Rightmove has “failed miserably” to support estate agents - claim

A prominent agency owner and industry figure has attacked Rightmove for failing to support estate agents and has accused it of a lack of creativity on social media and over technical development.

In a video interview available to Estate Agent Today readers at the bottom of this story, Simon Shinerock - chairman of Choices Estate Agents - says the leading portal has “failed miserably” to show empathy for estate agents individually and as an industry.

"I have a website, I want to promote my website, they do everything possible to stop the traffic going from Rightmove to my website. Why can't they offer me an open market search on my website? Why can't they develop my business?” he asks.

In the interview, Shinerock also criticises the portal for its lack of creativity. He says Rightmove's offering is more or less the same as when it launched, but that agents are now charged a huge amount more for the same product.

He describes Rightmove's proposition as 'purely passive’. "How come Rightmove - the so-called leader in the portal business - has done nothing on social media? You could almost say they are anti-social media," Shinerock argues.

"As a company, they are holding the industry back to some degree because of their dominant position.”

In the interview - conducted by industry commentator Christopher Watkin - Shinerock says agents’ suspicions about Rightmove are justified.

"Right from the beginning when Rightmove was free, I was super suspicious of them. That suspicion has carried on entirely through our relationship with Rightmove," he says.

He says he has been concerned to read that the portal has been testing an instant transaction function on its commercial platform. If Rightmove put an instant transaction function on its residential platform, it could be detrimental to agents, he claims.

Watkin suggests this could see Rightmove becoming the estate agents themselves, even though the firm promised it would never do that.