A new service launches today which shows consumers how agents in particular areas have performed over the last six months, and is aimed to be an instruction getter for agents.
Designed as an objective league table of performance, GetAgent shows the total number of agents in a postcode. It also shows number of properties a particular branch in that area has listed in the last six months, the average asking price, and the average turnaround time.
All the information is taken from property portals where the agents manage their own profiles and property listings, so the site says that the data is “as accurate as agents make it”.
The site also says that, by objectively ranking performance, it will help consumers confronted with a number of claims from agents saying they are the “leading” or “number one” agent in their area.
GetAgent also shows which portals the branch is listed on – ie, Rightmove, Zoopla and OnTheMarket.
Get Agent founder Rayhan Rafiq Omar says that information about OnTheMarket is necessarily limited at the moment to what has been publicly announced, so is not complete.
The service – which currently covers the area inside the M25 but which is due to roll out nationally – is aimed at both agents and at the public.
It allows agents to compare themselves to their peers, and it allows people thinking of selling their homes to choose agents.
Rafiq Omar said: “Some home owners will make their own choice based on our data and go to the agent direct.
“Others may be undecided, and will be able to use our auction service.”
The prospective seller will fill in an online form, giving details about themselves and their property, and draw up a shortlist of agents.
Agents on that shortlist will be able to bid for that instruction, based on a fee set by GetAgent itself. Across London and inside the M25, the average fee is currently 1.8% including VAT.
Rafiq Omar said: “We will set the fee on the average for that particular area and so agents will have to bid for the instruction using that fee.
“They bid on the basis of how much of that fee they will split with GetAgent. We are anticipating a split of between 20% and 40%. In London, the minimum fee works out to about £4,000 and the average fee is about £12,000, and so we are looking at earning around £1,000 upwards.”
The process guarantees one agent a verified instruction through to completion, and also incentivises the seller to use the auction service by a cashback – a split of GetAgent’s own share of the fee.
The site currently lists all agents listed on both Rightmove and Zoopla across Greater London and within the M25.
As well as plans to extend the service nationally, it is also intended to integrate Land Registry data on the site, so that the data can show price achieved as well as asked.
Rafiq Omar believes the site will be used both by independent agents and by branch managers of corporates with targets to hit as to instructions.
He said he also believes agents will use it to track their own performance and to see what competitors are doing.
He said: “Certainly, one of the most interesting things over the coming months will be to monitor which agents are on which portals, and how this changes.”
The home page of Get Agent shows agents’ performance in London SW11. However, postcodes within London and the M25 can be changed on the site by going into the SW11 box.
You can also click on each agent (for example, in W12, Kerr & Co Residential) for further, more detailed information.
http://www.getagent.co.uk/postcode/SW11
Comments (32)
Misleading information or inaccurate. I do hope this chap has a deep pocket because any agent who feels aggrieved and can show it is adversely effecting his business ……. well were talking telephone director numbers in compensation.
If your anticipating a split of 20-40% I'm anticipating we won't be doing business in the near future. I'm a Zoopla member and I've had 7 properties come I market as a gold member in the last 6 months , I pay them £350 a month and have gained over £20,000 in commission … Oh, they also send me over 100 leads a month, a good deal of whom have property to sell in my area.Mr Oman , your not a distant relative of Jeremy Beadle are you?
Evening Rayhan, how is the average turnaround worked out? and where is this data collected from (specifically turnaround) thanks..
Hi Ric, the time a property is listed to the moment it is flagged online as sold subject to contract.
Oh – by the way – LOVE the page for James Pendleton's Battersea branch… do they know that their BIGGEST COMPETITOR has prominence in the photo and NOT THEIR office? What hope for Agents (or, more importantly, for the public who you claim to be championing here…) if you can't even scrape decent images off Google Streetview…?
We love PeeBee. That's the consensus amongst our team. The current data is by far the most informative that has ever been presented about estate agents. And it will become more specific, hopefully to your liking, so that agent performance is represented in a 'true' manner. We won't keep you waiting very long at all, dear PeeBee.
"We won't keep you waiting very long at all…" Mr Omar – as far as I'm concerned the fact that you're publishing information that is by your own admission above NOT a 'true' representation of Agent performance makes it WELL OVERDUE ALREADY. Care to put what YOU consider to be an acceptable timescale for providing this "more specific" data on record – just so that we can measure and award you a 'star rating' based upon performance to target?
"At GetAgent our mission is to provide objective data to allow arguments such as the above to be settled based on fact." So, that being the case, please explain to me WHEN you will be meeting the criteria of that 'mission' – and WHAT "objective data" you will be providing. So far I see a set of ridiculous statistics and a 'who uses which website' which is less use to a prospective seller than sticking a pin in the phone book and hoping to hit an Estate Agent.
Yes, brilliant……5 stars and top 3 position for all our branches….I love this website-even where I didn't think we were top…the other agent -that is top- isn't even listed!!. I bet everyone who's moaning is miffed because they only got 1 or 2 stars!!
Mr Omar – how exactly does your 'star' rating work? There is no explanation I can find on the website…
Strikes me that the name hasn't been thought out very well… what about all those poor spinsters or 'confirmed bachelors' who try to 'get a GENT' on this website… and CAN'T? Think of the disappointment you are going to cause a proportion of your consumers, Mr Omar…
Amazing. That's our 'Compare the Meerkat' moment.
GetAGent – find love and someone to sell your home, on one site.
Well I'm pleased that I've come up with a far better use for your site than currently fit for its' alleged intended purpose…
Thanks for volunteering to be one of the Gents, but we need to validate people. And I think the world is better off with PeeBee being anonymous. (Sincerely).
Trust me – there was no volunteering for anything on my part, Mr Omar. The further I can keep from your site, the better for both of us.
But while I have your apparent attention – you appear to be dodging a number of questions and/or issues that I and others are asking. Might be a good idea to address the concerns of those who you hope will be bankrolling your venture.
Just looked at the website – shocking! For a start, it seems only to be able to confirm listings on RM, Z and OTM – and seeing as OTM isn't even LIVE yet, then it is already proving to give woefully incorrect "information"!
Ros… I seem to remember you running an article about this chap a year or so ago (…in another life…) – he was putting the world to rights from memory. Looks like he's yet another self-appointed 'fixer' for our industry. How did his last venture fare – soaring or sunk without trace?
Just as a little nudge, why is it that almost every agent has a different number of current listings on Rightmove vs Zoopla? It seemed odd, so we investigated and found the numbers are accurate. So, why does a single branch, that uses a single piece of uploading software, have different numbers of properties on the duopoly sites? A little concerning that some listings don't make it online.
I would think they would have more properties on Zoopla, Rightmove are strict with the amount of properties, so it's 50, 100, 150 etc. If you go over expect a sales call and £££.
given we won't be charging commission for sales when we launch how do you intend to attract the online agents which will under normal circumstances be alot cheaper that a high street one,does't that undermine your model abit,just a thought 🙂
Chris please stop talking utter **** your posts are aimed at being provocative but you just end up mugging yourself off! You and it seems most your company know very little re lettings and sales and i for one and getting VERY tired of you boasts about ***** all! – Whats next stock market flotation like PB as you have demonstrated you have taken the letting world by storm? – Guessing your "Launch party" cost more than the revenue you have managed to recoup so far.
seems I have another fan 🙂 what boasts – it is FACT that online is way cheaper than high street in most cases you can argue about personal service local knowledge etc but it is a fact online IS cheaper,it is also a fair question to ask the question I raised ie if you don't charge commission how on this site can you compare.
yep IPO is certainly on our radar and YEP our launch party was very successful so much so you are still talking about it 🙂
we actually raised many times the cost from investors at the launch, we are very happy.
easyChris its a fact is it that online is cheaper!? What you forget is that to make a price comparison you have to be comparing like for like. If we were both selling milk and you were offering yours for less then you would be cheaper. If all you are doing is stripping out everything that gets sellers and landlords the best price for their property and removing the service that actually sees them move then yes you can offer that for next to nothing. Thats not estate agency thats exchange and mart. FACT
Gents, this has made quite interesting reading and you have raise very valid points.
Which is better online or high street agency? Until now, this debate has been waged with subjective opinions. As has the debate over who is the best estate agent in a particular area. Understandably every estate agent thinks they are the best, otherwise they would do things differently. This makes life very hard for vendors, and is the premise upon which GetAgent was formed.
Up until now fees have been one of the two main deciding factors for a vendor choosing an estate agent. We are grateful for RealAgent's comment regarding how difficult it is compare fees charged by two estate agents offering different levels of service. At GetAgent our mission is to provide objective data to allow arguments such as the above to be settled based on fact.
We are excited to see more of these conversations over the next year moving away from fee levels and onto actual agent performance.
Chris cheaper is not always best. Clients are not driven by price alone. And if they were to take your "full" package it is probably more than most anyway! How are those 60000 potential properties or Harry Hills war cry saying you will take the letting world by storm, those are the boasts and bull **** we hear time and again. And Rayhan you did will getting some national press but please don't try and interact with us we see these "ideas" come and go. I am sorry your thread got hijack but nobody is really interested
This has nothing to do with how good an agent is, the information is worthless and arguably inaccurate, open to abuse and misleading. Its sole purpose is to make money off the back of what agents are doing. Stay well away and I do hope he has sufficient insurance cover, for if he gets it wrong he will end up in court. The get out of jail clause is possibly not valid as everyone knows today about business to business trading regulations if the other partner is not signed up. Arguably this would make his web site a TROLL site and we all know the penalty for that today.
If this site relies on portal data and uses a get-out clause such as “as accurate as agents make it” then it is a totally pointless and worthless site. I know of several agents who relist the same property time and time again and take off properties that have been on the market for years only to relist them as new shortly after. We regularly report this activity to Rightmove as it fudges the Rightmove branch performance data so we can't even rely on that!
Please please please can I urge no agent to ever bid for an instruction on this site. This is just another example of a web entrepreneur trying to tap into all us little independent agents that have worked our hearts out over the years. If it works for them they will be taking our profit and banking colossal amounts of money nationwide while we do all the work of selling houses and providing the service for our clients for even less than at present. This has to be the worst example of how to choose an estate agent to deal with your lifetime investment that I have ever come across in 32 years of agency. Should be branded moneyfornothing.com
EAMD, thank you for taking the time to reply. It is always good to hear feedback positive or negative.
The idea for GetAgent came from conversations with good estate agents who were becoming frustrated with constantly being undercut on fees by estate agents with no experience who could only afford to undercut on fees because they also had no high street presence and a very low marketing spend. The emergence of these agents was an unfortunate by-product of the centralised advertising spaces created by Rightmove and Zoopla. On the other hand you had estate agents who would knowingly overvalue property just to obtain the instruction.
The good estate agents were frustrated that their performance went unnoticed as there was nowhere for this information to be shown. This is where GetAgent comes in.
Our systems take information from property portals to provide more assistance on which of these estate agents do the best job. We want to stop the fee war as we feel that a vendor would be much better off paying 1.5% for a good estate agent than paying 1% for a poor one. If one sells the property for £15,000 more they should be entitled to charge a higher fee.
With regards our auction section, agents are under no obligation to bid for any instructions. Our estimated bids of 20%-40% may seem a lot to you, however if an estate agent can use our data to justify charging 1.5% instead of 1%, even if he bids 20% of the fee to secure the instruction he still makes 1.2% instead of 1% with a far reduced customer acquisition cost.
Estimates of 40% are based on feedback we have had from agents that there may be times when they already have potential buyers, or they feel that a particular property could be the missing link in a chain that could make them a lot of commission. Only then would they bid those kinds of fees.
Regarding money for nothing, most of what we make will be used to advertise the site to raise awareness of the best estate agents and to help bring more instructions to those.
Hang on, am I missing something. This relies on you filling in the info or data ? What and I'm sure this would never ever happen someone filled in erroneous data.
EstateAgent.me shows what portals an agent is listed on and more, see here:
https://estateagent.me/estate-agents/wembley/daniels-wembley-42313
Also property management, sorry for the plug.