Zoopla has responded to EYE columnist, Russell Quirk, and claims he made in an article yesterday.
Quirk said that the main portals, primarily Righmove and Zoopla, “use the lead metric as the money-stick with which to beat” agents when it comes to renewing their membership.
But he argues that many leads are often ‘dire’, adding that Rightmove and Zoopla have both managed to “position a bunch of random emails sent by bored people at 3am as the metric by which you now pay multiple times more for your listings to be displayed on someone else’s website”.
He added that Rightmove and Zoopla are charging agents “fortunes every year” for what he claims are “the names and phone numbers of people that have a one in fifty chance of providing you an income”.
A Zoopla Spokesperson has rejected Quirk’s claims and points out that a growing number of agents are listing properties with the property portal, which they say deliver a high “quality of leads”.
The spokesperson told EYE: “Agents have in-depth local knowledge about their local market and are best positioned to judge what works for their business.
“What’s clear is that record numbers of agents are choosing to partner with Zoopla. Our growth in customer numbers is fuelled by the volume and quality of leads we deliver.
“Last month’s launch of My Home and our biggest ever marketing campaign helped cause a 42% surge in valuation leads, a metric crucial to an agent’s success.”
EYE has contacted Rightmove for a comment.
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Comments (2)
They’re hardly likely to agree with him, are they?
“Zoopla says portal leads ‘are crucial to an agent’s success’” That’s because Zoopla and Rightmove have become most agents best member of staff.
Many agents have got lazy over the last decade – outsourcing their business generation to the portal for market appraisal leads and their get more viewings to the ‘whack the property on Rightmove” and see what happens
I insist my Negs spend half a day ringing up applicants and have done for years. I tell people in my social media posts that if you aren’t in the mailing list – they will miss out on the juicy properties.It’s time consuming and costs more – but it has after a couple of years paid back in bucket loads with lots of vendor listings coming direct to our agency… and the best but – fee isn’t an issue.
I really do feel the portals are like drug dealers – peddling their gear and keeping us agents addicted to them with their stories and vanity metric leads its no wonder this industry is slowing slipping into an hole when we outsource our key functions to a portal