An estate agency is charging vendors who simply want to get their property “out there”, £99 for an online advertising service.
Yesterday, EYE asked all three of the main portals about 247 Property Services, which is headquartered in Doncaster.
The firm, which gives several other locations on its site, was yesterday advertising on Rightmove, Zoopla and OnTheMarket – in breach of OTM’s “one other portal” rule.
We asked OTM about this apparent breach, and also asked OTM, Rightmove and Zoopla about the firm’s offering which appears to be a simple re-selling of space to private sellers on their portals.
247 Property Services explains this on its website by saying: “If you just need to get your property ‘out there’ we offer an online advertising service for £99.”
It also says: “Using all the latest software and management systems we ensure your property is put in front of as many sets of eyes as possible. It cannot sell if no one sees it. That is why we market all our properties on Rightmove, Zoopla and On The Market property portals to name just three.”
Yesterday we found the same property – a four-bedroom terrace home in Sheffield – available to rent on all three portals, and took screengrabs to prove it.
Separately, we also asked Rightmove and Zoopla about another agent advertising on both sites and which claims to be free.
OwnerSellers says on its home page: “OwnerSellers was founded by Rupert Cattell, who is one of the UK’s most experienced estate agents and business brokers and has advised on probably more than 3,000 transactions.
“Rupert set up OwnerSellers to enable smaller businesses and cost-conscious property vendors to handle simple transactions cheaply and easily themselves.
“We believe that selling your property or small business is easy. OwnerSellers gives you all the tools you need to sell your home or company yourself, saving thousands on commission-hungry estate agents or business brokers.”
Last night, a Zoopla spokesperson told EYE: “Thank you for your note. We have strict eligibility criteria for those advertising with us and the levels of service that they must provide.
“One of the businesses you enquired about was already under review and and we have already acted to remove them and we are currently looking into the other one.
“Any new agency looking to advertise with us needs to meet our criteria and comply with our member terms and conditions.”
OTM says it is making inquiries and will respond. Rightmove is also to look into it.
- Separately in a short trading update this morning, Zoopla announced agency branch numbers of 13,275 at the end of August. Analyst William Packer of Exane BNP Paribas said: “This is bang in line with our forecast and implies 5% year on year growth. Stock levels are also up 5%. This is encouraging in the context of i) Brexit concerns for the housing market and ii) the continued presence of OTM whichis also talking of positive momentum.”
http://www.247propertyservices.co.uk/
http://www.ownersellers.com/selling-a-house.php
http://www.rightmove.co.uk/property-to-rent/property-54546382.html
https://www.onthemarket.com/details/2832834/
Comments (16)
I am a bit confused by all this. Response from the agent concerned is understood but to me they are just offering the sales equivalent of a “tenant find” service.
When selling my home I found I did the majority of the viewings myself anyway so what exactly is this storm all about? If it’s about being on lots of portals then it’s just someone s**t stirring and dropping another company in it. OTM are terrible with very few leads provided anyway in comparison to RM and Zoopla.
They introduced something new, well not new really as this has been punted about for quite some time by different online agents anyway, their crime is upsetting OTM and let’s face it how many of us have been upset by them!
“When selling my home I found I did the majority of the viewings myself anyway so what exactly is this storm all about?”
If you’re not an Estate Agent (which seems to be the case from this comment…) then a) why do you care? and b) what does it matter? as you wouldn’t understand anyway
“OTM are terrible with very few leads provided anyway in comparison to RM and Zoopla.”
Sorry – and as someone who appears to be a non-Agent you know this how, exactly?
We thank Property Industry Eye for bringing this to our attention. 247 Property Services Limited has always solely marketed our properties on RightMove and Zoopla along with the smaller, independent portals. When OnTheMarket was first mooted we investigated the possibility of joining them at launch, however, due to what we felt were restrictive requirements, we chose not to. Our Landlords all pay the same 10% monthly fee, for the management and advertising of their properties, thus we thought that OnTheMarket’s requirement to solely advertise with them for a period was not good value for money. Advertising on both RightMove & Zoopla, who do not have this restrictive caveat, seemed far better value.
247 Property Services as a business work on a franchise basis with only Doncaster “HQ” being wholly owned by the founders. Individual franchisees are free to choose their own portal providers dependent on their budget. One of the franchisees chose to utilise the services of OnTheMarket and an internal software configuration error led to the properties from all branches being advertised through OnTheMarket, this of course has now been corrected. At no time did 247 Property Services (Doncaster) receive leads supplied through this portal, they were all sent to the franchisee who paid for their services.
With regards to the £99 to get online, we felt that a very cluttered, and what is deemed expensive by the public, marketplace needed a shakeup. 247 Property Services acted as the estate agent for the vendors, the only difference was the vendor carried out their own viewings, a practise that is not uncommon whilst the vendor is still resident at their property. All offers for purchase of the property were negotiated by 247 Property Services thus we feel the allegation of reselling space is unfounded. How do you define an estate agent? They market, negotiate and complete sales of properties. This was something 247 Property Services carries out for their vendors. The £99 sales fee, along with our 10% plus VAT management fee for our managed rental properties, is excellent value for money for our clients and we will continue the practice of offering excellent value for money across our product range.
Whilst 247 Property Services Ltd understand and accept the point raised in the article regarding OnTheMarket’s restrictive practice we, at no time, as a company advertised through them. We also note that the franchisee’s properties have been removed from their portal and agree that this was the correct course of action given OnTheMarket’s terms and conditions. We have always, and will continue to do so, solely marketed our properties through Zoopla and RightMove and we look forward to a long and happy relationship with these portal providers.
Its a great idea. All agents should have a £99, £49, £29, £9.99 or even 1penny service and class it as their Sh1t service not even worth a penny.
As the portals open to more in the race to ground zero the budget £399, £499, £699, £899 will lose out by Sh1t service providers claiming they’ll save sellers £millions in their next house move.
Im sure VCs will be pulling back investment in stack em high, sell it cheap models.
Sell on service and start charging proper fees again. IT’S NOT HARD.
You’d figure ‘most influential’ to conceptually label these fools but maybe ‘where the money at’ is a better perspective. Jeez aint it enough they got us standing on the sidewalk looking like that guy who wears his cell phone on his belt. I guess it’s like that Olympic dude about to swim 1500m. At some point you should probably just get a boat.
Come on OTM. Do better.
Owner Sellers is free for the seller yes. However, they’ll start charging the buyer a fee when requesting contact details of the seller! They don’t actually charge as yet!
I wonder how much that fee would be and whether buyers would be willing to pay such a fee…?
Eureka!
I have it.
Why don’t we create a website for selling and letting property that belong exclusively to estate agents ?
We could do it for £99 right?
We wouldn’t be breaking any regs cos we are estate agents!
I can see it now, the best property pictures, the best write ups and probably the most attractive negotiators showing the punters around too!
Just cant think of a decent website name. can you?
Mmmm….How about Countrywide estate agents.com so long as you do your mortgage, conveyancing, insurance and buy your food at Tesco?
Shame the old guard who realize that estate agency is not a loss leading ‘retail’ business are not in control!
Thank you PB for showing that independent, branch based, estate agency, is actually good value for money!
Could someone in the know, please point out to Alison P that it cost PB £2,700 per instruction in 2015 to list a property without a branch!
Even better, can such a person tell Countrywide shareholders the above?
If said person, who obviously has considerable talents and passion for the business would like to focus his attention on actually drawing this sector together, rather than try to take chunks out of it like our OTM board members, perhaps he would like to contact me on inspirationalone@live.com
NOW THEN…
… the name ‘Cattell’ struck a note with me. Not a good one, either.
He is tied in with Beth Rodwell – she of eMove UK ‘fame’ from a year or so ago. Among other strange past occurrences, OwnerSellers and eMove UK seemed to be sharing properties on Rightmove.
The Quirkster got all shouty (nowt new there, then…) about this bunch, and bought the name which apparently hadn’t been registered (maybe Mr Cattell ain’t as experienced as he would like to think?) – and now it’s part of his little empire… speaking of which some will have seen he’s now spouting that CW turned him down more than once when he offered them a slice of the tart.
Maybe they didn’t like the filling…
ANYWAY – that aside, it’s definitely a ‘watch this space’ job on OwnerSellers.
As far as 247 is concerned – this is of far more interest to me and I eagerly await an update. Going off the evidence – there’s a lot of explaining to do by all parties.
They’ve got nice teeth at ownersellers.
just saying !
Is that his hand round her neck?!
Come on Portals – get a grip or your/our businesses!
This is a crazy situation…
Is that the poster who was quirking* on here recently?
*sorry Eamonn that’s another word I made up, it’s the verb of the adjective shouty.
if you have the need to make things up, that’s cool with me Bobby.
keep it real,
At least the only making up I do is words and that’s only when there isn’t one to fit the occasion or the word in common use is quite right.
Eskimos have lots or words for snow there is no reason why shouldn’t develop a whole vocabulary for the emerging whack it on the internet for cash and hope it someone finds it and buys it sector of our industry.
Absolutely right, 100% with on that. Totally agree with you.
Eskimos, Got it,