Rightmove has confirmed that all agents will be uploading their properties in real time within months.
Last night Zoopla said it also expects bulk feeds to transition strongly in favour of real-time.
However while Rightmove will impose the switch on agents, Zoopla will not, saying a natural switch is already happening.
It is expected that almost all of Rightmove agents will make the switch to instant uploading in the new year, but by next summer all overnight uploads to Rightmove will have become a thing of the past.
The switchover for Rightmove agents is scheduled for January 6, with a six-month ‘grace’ period until June.
The ‘instant’ uploading to Rightmove looks to have major implications for those agents with OnTheMarket who launch their properties exclusively on that portal for the first 48 hours.
It may also have implications for agents who want to time how they market properties, including to their own applicants.
One agent told us he is concerned that the first that applicants could hear about a property is not from the agent, but from Rightmove.
He felt that this represented a shift in who finds buyers – the agent or the portal.
However, Rightmove yesterday stressed that instant uploading is becoming the industry standard, already used by many agents.
A spokesperson told EYE: “More and more Rightmove agents are seeing the benefits of near instant updates to their listings using Rightmove’s Real Time Data Feed, and it is fast becoming the industry standard for property uploading.
“We want all of our customers to see the benefits of RTDF, and as such it has been made available for free to all software suppliers since the summer of 2013, and the spec has been offered to other portals.
“We have been working closely with data feed providers to ensure a smooth transition of our mutual customers ready for January 6.
“As more of our agents are now using RTDF, we will begin to withdraw support for the outdated version of the Automated Data Feed (ADF, also called Version 3/3a) as of January 6.
“Agents will still be able to use the older ADF format for a further six months after January 6.”
According to Rightmove, there are several options “to help agents compete on a level playing field with those who can almost instantly update their property listings”.
These are:
- Contact their feed provider and ask to be switched over to the Real Time Data Feed
- Use Rightmove Admin (available as part of the standard Rightmove membership) to upload properties manually
- Choose an alternative software supplier who is able to provide them with Real Time Data Feeds
Rightmove says that agents can contact their software provider directly to ask about making the transition to RTDF.
The portal also says that the Rightmove Data Feed team would be happy to liaise directly with the software provider to manage this change.
The spokesperson said: “We have let all software providers know that we are able to offer support, advice and testing of feeds to make the transition to RTDF as smooth as possible.”
Last night, a Zoopla spokesperson said: “Agents have expressed a clear desire to create and update listings as quickly as possible and feed providers are moving apace to support real-time behaviour. We ourselves are seeing a strong shift from the use of bulk overnight feeds to using our Real-time Listings Service.
“We have no immediate plans to cease supporting bulk feeds because this is happening naturally already.”
Comments (68)
Perhaps someone would like to open this up as a forum topic so that this interesting discussion can continue?
It took a while to get going but the last hour of this discussion was probably the most insightful and for me reassuring discussions on here for a very long while. I finally understood why people far more tech savvy than I am (will ever be) are failing to have the brilliant businesses their knowledge and expertise gives potential for.
Digital experts (collective not the individual) do not understand Agents or Agency; that is like having a brilliantly informed and knowledgeable industry expert who doesn’t understand pupils or the aims of the syllabus, they can be called teachers but they can’t teach.
Has anyone here tried leaving Jupix/Vebra and seen if you can ever get your data back from them?? Some say you’re stuck for life once you’ve signed…..
If its your data you’re after you need to become one of their associated 3rd parties, they will happily share it with you then.
Actually one of the biggest problems has been that an awful lot of software packages could not cope with a live feed, so it is only in the last 24 months or so that your software in your office could handle it
Precisely ……
That is not correct Encore, Vebra, CFP and Expert Agent were all live feed ready before Rightmove existed, it was the portals not the software houses who could not handle the constant live data transmissions.
Yes, you’re both right.
Let’s hope for less coverage, worse marketing, more diverse places to market with less eyeballs on your properties and absolutely no innovation into the market place.
Let’s close the internet and revert back to black and white print. Aaah, the good old days!
Robert, you’re alluding to a pre-portal boom era. Apples & Oranges.
You cannot argue that advertising to less people is a good thing and remain credible.
People don’t set up property alerts to be alerted to the availability of a property and then ignore it. This is one of the key purposes of the portals and why they have become such a massive success.
I am not anti progression, quite the opposite.
What you and a lots of third party providers forget is its our date we collect. It is now being taken away from us and we are losing control of our industry and we are being charged for it.
The tech / digital innovations that agents like are.
1. Benefits us
2. makes our lives easier
3. helps generate further revenue.
4. Increased benefit to the seller.
5. makes the overall process easier for all.
Again most problems stem from new ideas coming from people outside the industry looking to reinvent the wheel, with estate agents loosing out but expecting us to help promote it.
The high street isn’t what it was, Smile. I appreciate your perspective here – it must be a valid concern for you, but progress waits for no man.
The agent is now right at the end of the research process, because people in their millions can now see every available bit of stock in one or two places, which suits them and their lifestyle. The same has happened to every industry – Automotive, Insurance, Banking, Travel, Musical instruments etc etc etc.
The old way of working doesn’t suit the modern time poor life of the consumer, but seeing everything immediately, easily, with no work does.
It has revolutionised the way we all live our lives – I still remember sending letters to companies, now I can get an answer in moments by tweeting them. This is life, and it will continue to change this way.
The digital sphere has changed the way and reacted to the way your customers interact with your audience in the way that Agency as a whole hasn’t got the time, expertise or tech/finance to facilitate.
You just dont get it!
Tech has a place and agents embrace it,
But why should we give our info away and be charged for it?
Progress is not always best.
Another prime example, One of the other stories on here today is about a website looking to obtain instructions and then give them to agents and charge them 0.25% PLUS VAT!
These people will be looking to sell anyway, why would any agent want to give away 0.25% in commission??
All the website shows is how long it takes to sell and what the % of asking price is ……. Guess what ………. all the agents in all the areas i checked are pretty much exactly the same, how does that help the seller?
Ideas like this defraud the public and take away from full service agents.
All these so called fantastic ideas are doing is watering down what an agent offers. it is reducing agents to listers.
Soon it will not be about service, do you want agency to end up like banking? call centers not bothered with your needs and concerns just spouting out yes or no if you hit a criteria?
Nobody loves their bank and all complain about service.
Strange how the new breed of bank like metro are open 7 days a week, uk call centers and longer opening hours …… maybe the public still want service!
We really do need to talk Smile.
The new breed of bank like metro are open 7 days a week with longer hours= service. How many high street estate agents are open 7 days a week or offer out of hours service? I am trying to sell my property at the moment and no high street agent will come out to see me after work. I am home at about 8pm most days. The public do want service, I’m just not sure the high street is delivering it.
‘Digital Expert’ – you’re punching waaaay above your weight when you get in the ring with Mr May and try to go toe-to-toe on the subject of property marketing and tech. He has advocated Generation 5 tech for as long as I have been reading these sites – has now been and gorn and built it – and is now able to demonstrate its success much to the consternation of those who least want it to work!
YOUR contribution would be …?
My contribution to the industry is a long list of clients whom I introduce to, help embrace, and monetise technology and consumer behaviour. I do this for a living.
I’m afraid I am not out of my depth, but speak from a nice comfy position of expertise and experience.
Is your contribution talking about other peoples achievements and name calling or is there anything else?
Nope – my ‘contribution’ is to match people with properties. Something I have found I do quite well.
I don’t consider myself an ‘expert’ – wouldn’t be so vain – but I do consider myself experienced, as I have been at it since the average UK house price was a shade under £16,000. The Sony Walkman was the year’s state-of-the-art technology breakthrough. You couldn’t afford a ‘home’ computer.
BUT I SOLD HOUSES. TO PEOPLE.
Funny how things only change in the minds of some…
“Is your contribution… name calling…?”
Sorry? Name calling? An ANONYMOUS poster?
Get real.
There is a contradiction here, you are a Digital Expert consultant advising agents how to be better at digital than their competition yet you are championing their biggest competitors for digital supremacy and championing the very vehicle that is causing the fee erosion I mentioned earlier. On top of all that you are advising the clients paying you to single them out from the crowd to simply bung their stock onto aggregating portals with everyone else as quick as they can.
With you and I both competing for Smile Please as a virtual client;
I am pitching I can outperform of Rightmove, Zoopla and OTM, Trovit etc and his local competitors, I can win him instructions and provide quality over quantity enquiries.
Your pitch is whack it on Rightmove and Zoopla sharpish, that’s your best hope of selling.
With all pitches Smile please can choose which he prefers.
No I am not the portal boon didn’t start with Zoopla in 2008. Homes on line Asserta Propertyfinder Findaproperty, Primelocation Home24, Thinkproperty , Rightmove the build up to 2008 boom was at the height of the portal presence, since August 2009 it has declined but the number of devices accessing the same information for the same purchasers has multiplied not the number of purchasers.
Interesting that no one seems to acknowledge this is a step forward for those that use the portals to look for property. and those looking to sell their house quickly.
Most house hunters & sellers will be absolutely delighted that their property alerts will be real-time…
Nothing Z or RM do is good enough, eh? I think it’s excellent.
But you’re not paying the bill!
It’s progression, Robert. Everyone pays for innovation with the aim of having an advantage over the competition and helping their vendors sell their house quicker to the right buyer.
It’s really a nominal price to pay for something that is in demand from the time poor public.
I can’t see the issue here.
Live feeds to property portals were introduced and rejected by agents in 1998 before Rightmove was even published.
The advantage for the paying customers isn’t going to come from ideas that have already been tried and failed especially ideas to reinforce dependence of a service supplier.
Agents need a solution that drive genuine enquiries to their door (actual or digital) rather than allowing the continuation of the belief that everyone and everything that registers as traffic is a purchaser.
This has everything to do with providing the people looking for your properties with a better service and one that there is a massive demand for and nothing to do with something agents rejected 17 years ago when the tech was in its infancy and unusable.
Millions of people have property alerts for this very reason – instant feeds meet that very great demand. Things have moved on since 1998.
And the best way to do that is to concentrate on the 1,000,000 who do move rather than the claimed 1.367 billion that look but don’t buy.
Millions of people do have alerts, please explain why only 1,000,000 move house each year so what are the rest doing with their alerts? Nothing!
Things have moved on but therein lies the problem Rightmove is a 17 year old, late 90’s, G3 portal as, by virtue of cloning is Zoopla and OTM, digital has moved on but they haven’t, if they do they implode.
More traffic = more purchasers.
Lesson one of marketing & advertising.
This is the problem with people that do not understand the industry. More traffic is not always better. Its quality agents want.
It is easy to sell a property. In fact we hold back viewings on most our properties and have them on one day as we know we get multiple offers.
We are paying to be on portals we want the best quality.
Its like PPC i dont want hundreds or thousands of clicks i want a quality number of clicks, ideally people looking to sell.
RM Z are not providing a service to us we are paying handsomely for it. They are not offer what we the paying customer want.
These real time feeds are designed to present your properties to those who have set up property alerts for that specific type of property because they want to get in to see it, and possibly buy it, before anyone else.
Why that doesn’t suit you, your vendors and your buyers I simply don’t understand. It doesn’t get any better than that for a seller or buyer.
Spend a week in a busy agency in a sellers market and you will see how silly that comment is.
We do not want to sell the property to the first person! we want to sell the property to the BEST person.
As for the buyer we do not work for them we work for the seller.
Lesson one of PROPERTY (very important word…) marketing and advertising?
BETTER traffic = more SALES
Simples!
Suggest you leave the subject of marketing PROPERTY to those who actually understand that particular, unique, market.
Looks like smile please beat me to the punchline!
Bl00dy sick of being ‘logged out’ of this site – think they’re trying to tell me something…
traffic to portals in 2007/ 2008 was sub 10,000,000 hits per month for all portals yet 120,000 were exchanging each month.
Now traffic is supposed to be 1.14 million visitors each month for Rightmove alone transactions are down to 75,000 exchanges per month. Your traffic argument is a digital myth!
114 million not 1.14
At Eurolink we have always taken the view that data we move for our estate agent clients belongs ultimately to the client the estate agent is instructed by and our property software allows for selective portal distribution amongst a number of innovative data handling features. As a software provider we have a responsibility to the agent and their clients to ensure data integrity and compliance with data protection legislation at all times.
I cant see the point in changing but as why is instant uploading a problem?
How is this going to affect me? surely the only way this affects me is that I may get a call before the end of the day for a property that I have just uploaded.
But I cannot see why we as an industry wouldn’t want this. can someone clarify why this such a bad thing? Robert Mays comments confused me, he is going on about data protection and I cant see why moving to live feed makes a difference to the data that is uploaded. it’s the same data but earlier…
It isn’t the timing of the data moved it is what data is being moved and to where.
You have legal data protection responsibility but I am guessing you do not know exactly what is included with the data feed, you ought to find out what is being transmitted and to where.
Peop
I still don’t understand the issue?
why does it matter, I sell houses I don’t sell data, I don’t care who uses my data for what purposes as long as my photos and details are on my website they can do what they want with my data as I have much bigger things to worry about.
I use to feel like that.
But are you a traditional full service high street agent?
If you are, Do you agree with all these “Online” agents popping up?
If you do and you do not think its a worry that traditional agency is being bought down to just being listers i would say carry on and dont worry.
However, if you are fed up with all the lies and misinformation onliners are putting out there, and you are worried about our industry it might be worth looking a little closer at where your data goes and what it is used for.
Basically your data is fueling online agents. They know who is selling, where they are selling, how much the properties are advertised at, the time taken to sell and how much it has sold for.
You cannot limit all this information coming out but depending on service agreements, depending which portals you advertise on, depending on your software provider you and limit parts of it.
At the moment not many agents are bothered because they do not see a direct issue but what we are doing as an industry is giving ourselves enough rope to hang ourselves.
You probably have daily battles on local market share, exchanges, fees etc but you should sit down at some point and look at what you give away and to who. If more agents were aware and did something about it you can stop the tipping point coming for onliners.
Contracts & Data Protection to the side – WTF?
Price reduction – change the details on my software and it uploads to RM / Z / OTM in 15 minutes – YES PLEASE!
Made a mistake – change the details on my software and it uploads to RM / Z / OTM in 15 minutes – YES PLEASE!
Under Offer – change the details on my software and it uploads to RM / Z / OTM in 15 minutes – YES PLEASE!
Instant upload – definitely a YES PLEASE!
WTF= costs you about £22,200 average per branch per annum, a lot more in the future.
Agree price reductions, errors and status changes should be real time but not new instructions.
If my posts confuse you and you don’t know why you should be aware that other than Mike Griffiths (Expert Agent) I can’t think of anyone who has been doing this longer.
I cant see the point of real time updates, feeds are already taken twice a day to upload changes.
Never once have i had a client say it takes too long. What is the difference of a property being updated right now or later in the day?
On the spot real time feeds can be used to win instructions especially when with a ‘Google poke’ they go straight to the very top of the internet ahead of the main portals.
Disagree with you on this i am afraid Robert.
All i think RTDF do is create a need or want.
I do not want to be at a vendors house and upload there and then, i want to go back to the office, enhance pictures, write a detailed set of particulars selling the property not use standard templates.
And almost all vendors accept it takes 24 hours to be showing on a portal, in most cases vendors like this as gives them a chance to tell neighbours and friends / family.
All RM & Z are doing is creating a need, another reason to justify the price hikes and give them more control over the market.
You don’t need to worry about disagreeing, we actually agree 100% but because of some people’s sensitivity about what I post I end up being obtuse. If I wasn’t restricted in what I am allowed to post without being described as parasitic or plugging product I would tell you how you can now get a real time exposure yet channel the enquiries through your very sensible safety net.
They aren’t creating a need, they are responding to one.
This is 2015, the age of instant gratification & now.
This is something the end users, consumers, your customers want and the two main places they use for search have responded in kind.
Price Reduction – How about get your staff phoning a few people and showing the clients, you didn’t just need the internet? We rely to heavily on sounding and looking as if the quicker we do it on the website that is all that matters. Perhaps all you actually need is an online only agent.
Made a mistake – How about don’t and proof read, before pressing live? if it then is a 24 hour feed, by the time you have changed the error it will upload it correct anyway?
Under Offer – How about does it matter if it displays UO in 15 minutes or 24 hours? Buyers search for available property not sold.
Instant Upload – on your own website GREAT but why continue to allow the public to think RM/Z are really the key to knowing what is happening with houses, prices, etc – ALLOW your agency to take some control and some credit.
Onw would have to ask have we already moved away from a ‘duopoly’situation to one where RM is once again in the position of a monopoly supplier. To force your Clients to do something they may not wish to whilst making 74% profits by charging what you want suggests to me that we have once again reached that position.
Why don’t we all complain to the CMA. Having looked at the forms it appears quite easy to log a complaint.
My software provider wants to charge me £10 per month per branch for the privilege! Although i have been incredibly happy with them i am thinking of now moving just for the principal.
I will wait a little longer to see if their stance changes otherwise i feel my next post in “The Arena” will be What software supplier do you use?
Good to see that Rightmove and Zoopla are finally getting close to the real-time listing capability that Team agents have enjoyed for years!
There is nothing great about this! It simply means you are losing control of your data quicker.
Vebra allows you to delay the feed to portals as you wish. IE Rightmove – 24 hour delay, OnTheMarket – instant. So if the feed is delayed 24 hours, Rightmoves ‘live’ feed will still be 24 hours old.
Wouldn’t be there at all if we all had the ‘nads to drop RM…
Rightmove said it’s becoming the industry standard…. Explain ! Currently not the standard …. Force everyone to do it … Becoming the industry standard . Far prefer the Zoopla method, there if you want it
Rightmove was an industry standard long before Zoopla existed, all of the software service suppliers had RM standard feeds by 2004, 4 years ahead of the ‘Distruptors speech’ in January 2008.
It makes sense to adopt a universal feed with known data contents, it makes sense to use most widely used one as a base. It is folly to allow all service suppliers to dictate their own feed format and it is as easy for the Zoopla coders to adjust their data collections as it is for all DAAS and SAAS suppliers to change theirs to suit.
You issued the point Robert , real time is currently not the industry standard but Rightmove have said we will make you do it… The. It becomes the industry standard . It’s a self filling prophecy
There is no problem with real time feeds it is a matter of who owns and controls their content and directs what is fed first.
Generation 5 agent technology is now developed live and tested. G5 changes the way things are done; Agents should be feeding their own sites first and using the portals as a safety net, restricting the portal contents to nothing more than a price, single photo, description and link through to the agent’s site.
These live feeds are a life support system for technology introduced in 1996, compassion and decency says it is about time to say goodbye
Oh look someone has left a fine wooden horse outside the gate.
Do not use either real time feed until you fully understand; the contents of the data feed ( ask someone completely independent to explain exactly what data is coming out of your system) Exactly where the data is going, who has access to it, who is authorised to look at it, who it is shared with.
Take the software agreement to your solicitor and understand the implications and warrants you are signing away in relation to data protection regulations. I have seen two service contracts that I simply would not sign and would not allow any client to agree to. From one conversation I had 7 in 10 agents do not realise what they have authorised and warranted by agreeing to a software licence they have signed but not read or understood.
To keep it very simple do not use either real time data feed until you understand the contents, implications or full effects and costs on your business.
If agents want a real time data feed [it is not up to any service supplier to dictate compulsory use or recommend software switching to colluding partner firms] the Agents should own and control the data feed. By all means use RM rtdf as a standard to code to and use that as the basis of a universal feed to all other portals but it is vital agents remain in control of what is going on. At the moment some agents are blissfully unaware of what is happening to the data in their cloud based systems, who has access to it and who/what their data is fuelling.
With respect you boys should be getting to target not reading PIE please come back and dislike my post after lunch. If you haven’t got orders/prospects to chase how’s your diary looking for next week?
I seem to remember exactly this sort of *********** (credit: Jonnie) being forewarned to us a year or so ago, Robert – and you got a fair bit of flak on the back of it.
My guess is that today there’s a lot of people sitting thinking “I guess he was right after all…”
I am not concerned about how many pennies drop Peebee, it is more about what is done about it and how the hierarchy of service supplies is re-established and maintained.
It is not up to Rightmove, Zoopla or software service suppliers to dictate anything to agents, they are a service suppliers to a service industry, as big and mighty as they are only their broadband connection, data centre and electricity suppliers come lower in the pecking order.
Sorry, Robert – I wasn’t trying to infer or suggest you would be sitting thinking ‘Told you so…” in case that’s the way it reads – ‘cos you’re not that kind in the first place and it’s certainly not what I meant.
My point is that your ‘outside’ view of the industry and its’ supply chain gives you a completely different perspective which should not be dismissed or ignored without serious consideration of the “What if…?” effect.
It is enough to say I resigned from a well paid, high achieving career on a matter of honesty, integrity and respect for agent clients 6 years ago and have bored you all to the point of exhaustion with a single message.
If you have Encore Live as your software provider, then there is a portal section which allows you to select the portals and the delay in which they will release the feed to each one.
Or if you want, you can deselect it (a portal) all together so it never appears on that site.
3 dislikes on a factual statement of what a piece of software can do?
Do you dislike the function?
or
Do you dislike I told you about the function?