zoopla.co.uk’s TemptMe Under Fire
March 3, 2009 by Emma Sorensen
UK property website zoopla.co.uk has reportedly come under criticism from UK estate agents.
The Negotiator has revealed that the National Association of Estate Agents (NAEA) has written to its members over concerns that the portal has a private listings function.
The concerns seem to be over the website’s unique “TemptMe” function.
Peter Bolton King, chief executive of the NAEA, was quoted in the Negotiator as saying: “While on the face of it, it does look as though it’s all agents’ properties, [but] if you click on the TemptMe! [button], that appears to be a whole load of private ads. So it would appear that this site mixes agents adverts and private adverts.”
zoopla.co.uk’s CEO Alex Chesterman disagreed with the allegations, and said the portal did not endorse private seller listings, and pushed buyers towards agents.
TemptMe! is a tool through which buyers can register their interest in properties not yet on the market and, conversely, is also a tool for vendors who are not planning to sell to test the waters by naming a price at which they would sell, and gauging the response.
Until recently zoopla.co.uk has specialised in providing residential property market information. The have now begun to accept listings from UK agents on a pay-per-lead basis.
In a recent interview with propertyportalwatch.com, founder and CEO Alex Chesterman spoke about the changes to zoopla.co.uk saying: “The response to our offering has been overwhelmingly positive from estate agents, both large and small. Not only with regard to the pay-per-lead element which is being welcomed as a long overdue shift in the market but also our unique ability to drive vendor leads to agents as well as buyer leads.”
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UK portal zoopla.co.uk has released its first set of audience figures since integrating with propertyfinder.com, hotproperty.co.uk, and thinkproperty.com, and the results have it in the number two spot. The Nielsen figures quoted by zoopla.co.uk have November traffic at rightmove.co.uk at 2,614,000 unique visitors. zoopla.co.uk follows with 1,126,000 unique visitors, primelocation.com had 976,000, findaproperty.com had 948,000, and vebra.com came in fifth place with 732,000....
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Why are agents so worried about private ads? It is the same here in Australia. If they were providing a valuable service people would not consider private ads, and if selling a property is such a specialised profession then the private ads would be useless anyway and the owner would eventually resort to using an agent.
As a professional software development I am not at all worried about backyard hackers writing software and building web sites because I know that when they mess up the owner will eventually come to me to fix the mess. That is how agents need to look at it.
Zoopla also feeds listings from estatecreate, which are from private sellers. I would have thought that, that would annoy agents too.
Ken Adams is incorrect.
Zoopla.co.uk does not take listings from estatecreate or any other private listing business. Nor does it promote private selling. Click the link.
All Zoopla.co.uk is about is creating leads for agents – if we don’t, we don’t get paid. Surely this pay-for-performance model is the best way for agents to be certain that their portal is absolutely aligned with their interests?
[...] private sale listings or only take listings from real estate agents or brokers. This issue was news again in the UK last week with agents accusing zoopla.co.uk of accepting private listings via its [...]
[...] AHIPP action comes after the National Association of Estate Agents (NAEA) wrote to its members over concerns that TemptMe tool meant that zoopla.co.uk could provide private [...]