Boomin, the soon-to-launch property portal, has announced that it has secured the support of yet another 10 estate agencies, as part of a tightly controlled public relations campaign.
The continued drip feed of founder members by Boomin, which has rejected a request by Property Industry Eye to share with all agents a pre-recorded video clip, seen by this publication, explaining more about the website and the potential opportunities for agents, is the sixth major announcement by the company.
The latest agents backing Boomin are Robinson Jackson, Hunter French Somerset, Bonners & Babingtons, Maslen, JOHNS&CO, Penny Lane Homes, Peter Morgan, Hannells Derby, Xact Homes, and Rolfe East West.
Founder member status not only offers agents free use of the Boomin platform, due to launch over the next few weeks, until January 2022, but also an opportunity to benefit from new and recurring revenues, due to new tools offered by the new platform.
Michael Bruce, executive chairman and founder of Boomin, hopes that new features, such as Sneak Peak, Matchmaker, Property PlayGround, and 24/7, will encourage more agents to sign up to Boomin.
He commented: “Our new platform is transformative and our pricing will be transparent and game changing. New features including Sneak Peak, Matchmaker and 24/7 will draw new people into the market and help to sustain transaction levels long after the current stamp duty holiday ends.
“Agents signed to the Boomin platform will benefit from a win-win, with the ability to secure new customers with the offer of a superior customer experience and earn more money through the platform than they pay over in fees.”
Comments (24)
Remember homesearch? 10,000 branches all signed up! Anyone here had a single lead from homesearch? Thought not. Generating leads for agents is not what they were for, was it?
These (homesearch, boomin, all free-to-list portals) are all data gathering exercises whose beneficiaries are NOT the agents supplying the data.
For any agency to give anyone their property feeds (full addresses, from which it’s easy to identify the vendors / landlords) for nothing is naive and will hurt them. We’re not going near them.
pieinthesky: Absolutely spot on, I had a call from a Boomin rep and I asked how many agents had signup he couldn’t or wouldn’t answer said he didn’t have the figures so asked a few more basis questions which he couldn’t answer, his reply “I’ll have to get the answers and will get back to you after we announce the prices In December but don’t worry it’s free and you can leave anytime if you want”. He also said that they are going to be bigger than Rightmove, not sure what drugs he was on but probably free ones!
That is a basic question so the reason he couldn’t say is the figures were not high enough. I don’t mind newcommers, homesearch openbrix and so on. I actually get excited when something new comes out. I just have a gripe with these two as don’t think they deserve a second chance after what they did to us. The stupid thing is the power lies in our hands but there is only so much we can do alone. We made RM, Z and OTM and we can make or break others as it is after all our listings that make them what they are. Think about it.
call me a cynic, but a free to advertise platform, no restrictions on advertising on other platforms.
So Estate Agents put all their properties on this platform, subsidies the advertising spend with referral/advertising fees till the site is gaining a bit of traction.
Then what?
Hike prices up to pay to advertise like zoopla, OTM and rightmove?
Look for alternative ways of generating income?
So what might those alternative ways be I wonder?
Are we looking at PB part 2
It reminds me a bit of those things that were around years ago where you have a banner ad on your site and get paid for click throughs. I haven’t seen the webinars, and seriously, why the NDAs? If I were a member of the public I would be seriously peeved if an estate agent started trying to sell me home wares and other stuff. Is this how desperate things are getting.
I wonder if these brand names know they are being used in Boomins marketing or is this a classic misuse of other trade names the ASA should be investigating?
Virgin Media
PaddyPower
Carwow
ITV
Youtube
deliveroo
B&Q
Nike
Dreams
Habitat
FedEx
UEFA
Gymshark
Pernod Ricard
Tesco
New Look
Cazoo
Tia Maria
Yorkshire Tea
Fever-Tree
Ben & Jerrys
Dunelm
……… to name a few.
I’ve lost track of the numbers! So many PR articles on here….
Is that about 50 agents now?
Boomin’ indeed….
Still don’t know exactly what it is either!!!
Apparently 56 agents have signed up. What a flop …. big time?
Yes they are everywhere. We got an unwieldy email off them through the other trade news site which smacked of desperation.
I don’t see Boomin as a challenger portal to RM, which is what I thought was it’s original purpose and it’s hard to understand the companies who have signed up so quickly. Wonder if our competitor’s will start using it against those that haven’t joined? We’re going to have to sign up for that reason. No doubt the Bruce brothers and Boomin are a slick and powerful outfit. Proficient with marketing and experts at feathering their own nests. Anyone who believes they really have a keen interest in helping to increase agents revenue, well…. The public do have an obsession with property, captured well with Boomin’s offering and will only feed an appetite from the public who already fantasize about being property experts. The cynical side of me says it’s actually only going to make a mockery of our industry.
If its sooooo goooood why the secrecy?
Answer in a nut shell ….. something to hide, something they don’t want you to know about. Who ever launches a business and keeps it secret from agents that it needs to grow? If its that good they shouldn’t be afraid to let the competition see why they are lagging behind.
I wouldn’t trust this lot if it was free for ever. No-one that has joined has come out and said it can’t bite you in the %%% once the free gimmick has ended.
Another 10 ….. pitiful take-up for an industry with 20,0000.
Probably they’re hoping to create scarcity or FOMO.
Who do they think they are? ROLEX? 😀
The answer to your question is the simple fact that you are commenting on it. It is a very cleverly done piece of PR. Stick an advert out there and it may or not work, but the process they are going through is creating intrigue and interest. I don’t like anything the Bruce brothers stand for, but you have to give them credit for the brand they built with Bricks and the same people are behind Boomin. OTM failed due to the lack of brand awareness created driving the consumer to the website. Just from this PR campaign you see that Boomin is streets ahead of OTM in that regard, and that is what matters with the portals – where will the public go ?
Krostotv, Unless you know more than everyone else how can you say Boomin are streets ahead of OTM if anything they are at the very least 6 years behind OTM.
He commented: “Our new platform is transformative and our pricing will be transparent and game changing. New features including Sneak Peak, Matchmaker and 24/7 will draw new people into the market and help to sustain transaction levels long after the current stamp duty holiday ends.
Sneek Peak? or Sneek Peek?
Anyway, I hope the platform is better than the PB one which was an absolute clunker. Or was it Mutton dressed as Lamb?
Either way, the Bruce’s are great at Smoke and Mirrors. I saw it all behind the scenes at PB.
Let the suckers roll their dice and let the Trojan Horse into their business back ends. Anyone who thinks they can trust them is a fool.
Dont trust the Boomin proposition or the founders.
Once you recognise what is happening on a bigger scale than the “Bruces are doing Onedome with a bigger budget” you’ll find that there is actually no reason not to trust them and every reason to give it a go. Unless, as some agent are, you’re protective of the transaction chain.
As Smile Please said the other week someone needs to do an objective review of Boomin so if you have or if you haven’t seen the presentation it will help you make your mind up.
Boomin is opportunity income, the stuff that’s spent by people who look at the pictures on the portals, don’t move, but spot some homeware or decor that’s a bit nicer than the chintz, tat or decor they have already. It’s a BIG data system that if it starts out free ought to remain free. A subscription would show the theory is failing to cover costs or is here we go again exploitation.
It’s easy to become too emotional about Rightmove where the cure is worse than the disease.
Robert, you have the ear of many agents and are influential. You have spent a long time defending agents over the years but defending Boomin (possibly as their model somehow justifies your own work on your own portal over the years) is a real danger.
You have criticised RM over the data they hold yet Boomin’s big data play is this in steroids.
There is a lot of fluff around Boomin’s main offering to agents. Make no mistake, the trojan horse is there.
I am not defending Boomin I am defending the model because it aligns with my agent centric thinking on rm4; PSP property search platform versus portal. Portals centre on and return to the portal, PSPs click through to the agent’s site.
I am still defending agents, each an every competing one of them, but as my development moves forward I will start to give my agents advantage over their competition.
It is true I have warned about BIG DATA projects but I have not been critical of all BIG DATA projects for the same reason. Rightmove giving competitors an agent’s dead file historic data is the worse commercial tort I can think of, that alone enabled disruption. Sharing completions data is different to BIG DATA taking income opportunities away from agents.
Agents have a right to their data and the income opportunities having a business, reputation, experience and goodwill generates. Service suppliers should provide services where the hierarchy of the relationship is respected.
I’m agnostic about Boomin, if agents go into the relationship and allow it to become abusive more fool them.
Boomin is a magazine, the portals are the papers, how Rightmove, Zoopla and OTM react to new competition will only work in agents’ favour. Boomin is going to cause Rightmove to look at itself hard and the threat that didn’t materialise from OTM (because of the OOPR) and didn’t materialise from Homesearch because of naive ambition, will come from Boomin.
The duopoly has been broken and ARPA of £1088 is as close to £2500 per branch as PBJ will get from subscriptions alone. They might get closer by studying the income opportunities Boomin has identified to them
You have to love that a discussion forum for the industry where the conversation is lead by the news (or PR article) doesn’t get used for just this sort of discussion.
If agents like Smile Please are saying you know what, I know their past but eyes wide open I WILL give it a go. They have already achieved more than 98% of all new ventures that have been proposed over the years.
Whether agent do or don’t doesn’t affect me. The bit I’m enjoying is the bit I worked so long and hard for happened in March; projects like Homesearch, Openbrix, Boomin and all the rest get to have a go. We are finally emerging from portal dominance at any cost.
They have said they will be charging a subscription from 2022. Here we go again.
Good to see the headline article today,.pole position is flagging up the daily increase in members for Boomin accompanied by an advert in the right hand column with the teaser .
“Join Boomin free for 2021”
“Advertising that the first visit will be free is a bit like a fox telling chickens he won’t bite them until they cross the threshold of the hen house” Warren E Berger.
Fair play to them there is no stopping the Bruces as everything seemingly turning to gold
Sporting Ken Bruce doing his bit reaching out to agents by email or maybe agents might be thinking they are being invited to join Ken at a sporting event with this hook ?
“Boomin thrives on innov’n ,something agents deserve and should demand from everyone if they are to give them a ticket to the game from 2021”
On that note as the flat season draws to a close the National Hunt season gets into full rattle & it’s a boomin’ start for Sporting’s ‘orses.
The appropriately named Pink Sheets has now won 3 times on the bounce over the sticks .
Moving across the pond Larne FC are currently lying 2nd in the Irish Premier League
Good on Eye for recognising this drip feed as a PR stunt. Not sure why this still counts as news the 5th time round?
Anyone who has mortgage pages or pays for a valuation postcode on rightmove (£120 a postcode!!) Will know people won’t click on it.