Are Rightmove/Zoopla about to go out of business??

[Streetrod]

Ok that is a bit of an inflammatory remark but here’s the thing.

The agencies have come together and set up their own listings web sight that does not charge them to list properties on it, you can find it here: www.onthemarket.com Apparently the agencies were getting feed up by the charges being laid down by the established sites. Their own site apparently will stipulate that you can only advertise with them if you agree to use only one other site so forcing customers away from the current sights. How do you think this will play out?

I actually like the layout of onthemarket a lot more than the others

[Croutons]

I think their logo looks like a 9 year old liked their Spitfire Airfix kit a little too much... Quite why they appear to have been inspired by the RAF is a mystery...

there is a thread running btw http://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?h=...

[lj04]

Are you an estate agent. I think they are vastly overpaid and people will slowly move their business to online agents to get on right move or zoopla.

[spaceship]

It'll take a while before they are a rival to rightmove or zoopla - when searching in my area, there are hardly any houses listed compared to the two established sites.

[TTmonkey]

spaceship said:

It'll take a while before they are a rival to rightmove or zoopla - when searching in my area, there are hardly any houses listed compared to the two established sites.

Give them a chance they've just launched.

And many estate agents are signing up, because its a lot cheaper. Part of the sign up deal is that the EA's will agree to give onthemarket a two day head start over zoopla/rightmove, and will oly multi list on this site and one of the other two.

I thik it will work.

[Funk]

I'm surprised such anti-competitive behaviour is allowed..?

[JungleJim]

Funk said:

I'm surprised such anti-competitive behaviour is allowed..?

You mean like estate agents charging higher fee if you list with other estate agents?

[FourWheelDrift]

Streetrod said:

Their own site apparently will stipulate that you can only advertise with them if you agree to use only one other site so forcing customers away from the current sights. How do you think this will play out?

Same houses as Rightmove have advertised so that's not working.

[CoolHands]

doesn't matter does it? If they become super popular, they will raise prices, another entrant will undercut them...and so turns the wheel.

[spaceship]

TTmonkey said:

spaceship said:

It'll take a while before they are a rival to rightmove or zoopla - when searching in my area, there are hardly any houses listed compared to the two established sites.

Give them a chance they've just launched.

I get that, but that OP asked if rightmove/zoopla are about to go out of business. Judging by the number of properties on at present, I'd say no. Hence my original comment.

As someone looking to buy a house at the moment, I'll be sticking with rightmove/zoopla as they show all the houses for sale in my area.

[Gareth79]

CoolHands said:

doesn't matter does it? If they become super popular, they will raise prices, another entrant will undercut them...and so turns the wheel.

It seems to be a mutual, so the fees would be limited to cover costs etc.

Given the combined marketing powers of lots of estate agents (in their own adverts, literature and websites), and that a property listing website is relatively straightforward, I'm surprised it hasn't been done sooner.

[Funk]

Why do you think Zoopla rushed to get its IPO done before this launched....

[DrTre]

Rightmove was set up by a group of agencies wasn't it?

Give it ten years and there won't be (m)any agencies, sell your own house websites will take over particularly when they integrate with the big web sites eg tepilo which advertise on rightmove

[alock]

Streetrod said:

Apparently the agencies were getting feed up by the charges being laid down by the established sites.

Estate agents do live in an odd world. Their fees dwarf those of the online sites and yet the online sites are the ones finding houses for buyers.

Recruitment agencies need to take note. Another dinosaur industry that thinks they can connect buyers with sellers better than the Internet while charging thousands of pounds for the service.

[Streetrod]

I am no agent by the way, I was just wondering what you more learned folk thought of the idea. As others have said, is this not anti-competitive behaviour. And if it is what kind of responce can we expect from the established players? At the moment it can only be in the interest of agents to promote this new service surely

[Jobbo]

Sold my previous house 6 years ago and the agent told me about this (or something which sounds suspiciously like it) - if they'd been a bit quicker bringing it to market, imagine where it would be today.

[Jimmyarm]

All we need now is an aggregator website that pulls all the data from them so is poor folk looking don't have to check three websites

[Mark Benson]

I think it's more a move by the traditional agents to recoup market share lost to the 'sell your own' online agents who are slowly showing people that selling your house is not a complicated affair and that agents get paid a lot of money for all too often very little work.

There are good agents, I know one or two personally that I think do a fantastic job. But there are far, far too many taking a relatively large amount of money for some measurements, poor photos and a few perfunctory sentences. People are realising they they could do just as good a job themselves for a couple of hundred quid.

They tried to block the online agents from Rightmove and Zoopla way back in 2007 and were defeated in court IIRC, so now they're trying again with another site. Excluding online agents and making all the others choose to drop either Rightmove or Zoopla is, in my book anti-competitive and for that reason it deserves to fail.

[TTmonkey]

spaceship said:

As someone looking to buy a house at the moment, I'll be sticking with rightmove/zoopla as they show all the houses for sale in my area.

No, they don't. They show all the houses listed by EA's that advertise with them, which is not everyone.

[Slurms]

Problem is the existing sites work, so it's a real risk moving your listings exclusively to another site with less traffic.

Lets see if they are still trading in 12 months.