A new property portal for sales and rentals is to be launched in February or March with the additional element of containing user reviews of estate and letting agents.
The man behind the portal, which is to be provisionally called Yellowfish Property, claims there will be between 2,000 and 3,000 sales and lettings offices signed up by the launch, which will be accompanied by television and social media advertising.
The founder of the portal - a media buyer - describes Yellowfish as "not being a competitor of Rightmove or Zoopla but another spoke in the wheel" of property portals available for the public to use.
He says agents will upload their inventories to Yellowfish, with a package costing £129.99 per branch per month; there would be no long-term tie-ins of the kind found in the established portals.
He anticipates that the portal will begin with a concentration of agents operating in major cities - especially London, Manchester and Cardiff - but there will be "a spread from across the country" as well.
The portal is in discussion with information providers such as Property Detective to see what additional consumer-focussed data can be added to agents' property details, and has developers "working hard as we speak" to create the site infrastructure, according to a spokesman.
He says work on a launch TV advertisement is beginning in November and the portal founders are currently considering possible public relations advisers.
The spokesman anticipates that most agents will currently be on Rightmove or Zoopla or both, but not OnTheMarket because of its 'only one other portal' rule.
The major USP of Yellowfish will be agency reviews by past or current customers - a challenging activity as the operators of current agency review sites have found.
The portal's spokesman says agents will have no involvement in the reviews, other than to authenticate that the identities of the review-posters confirm that they were or are genuine agency clients. There will also be checks conducted by the portal itself on posters' IP addresses.
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Yet another portal!! It wont take off, not without some sort of free period of a year something.
2000 - 3000 agents signed up for launch. Sorry but what rubbish!
There is no appetite from agents for yet another property portal especially on which is also a review site.
Telling that the founder is a "Media buyer" - Somebody else who has little or no knowledge of our industry thinking they know what we want when in actual fact they have no idea.
Has is maybe occurred to you that they might have done some research writhin the industry. When I look at the service provision by the successful two Rightmove and Zoopla, it's be usage they have their marketing on point and have experts who understand the industry.
Let's not be hasty and watch to see what they are really offering.
Jason,
Just seen your comments (time on my hands today so looking through bits and bobs)
Answer is no they have not done their research. Unless of course you mean by research asking half a dozen agents he may know.
Like John points out Houser offered it for free but is a popular as a case of the clap!
Agreed - SP. Who remembers Houser from around this time last year? Whatever happened to them - absolute tosh. RM, Z and/or OTM are more than enough for agents to spend their money on!
Well it's very true that zooplankton, RM and OTM are in place, did we not long ago make a hoopla about fees and charges...what if the service provision is right, traffic is better than one of the three and looks like a cheaper cost to list. Will agent say no to it.
Well if you did say no then your definitely of a myopic and non free thinking view which can be harmful to a business.
Sorry I mean put zoopla
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