Rightmove has been accused of ignoring instances where agents have allegedly re-listed properties that have been sold in a bid to skew figures and boost inventories.
An agent, who wishes to remain anonymous, has contacted EAT claiming that at least two agencies in one town were re-listing properties that had actually sold.
“I want to bring to your attention the fact that many agents are now blatantly flouting Rightmove data quality rules, giving them an unfair advantage over us that play by the rules, and Rightmove are doing nothing to make these agents take down misleading info” claimed the agent.
He went on to write that two named agencies “have in the past few weeks virtually doubled their ‘stock’ on Rightmove, by re-listing sold properties that completed months ago. These sold houses will help them manipulate Rightmove market intel and also give the general public the illusion they are selling more houses, when they are not” says the exasperated agent.
“Both myself and other agents have reported this weeks ago but Rightmove have done nothing” continued the agent, who provided three specific examples of properties alleged to have been recently sold but then relisted on the portal. “This is just a small snapshot” he claimed.
Estate Agent Today put the allegations to Rightmove.
A spokesperson responded: “All complaints we receive about potentially reloaded or sold properties are handled by our Data Quality team. In some cases inaccurate listings can be loaded in error if an agent is experiencing issues with their datafeed, but if we investigate and find that it has been a deliberate action we have a policy in place for this and we can make agent branches invisible if they are a repeat offender.”
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This is not just relevent to sales there are letting agents that also keep their stock as available one agent in our area show way in excess of any of the peers and had recently listed a property that was first added in february 2017
well with a 94% (currently) vote that most agents have noticed it in their town, shows the data quality at Rightmove is lacking!
When I worked for Countrywide we were forced by our Regional Manager to keep all stick available. I remember at one point our system and right move said we had 64 available to sale. In fact we had 7! This is the same in every Countrywide office!
We have similarly reported to Rightmove companies in our locality re-loading properties that have either been let or sold - alas to no avail.
May be it's down to problems in their Data Quality team, or the fact that they have such a dominant market position that they don't need to worry about such issues ?
Either way, RM really do need to "up their game"in this regard.
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