Rowe Property Services in Hampshire, said he had made it clear to Houser that he owns the copyright to photographs and details of properties on his books and that he did not take kindly to third parties “scraping” his data.
Rowe said he has made several phone calls to the company and that despite having been sent an email asking him to click a link to terminate listings, his firm is still listed on Houser – despite having been promised immediate removal.
Rowe said he is now ready to complain to Trading Standards.
Paul Jarman, residential director at Savills, told Eye: “We take a very dim view of anyone attempting to scrape our listings and data, and our lawyers have been in touch with the site demanding they stop and remove any reference immediately.”
It would appear that those who wish properties to be taken down can telephone 020 8597 3949 or 0845 004 0640. Eye has tried out both numbers successfully.
The address to write to is: 149-151, 4th Floor, High Road, Romford RM6 6PJ.
You can also email contact@houser.co.uk
The website is here
Comments (47)
You can put this in your pipe….
" Database right lasts for 15 years from the completion of the making of a database. If a database is made available to the public during that period, then the 15 year period lasts for 15 years from the time of making it available to the public. Any substantial change to a database causes the 15 year period to begin anew, as the changed database is regarded as effectively a fresh creation. Therefore, in theory, databases which regularly undergo substantial changes could enjoy (effectively) perpetual database right protection. If a database was created on or after 1 January 1983, and the database qualified for database right on 1 January 1998, that right lasts for 15 years from that date.
Database right is infringed if most or all of a database is extracted and reused without the consent of the owner, or if small portions of a database are repeatedly extracted and reused without the consent of the owner". Here endeth the lesson.
Come on Portal Person, do entertain us with a response? It surely can't be any worse than most of the nonsense you've posted today.
I'm absolutely SEETHING. I, like most agents don't believe a word of this. I went through their de listing process and haven't heard a thing-does he think I'm one of my competitors?. Name the agents you claim are doing this Mr. Mirza(so we can have a laugh at them before asking them to do the same to our listings on your awful site!!), as you can see … you are doing yourself no favours at all by trying to hoodwink us in a vain attempt to keep our stock longer.
aww poor wilko has had his temper raised, would you like a bed time story with your pity party?
And another rather immature response. Well done Portal Person. How about actually joining the debate?
Few months back PP you made some intelligent comments about seo that made me think "actually he is not stupid just does not understand agency" today you have shown yourself up to not only be ignorant but childish. You are posting in a forum where we are experts at what we do. We understand the market inside out, we might not agree with each other all the time but its clear to me that in the most the "Uber" posters are good agents in their own right. If we were posting in portal today and and said nah google had its day mate bing is the future you would rip us apart. if you are going to post at least respect the comments of people who work in an industry you don't. Take Houser or rataagent these people do not understand agency and guess what? nobody will back their venture. OTM for all its flaws have the agents on board not even the biggest die hard fans of it expect it to rival RM in the early days! As a tech guy understand that selling property is not hard, its really quite easy! paper, website, board, portal it will always sell many times over in this market. Valuations are the part that is hard to achieve and that is the downside (for now) or OTM but it will change in time. And if you have not forgot OTM agent will mostly all still be on RM!
With respect, Houser have gate crashed a party uninvited, are insulting the hosts by helping themselves to the showpiece salmon and are embarrassing those guests they claim to know. The one person who has met them didn’t get invited to the party either.
If you treat agents with respect and extend them the courtesy of calling, about a quarter will not even take a call and only about half of those that do listen to a request will agree to help. Getting buy in from 1/3rd of the industry would have been a good and manageable start to the project. From experience having the best/most advanced technology in this particular industry will not guarantee friends or success. Suggest Houser start again, but understand Agency, like Estate Agents, respect Estate Agents, listen to their objections and build something that fixes the problem agents have without trying to sell the solution they have built. There is an opportunity for a new technology solution for the property industry but it is not another RM clone or re-badged version of a Zoopla component.
Agree with Robert. The property industry is made up of 3 parts. Legislation. Front and back agency operation and IT. One part alone doesnt make the whole. The DNA of future property marketing and search and access to listings isnt cloning whats already there.
Mirza should have just had a chat with a few people in the industry first to see if there was any legs in his model, would have saved him a lot of time and money.
I can't even find Houser, so I am not sure if I can get enraged or not.
Comment of the week!
We all realise that Houser hot air, don't we! Why, therefore, give them a platform. All we are doing is delaying the inevitable.
Houser complain about entering a war zone. The war was raging long before they entered it. If they had looked ahead half an inch they would have seen it existed. I don't feel sympathetic to them. I share Mark Rowe's annoyance that such companies have no right to scrape "our" data,which has cost us dearly to obtain through marketing and profiling and then our staff to convert. They should try setting up a proper business that does not rely on being a parasite to other properly run businesses.
I agree that taking data without permision is offensive but with permission collecting data from an agreed source is a sensible and cost effective way of populating multiple websites. One thing that ought to come out the AM game change is an industry standard web site/ portal feed where Agents are controlling exactly who has access to their data and more over what data is being accessed.
You may get an email from me, begging you to put my competitors ON your site.
Rubbish.
Oh dear! – So its not his fault the site is not wanted or supported by agents? Oh and he has got Ros to put a new picture up as he was not happy with the last at his launch party (still looks pathetic Mirza). And apparently agents are now trying to get other agents disinstructed off the site!? yeah okay! stinks of desperation. Speaking of desperation anybody checked in on easyproperty lately? thought I would don my sunglasses, lower the resolution on my screen and check them out yesterday by the look they are not shying away from being a lister now as opposed to agent. Big advert on home page saying list your property on RM & Z for £9.99 – Still have minimal stock!
"Still have minimal stock!"…No change there then! After their massive launch and following failure to attract customers I would think the shareholders will be getting very concerned…..I miss Easychris though….wonder if his management barred him from this forum.
Pity he doesn't comply with copyright rules himself rather than post this disclaimer below the copyright material he himself has 'stolen' !
"You may download, store and use the material for your own personal use and research. You may not republish, retransmit, redistribute or otherwise make the material available to any party or make the same available on any website, online service or bulletin board of your own or of any other party or make the same available in hard copy or in any other media without the website owner's express prior written consent. The website owner's copyright must remain on all reproductions of material taken from this website."
So, only a minority of emails were from agents requesting removal of their properties ? The rest presumably were from agents emailing to congratulate Mirza on his unqualified success…..
try googling Houser and nothing comes up, you need to know the website address, if agents cant find it how on earth are the public to find it. When I did actually find the address and searched agents in my area, Houser had put agents in my town purely because they had the name of the town in the address,i,e An agent on Whitby road in Ellesmere Port shows up in Whitby. Amateurish at best.
Which is EXACTLY how OTM will be for the first few months. There is NO silver bullet to getting straight to the top of Google listings, when the fanboys of OTM realise that they will have to wait months (just like EVERY OTHER WEBSITE ON THE PLANET) to get traffic from Google searches the sooner they will realize that they are in for a long wait!
"when the fanboys of OTM realise that they will have to wait months (just like EVERY OTHER WEBSITE ON THE PLANET) to get traffic from Google searches the sooner they will realize that they are in for a long wait!"…..We're all committed, with funds in place, to go 5 years….so, in your words we have to wait MONTHS….we've got 60 months for starters?!
haha amazing, you can multiply 12 by 5
So – 60 months, coupled with millions of pounds of contracted investment and stock that the public want to see online …..is that not enough to have a good go at driving traffic to any website?…..You said months, and you are supposed to be an expert so 60 months is good ….isn't it?….or are you happy just leaving another rather silly comment?
"Which is EXACTLY how OTM will be for the first few months. There is NO silver bullet to getting straight to the top of Google listings". Sorry Portal Person, but I disagree. I will have hundreds (if not thousands) of e-mails going out to applicants, current clients and prospective clients giving a direct link to http://www.onthemarket.com the weekend before launch day. And I'm just one small cog in the OTM juggernaut – ie if I have thousands of e-mails going out, I assume that my competitors have as well. I think I am a pretty typical person, and when I get given a site I find useful, I just add it to the "Favourite" list; I can't remember when I Googled a site last.
Absolute nonsense, with 4,000 agents all adding property related backlinks to OTM and millions of hits instantly (just from agents alone, let alone the public), plus a ton of fresh property data, it won't be long before OTM. Keep trolling @PortalPerson
This is a classic tactic: say that you believe requests are bogus and make it as difficult for agents to get the properties removed from the site.
Right, this lad is flattering himself with all this nonsense about agents pretending to be the competition, businesses don't want their customers properties on his cack site, the end. Nice spin on it though with the verification bit, give them an excuse for doing naff all and keep scraping but at least Simon Sinerock can nuzzle up to him like a grateful gimp and load his stuff up directly? – Jonnie
To be fair Simon Shinerock has realised he made a mistake regarding this business model.
Simon Shinerock is an idiot plain and simple he has even less clue about business than the guy who owns Houser!
I am fairly certain what you just typed crossed the litigation line. You might not like Simon Shinerock but the success of Choices suggest he isn't an idiot or clueless about business. No doubt Ros and Nick will be loathed to help with his solicitors request for your identity but as you will appreciate slander is slander and for the slandered that, these days, means money!
Mind you he will probably be satisfied knowing he has irked you so much and would guess he doesn't need any more money.
Have to agree Benay, unfortunately (and it's been proved too many times to remember) Portal Person seems to be the one on this forum who repeatedly reminds us, via his/her posts that they lack any industry knowledge at all, in my view.
It's a him, his ego got the better of him enough for his background to be researched mid last year complete with his own, non-compliant, website.
Sadly for PP's bank balance not having a clue about a particular industry won't be a defence that will stand up in a civil court. I would guess Simon has got a really great solicitor and can you imagine how much respect Simon would get if he donated the settlement to Agents Giving?
I could care less, the internet and the country is about free speech. I will gladly give him or anyone my details if they have a problem with what I say. What I say is not illegal it is an OPINION which as long as I am not racist or inciting violence is not illegal.
You're definitely 'a fanboy' of doling out the title "idiot" to pretty much anyone whose opinion isn't a DNA match to yours… aren't you, PortalPerson! Sniff… sniff… I don't feel 'special' anymore :'o(
Thing is, there are many names that, given a very gentle prod, I would be prepared to call Mr Shinerock… but 'idiot' wouldn't be one of them. More's the point – I'm absolutely certain that he will simply look at his bank balance and not give a fuppeny tuck how you regard him or what you call him. But congratulations are in order – you've succeeded in scoring a SPECTACULAR series of own goals today, PortalPerson!
I'd be surprised if we ever see you again, in your current guise at least – but I have no doubt that you will be back in some form or another. Your ego simply wouldn't allow you to stay away… and you love us all, really – don'tcha!
Benay, wilko, yet again you prove your intelligence and I cannot do justice to your words, you seem to do it all for yourself. Go jump on some more bandwagons! It seems that even after a month or two of not posting the same old trolls are still here spouting the same old nonsense, not sure why I bothered checking to see the opinions on this side of the fence.
"Go jump on some more bandwagons!"….Sorry, but I don't understand what you mean by this. And also what do you mean by a "troll"?….is that the definition you give to people who don't agree with you?. As for my post "proving my intelligence" do you believe calling someone an idiot takes an intelligent brain. Lastly you said… "not sure why I bothered checking to see the opinions on this side of the fence"….Nor am I!
And one last piece of information for all you non legal pundits. For "libel" to be proven it must first be established that an article or word had a negative impact on business for the person or persons involved. The honus of proof is on the person who has a problem with it and nobody else. In this case first the person has to prove they're not in-fact an "idiot" which in itself is not possible as it's an opinion of someone then secondly prove that the single comment had a large enough negative impact on their business which again cannot be proven without the first part. Ergo for all of the slow people saying personal opinions about somebody is NOT libel. However saying untrue things like they're a crook or worse would be. With that said, anyone whom has a problem can email me at john.milner.uk.1962[at]gmail.com and we can discuss at length your issue
The word Honus – what exactly is that? with the H stuck right in the middle of the keyboard you can't blame fat fingers for a mis- spelt word so what were you actually trying to say?
Benay…PP has reached an all time low today with his forum comments. I guess the fact that he hasn't got much to add to any debate, coupled with the fact that he has been well and truly found out as not having any industry knowledge, has led him to resort to playground name calling culture.
John Milner will no doubt be scoffing at our stupidity but at some point those that employ him will understand what a character like him brings to their business. Being a service supplier to a service supplier means it isn't possible to get much lower on any pecking order.
I am not sure he should have the mandate to validate or verify a request to de-list, rather he should be seeking permission to copy information published on our website and consider the terms & conditions of the same.
Because data not behind username/passwords or otherwise authenticated mechanisms IS considered in the public eye and ergo is NOT deemed to be owned by anyone. If they don't want their property being scraped then they MUST password protect the pages – this IS the law unfortunately for agents
Absolute rubbish.
Unfortunately for you that's untrue, go ask a lawyer, fortunately my wife is a barrister so I get my legal advice for free 😉
Read below, numpty.
Sounds more like his business model is broken not the other way around as he claimed in his press release.