Spicerhaart, owners of haart, Felicity J Lord, Darlows and Chewton Rose, and board member of OnTheMarket, announced this morning that it will be retaining Rightmove as its other preferred portal, and will be dropping Zoopla.
Spicerhaart is the largest of the high street OnTheMarket agents and its public announcement follows that of single-office Barton Wyatt yesterday – the first agent to go public with its decision.
Paul Smith, CEO of Spicerhaart, said: “OnTheMarket will be run for agents by agents, and we believe that listing all our properties on the new portal will be in the best interests of our clients.
“We predict that within a year OnTheMarket will be the second biggest portal in the UK and be the biggest in five years.
“We estimate that, over time, there will be savings for all agents of up to 70% by joining the new portal. The duopoly of the current two biggest portals means that prices are continually going up – and that pushes up costs and is not in the best interest of our clients.”
OnTheMarket will launch on January 26 with a multi-million pound advertising campaign. Other major names backing the new portal – including Knight Frank, Savills, Douglas & Gordon, Chesterton, Humberts and Strutt & Parker – have yet to announce their “one other portal” strategy.
Smith added: “OnTheMarket provides an opportunity for agents of all sizes to regain control of their online advertising costs and to provide a better and more cost-effective service to customers.
“We estimate that 5,000 agents are yet to make up their mind about joining the new portal, but we are convinced it will grow to be the best property search site for selling and letting property in the UK.”
Spicerhaart will not be renewing its contract with Zoopla when it ends this weekend but will be revisiting its second choice of portal at the end of 2015.
The Spicerhaart Group has 190 sales and lettings branches throughout the UK covering six well-known high street brands including haart, Spicer McColl, Felicity J Lord and Chewton Rose.
Yesterday, south-west London agent Samuel Estates, which has three offices, also went public with its decision to drop Zoopla. The firm is a Gold member of Agents’ Mutual.
Comments (76)
I've said this before over the years. Every time we dropped RM our sales went up and our waiting list went up and our cash reserves went up and we were in control of our property stock. The only reason for going back once in a while was the hammering we would get from the corporates who had no web site of their own (I wonder why they always push RM!) when trying to get listings. We now know how to overcome this, we throw RM stats right back at our competitors vendors who were promised RM was the Holy Grail … they haven't sold their property. Never lost an instruction over RM since as long as we have been able to get in front of the client. It is nice to see some new names appearing on EYE and coming out in support of OTM, it would appear as we get closer to the New Year, that ball has started to gather pace. Someone said we need to club together …. we are and now's your chance.
Ok guys, I've followed these posts for a while and I'm interested to get reaction to this: I'm a 1 branch independent agent up north. Available stock is 30 with an under offer pipeline of 12. I only use RM, never been on Z and at the time of writing don't have my own website ( it's currently being built and will be ready in approx 3 weeks). Ok, so this week we've agreed 3 sales, I'm happy with that, decent week for us! I don't have a portal to drop, I've simply got an investment decision as far as I can see with regard to OTM. I pay in excess of 950 quid per month for RM! And… The 3 properties that we've sold this week have yet to be advertised on RM. Fluke? Or maybe …We can actually do the job! I know at least 3 people who would agree with the latter!
Red Friday for Zoopla?
Yorkshire Agent…fair comment although it would be equally fair to comment that a growing percentage of UK Estate Agents support OnTheMarket.com as the future Number One Property Portal…and it's likely that homesellers may in fact ask for their property to be advertised with OnTheMarket
I totally agree with you GPL, no one wants OTM to succeed more than me, having being a gold member from the outset.
We will ALL be dropping RM in 24 months and they will then become the biggest private sales lister in Europe – that's when the fun will begin 🙂
Why do some agents believe that RM/Zoopla moving to the FSBO market would give them a viable business (one that satisfies shareholders)? I think this is the biggest red herring going about the big portals.
Why are we afraid of a private listings? I've said it before, but if I can't compete against someone who will just copy and paste details of a similar property and take photos with a Box Brownie – while all the time thinking he's David Bailey … to be blunt I deserve the biggest kick in the **** this side of the Severn Bridge. I'll take em all on.
This this a weak move from Spicey – the whole point of this excercise was to disarm Rightmove. All they've done is encourage the industry to continue supporting a portal that's been sticking it to agents all this time. Very poor.
Don't you see it as a good business move? Zoopla are the weaker of the two sites so it surely makes sense to weaken them as much as possible in the first instance? When Rightmove see that OTM is a real threat (like I said earlier Zoopla have lost around half a million £ p/a with just Haart giving notice) their position doesn't, in my mind grow stronger. Surely they become more vunerable in the medium to long term as OTM becomes stronger and OTM members hold more bargaining power?
Zoopla is as cheap as chips (and not terrible)…
Surely dropping RM and encouraging others to do the same weakens RM? It seems the only way to damage RM is to stop using it – or is that too simplistic?
No, it's not too simplistic, and in some areas Rightmove has/will be dropped in favour of Zoopla. Going back to your original comment "the whole point of this excercise was to disarm Rightmove. "…I'm not sure it necessarily was. I think it was originally designed to stop both from constant price rises to feed the shareholders at the expense of the agents. Rightmove and Zoopla are both good advertising sites, but they were both trying to move to control the industry. Already, by being a gold member of otm, I have made considerable forward savings on Rightmove and Zoopla(the latter replaced by fixed price OTM). I think a lot of people who aren't even joining otm are considering dropping a site anyway as, in the lead up to the otm launch they have realised that, perhaps they don't actually need 2 sites to be successful.
My enquiries come from RM 30% Zoopla 25% Others 10% Google 35%. Costs RM £550/mth Zoopla/Others £299/mth Google Zero (These figures only for a letting agent). If we all invested in our own web sites and did not use any of the portals this debate would not be happening. No doubt Google would then charge us!!
I seriously think a propertyindustryeye regulated poll would be a very worthy debate, providing we can filter out The Duopoly employees… So, 7 Days from 26/01/2015… all The Registered Duopoly Estate Agents… Switch Off The Duopoly – Switch On to OnTheMarket.com
Or even better…..26/01/2015 Switch off the Duopoly……..then, don't switch back on!
I expect it would produce massive free TV news advertising for us all, not so sure about the press and the vested interest though. I can see the headline "Revolting Estate Agents"!!!.
Picking on up Jonnie's point re a Black Friday for The Duopoly?… that has legs for me I have to say… however I think it should be a Black Week!… from 26/01/15 for 7 Days.
Can Rosalind Renshaw & Co set up a Poll to ask whether agents would be interested in such a "promotion" entitled "Switch Off The Duopoly – Switch On to OnTheMarket.com"
I can easily set my property to "Non-Live" for a week and ensure that all my clients are being promoted on the Single Biggest Property Portal for that week!
What's the thoughts… Jonnie has flagged it and I am just widening the debate for a stronger "promotion"!
A single vote per registered user although they must insert which company they work for and a contact number in order that if one chose to randomly sample the votes submitted we could have some way of seeing whether is has been contaminated by Duopoly Employees!
@GPL – we were having a scrap the other day, but here we are we agreeing on this point, so that's nice. We had a similar thing years ago with the local paper round here, all got together, nice chat and coffee and all that and agreed to negotiate as one body, went quite well and carried on like that for years – Jonnie
So those firms signed up to OTM and staying with RM, do you plan to drop all the extras that RM charge for such as 'microsites', having your logo appear on each listing (this alone must cost RM a fortune to carry out!) & premium listings?
Yes, I think that will be the next phase that otm agents will move to. Especially if RM try and increase their prices.The success of Otm depends on continually weakening the sites to make otm the number 1 in time.
What a brilliant idea Property Pundit, I will probably do that now. If we all follow you on this one we will save a fortune. I hope you don't work for RM as you will probably be sacked for that idea?!!!
Ha! No, I'm just a service provider to agents (nothing digital) and past/wannabe developer who believes the pricing of RM/Zoopla is unforgivably extortionate and completely unrepresentative of what they actually do for agents.
For those who are joining OTM, why would you want to prop UP your biggest competitor and in fact, relatively strengthen it, with your properties, plus the corporate's and the online outfits. Portals only exist because we supply them with properties. Phones 4U, one of the biggest mobile from suppliers, collapsed when two phone producers withdrew supplies. If you believe in OTM and why wouldn't you? Wouldn't you want it to grow as quickly as possible? If local agents operating in the same area all agreed to drop RM, there would be no one to take competitive advantage, and the public would quickly learn that OTM held the properties they wanted.
There's a challenge for the spring market, this is probably more likely than you think when OTM gains traction.
Dropped Zoopla back in September, savings paid for the Gold membership on onthemarket.com. Easy to drop, due to the on-line valuation problems that Zoopla sometimes causes our property sales, easy explained to our clients if they asked why, and only two did. As for rightmove.co.uk always had the basic package + the logo no other extras. Will take off all the rightmove.co.uk logos off our literature and newspaper adverts and just use the onthemarket.com branding. We will still use the rightmove.co.uk on the valuation literature left at the property only just for instruction proposes. If we all push the onthemarket.com brand, first over the other portals it will be number one over time. Its up to us, we made rightmove.co.uk the number one brand and so we can also change it too 🙂
Okay, doesn't matter if you are going to http://www.onthemarket.com or not what about everyone gets together and switches off of RM for 24 hours? sort of a show of strength, Black Friday but without getting in a fight with a chav in Asda to save £20 on a telly – Jonnie
Ok enough is enough…..Will the Zoopla and Rightmove reps please stand up, this is ridiculous!
Paul H, not really sure why you keep coming back to this. Personally, the reason I started posting yesterday is for the first time the discussion was actually two-sided and people were making reasonable points, particularly for the first time on the "pro-AM" side instead of nonsense like "the portals are evil and we need to take what's ours!" You clearly like the discussion or you wouldn't continue to read and comment. So what's the problem? And why does anyone who has something to contribute to the conversation that is not overtly pro-AM automatically a Zoopla and Rightmove rep?
Ukpropmaster….hey no objections, you guys can carry on, if i'm honest i'm finding this all the comments quite interesting!
We are giving up rightmove as they are four times more expensive than Zoopla and give a similar amount of enquiries
How many branches do you have Herb?
I agree with Herb.
I just done the same ,when my contract with RM came to the end in October i didn't renew it for two reasons 1, is well over priced 2, they are not delivering any more leads than Z so it was a no brainer.
…clearly my view in Stereo! lol
Sorry, double post!
Well, my plan of action, for the Rightmove employees reading this, is to contact my fellow agents/competitors within my geographical area and work towards collectively withdrawing from RM at the same time. It will be a tough sell in the sense that we all compete against each other however the RM Rep walks into these businesses every month with a view to selling each one more products which ultimately most will be persuaded to buy and thus the playing field levels until the next round of product selling. I find it hard to believe that professional estate agents are so blinkered that they can't come together and agree on something that is clearly of mutual benefit…. however time will tell! Do estate agents want to listen to The Duopoly Salesforce or actually listen to their own professionals whom on this very, very rare occasion are trying to come together for this single mutually beneficial purpose. I would like to hear again from the estate agents in the North of England, who I believe have mutually agreed to resign from The Duopoly…. it would be very interesting to hear how competitors came together for a common goal, whilst still ultimately remaining competitors!… which is how it should be. In the interim, every single estate agency business in the UK that values their profession and the service we provide to our clients should revert to a Standard Only Rightmove listing which then collectively levels the playing field whilst probably halving Rightmove monthly income! And ending on the most POSITIVE note of all?…. OnTheMarket.com 26/01/15… At last!
Well, my plan of action, for the Rightmove employees reading this, is to contact my fellow agents/competitors within my geographical area and work towards collectively withdrawing from RM at the same time. It will be a tough sell in the sense that we all compete against each other however the RM Rep walks into these businesses every month with a view to selling each one more products which ultimately most will be persuaded to buy and thus the playing field levels until the next round of product selling. I find it hard to believe that professional estate agents are so blinkered that they can't come together and agree on something that is clearly of mutual benefit…. however time will tell! Do estate agents want to listen to The Duopoly Salesforce or actually listen to their own professionals whom on this very, very rare occasion are trying to come together for this single mutually beneficial purpose. I would like to hear again from the estate agents in the North of England, who I believe have mutually agreed to resign from The Duopoly…. it would be very interesting to hear how competitors came together for a common goal, whilst still ultimately remaining competitors!… which is how it should be. In the interim, every single estate agency business in the UK that value their profession and the service we provide to out vlients should revert to a Standard Only Rightmove listing which then collectively levels the playing field whilst ptobably halving Rightmove monthly income! And ending on the most POSITIVE note of all?…. OnTheMarket.com 26/01/15… At last!
Interesting that Zoopla's share price is up nearly 3%, looks like the city folk are not tuned in yet.
Call me cynical, but I don't really trust share prices … simply because they can be massaged to show whatever you want to show. I know that Zooplas share price is 4.3% LOWER today than it was a month ago – unless Google is lying to me. For some reason there were 3,580,292 shares traded on Tuesday, when the average for the 6 days before was about 439,000 a day – what happened Tuesday then?
Years figures announced to the market.
That's about half a £million p/a off zooplas' bottom line, not to mention the 20,000-25,000 Haart properties that won't be seen on there in 2015…..and this is just the tip of the iceberg. Those that have stomached the rise from Zoopla for next year are going to have big problems convincing sellers that Z are a major reason to instruct them in 2015.
Nobody cares! I know successful Agents that have not advertised on Zoopla for years. All the client really cares about is whether you advertise on Rightmove! So now it'll be 'We advertise on Rightmove and Zoopla or Rightmove and OTM.
The industry is changing and some of you are trying to hold onto what was. OTM is such an old fashioned, backwards way of thinking. Good luck!
"OTM is such an old fashioned, backwards way of thinking."………..Could you explain why?
Prize for the first agent with more than 5 branches to announce they're leaving Rightmove…..
If the prize is a year for all my branches to go on Zoopla for free I'll do it!…..assuming Zoopla are still a credible advertising portal(with enough properties) come the end of Jan!
"assuming Zoopla are still a credible advertising portal"….Indeed Wilko, come January I believe it will be extremely likely that a vendor/landlord is going to query the judgement of an agent who is stuck on either RM/Z and not on OTM with all the other big and well established companies such as Spicer Haart and many others that have signed up. The tide has now turned completely!
Other major names backing the new portal – including Knight Frank, Savills, Douglas & Gordon, Chesterton, Humberts and Strutt & Parker – have yet to announce their “one other portal” strategy.—– Come on, it is now time to say.
For the long term sake of the industry agents have gotta consider pulling off Rightmove.
They are already game keeper and poacher.
"Rightmove. They are already game keeper and poacher"…….Not when they see what has been done to zoopla. They will increase the fees of online agents and agents not on otm, but they will treat those on otm much better as they have proved they will do something about any ridiculous increases. Like I've said before RM offered a much lower monthly office fee to stay with them in 2015. Zoopla wanted to increase.
Great news, thats something else we can use. Not that Haart are any problem for us!
You go for it matey- pay those duopoly fees til your heart's content! Bad OTM trying to get the industry together. Great to see you're so confident about your ability to compete with Haart that you've taken the time to tell us all about it.
Ho ho ho Tis the season to be jolly!
The quickest way for OTM to succeed (and I hope it does) is if it is the only portal that has got the most properties on it in any given town. That is the quickest way for it gain traction and find its way into people's 'bookmarks'. Barring the corporate groups, initially at least, all the independent Agents in the country have the opportunity to make this happen. Strikes me that the current position of continuing to list on RM is only going to make them stronger and give them the opportunity to hike prices even quicker. If Agents can't ensure that their own 'mutual' website has the most stock on it then what have RM got to be worried about?
I totally agree with this comment.
It's by far the most accurate on here today
Yes indeed. And there are only two ways OTM can have the most portals: OTM can have a higher %, or the existing portals can have a lower %–obvious, right? That's why I don't get this stance by OTM supporters, particularly in smaller towns where RM is dominant, to keep a stable of OTM and RM. If everyone follows that strategy it just ensures that RM thrives and OTM eventually fails.
Sorry not the most portals. The most properties.
Rightmove have told us that our fees will be going up again in March and they have made a stance to just carry on with their pricing/business model as they 'know' OTM won't cause any detriment to them. We are a signed up gold member for OTM but I had expressed my main concern that everyone would drop Zoopla and this would just strengthen Rightmove further. I dislike Rightmove with a passion and believe they hold complete contempt for their customers but if everyone leaves Zoopla the only sensible business decision is to keep Rightmove. Is anyone out there leaving Rightmove?????
I suspect you are right Urbanite, I can see this as being a very bleak December for Zoopla. I'm sure Rightmove will look to profit perhaps in the short term, but it will be a very unwise thing for them to openly try to gain momentum from this situation, they already have little customer loyalty and their fall when it comes is likely to be even more spectacular.
Explain why it will be an unwise thing for them to do? If no one leaves them they will still have all-of-market exposure, and therefore no one will have any reason to go to OTM (which you seem to forget no one has yet heard of), since it will have less inventory than Rightmove. When they come to you this time next year telling you they are jacking your rates 20%, when you are saving money by not paying Zoopla but have a useless marketing expense in OTM that provides virtually no leads…THAT's when you're going to leave them? Somehow I don't see that happening.
The reason that Zoopla has gained market over the last few years wasn't because they had access to a whole new sector of possible buyers, they didn't, it was because estate agents saw some market advantage in being able to tell potential sellers they were on a number of portals. Further the "success" of Zoopla has been wholly down to this and their statistics merely reflect the levels of stock that extended marketing that agents did, afforded them. I fully expect that OTM will become the leading portal for stock in the UK over the next few years, and remember that is the ONLY reason why either Z or RM have been successful, its not because of what they do, its simply that they have had the greater collection of property. But as I have said once OTM has that position, the choice of second portal for that long term extended marketing is up for grabs, right now it will be RM I'm sure, but I don't expect Z to disappear, so down the line that choice is less obvious.
I want to better understand this statement: "it was because estate agents saw some market advantage in being able to tell potential sellers they were on a number of portals." So then you are saying that potential vendors do in fact care that they are advertised on multiple portals (they must if this is enough of a selling point to justify paying ZPG), but they aren't going to care which portals those are, as long as they are on Rightmove? So why not put them on Rightmove and propertypigeon or some other equally obscure website? Why ZPG?
I am running out of reply options ukprop, but no I don't believe ALL vendors did care about that point in isolation, but estate agents look for all sorts of distinctions in a competitive market place, and additional portal marketing would have been one of those list of USP's they promoted that they did. Also remember that until this year many agents were getting Zoopla very very cheaply and to be fair they sold themselves to the agents well. Personally I like the guys at Z and would like to return to them someday but for now RM isn't as replaceable, but as I have said sometime in this next few years they will be and certainly what will then affect my decision is what they do now.
Got it, makes sense thanks.
Real Agent…"they already have little customer loyalty " doesnt seem to matter nes pas ? They are hated, despised and I think the message they are getting is "We are working to try and get rid of you,however we are too scared to do so right now.Would you not screw us over whilst our plans unfold!"
Maybe they will and maybe they won't but if they do then it will be a short lived gain for them. Ultimately the quicker the traction of OTM the shorter the breathing space RM will have .I hope this is an incentive for agents to get behind this.
Very dangerous words from this RealAgent.
You think that somehow OTM getting traction will diminish consumer demand for Rightmove? You are completely mistaken and show that you do not understand how consumers think.
@Urbanite…..I was offered a reduction to stay with RM with my branches…do you pay basic, or basic and add-ons?……If you have add ons then just ask them to give you a basic branch fixed rate. The problem is we are all paying different amounts on RM. Ask to see their national ratecard for advertising…….it makes interesting reading…….it simply says …"charge customers as much as we can possibly get away with".. I think the survey that the eye have carried out on monthly portal subs will be VERY interesting.
…"charge customers as much as we can possibly get away with".. I , of course, imagined that it would be something like that…..I haven't seen a national ratecard in truth……has anyone?
Once again a big EYE welcome to the new posters this morning – where have you been all year!!
Paul H Ive been reading this all year. Rarely heard a good word about Rightmove yet when push comes to shove and we all have an opportunity to do something, like I said, all I hear from every agent I speak to is 'oh no, I am not pulling off Rightmove'
It's pretty clear that there is a consensus to reach the no 2 spot first, then push for the summit. Not complicated.
its that lack of ambition that is leaving alot of agents on the fence. No2 spot is the easy one, Mr Wyatt on Thurs. Spicer on Fri, all shouting about Onthemarket from their office rooftops whilst still giving far greater financial support to its biggest competitor. Any other industry and come the end of Jan , the equivalent of the onthemarket would be the dominant portal and the equivalent of RM/Z would be on their backsides,
Not complicated,
Same old, same old. 'On the Market is going to be the biggest portal…….oh no we are not pulling off Rightmove…they are by far and a way our biggest competition but we are still going to chuck a load of money at them every month and they wont know whats hit them!'
"The duopoly of the current two biggest portals means that prices are continually going up – and that pushes up costs and is not in the best interest of our clients.”
Yet Zoopla is a cheaper subscription than Rightmove! It's got nothing to do with cost. Yes they're expensive but it's to do with the fear of change within this industry, something that's inevitable. Good luck!
Nextchapter. If you are going to post, please make it obvious you are stating YOUR opinion as opposed to a fact. The truth is you have no idea what Spicerhaarts motivation is do you.
Doh!
You have completely missed the point here. This is about objecting to the role a supplier to the industry is taking in FACILITATING change and using our aggregated data in the process. It is 'ultra vires' and not what we have charged them to do.
Portals should not act as market makers. They should serve their clients, the estate agents, pure and simple.
OTM understand this it seems looking at today's other article on what they won't be doing.
Succinctly put HI, I think for most agents thats exactly what this is about.