The Say No To Rightmove campaign has admitted that getting the number one portal to change its fee structure “may take a little longer to achieve.”
The campaign appears to have failed to persuade significant numbers of agents to leave Rightmove, and the Acorn Group itself - the London and south east England agency leading the campaign - remains on Rightmove as well.
In a blog on its website the campaign once again says Boomin - the new portal being launched shortly by the founders of Purplebricks - may change the landscape.
Referring to the glut of new portals launching recently the SNTR campaign says: “If Homesearch, Onedome, OpenBrix, PropertyHeads and their contemporaries are to sustain and win a game-changing amount of market share, they need huge marketing budgets and must go toe-to-toe with Rightmove, Zoopla and OnTheMarket.”
Then it goes on to say:”Perhaps the first of the challengers to launch with a properly funded, direct marketing strategy will be Boomin? Only time will tell if they can live up to their promise of being the agent’s friend whilst simultaneously seeking a more diverse set of income streams. Perhaps this will also stimulate renewed and innovative marketing strategies from both OTM and Zoopla.”
One agency backing the SNTR campaign has told Estate Agent Today confidentially that the latest campaign blog “means the white flag has been hoisted” and “Rightmove has won.”
The blog finishes by saying; “In the absence of agents setting aside their competitive nature and placing all their listings with the platform that provides best value – and nowhere else – it will be the portal that continues to win the hearts and minds of the public that sustain the greatest level of agent loyalty.
“Nevertheless, the dichotomy remains that UK independent estate agents really are the ‘kingmakers’ of the portal industry, if only they believed it. If we did all choose to align where our instructions are all listed, we could equally control what we spend.
“Say No To Rightmove remains committed to achieving major structural change, in particular the tariff paid to portals by the average estate agency business. The revolution that was threatened in March of this year may take a little longer to achieve, but the desire to achieve it has not waned!”
You can see the latest SNTR blog in full here and support from SNTR for Boomin here.
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Perhaps we need to stop the view that one portal needs to win against the others. The new challenger portals innovate and differentiate and offer consumers choice. Agents should back all the free or low cost portals. Surely if The big 3 were all free to list or low cost, agents would not limit themselves to one or two? Supporting the challengers is the only way to break this monopoly.
Just to be pedantic, if it 3, it isn't a Monopoly....
A much more balanced view than from The Negotiator. Thanks Nigel
Acorn still on there....
Well that’s standing by your guns and showing everyone you’re up for the fight .....
Not 😂
No white flag here!. And I am aware of others still leaving.Many seem to forget how much we have saved them. We may have lost a skirmish but we have not lost the war yet. As a much more balanced review in The Negotiator states “Say No To Rightmove remains committed to achieving major structural change, in particular the tariff paid to portals by the average estate agency business. The revolution that was threatened in March of this year may take a little longer to achieve, but the desire to achieve it has not waned!”
Rightmove were never going to lose, they're the cat toying with the ball of wool (agents). As Adam Pigott says above, too many agents are focusing on toppling Rightmove. This will never happen overnight but they can be beaten by erosion using a different strategy. If you think Boomin is the answer/solution, you haven't been paying attention.
Unless you hadn't noticed Rightmove are proper busy right now changing things and catching up.
They are sweaty and tired like an ageing heavyweight, keeping their head down hoping no-one will notice they are 12 months behind the curve. I've noticed I am documenting and recording the changes as they happen.
Rightmove have not only blinked but they've winced too!
The issue is simple - Greedy and stupid agents; I'll explain: In a town of 10 agents, 8 will say they will leave and mean it because it will work, and two will send leaflets to the others clients saying "your agent is leaving rightmove, come and join with us". So until your money obsessed agent grows up and gets a brain, it won't work. But if it does, the two that remained will still want the discount - you know the agents I mean, the plague every town.
How on earth can the SNTR campaign gain serious traction when the main man spearheading the operation has not even got the balls to come off RM himself! What does this say to all of the other agents he is trying to persuade to leave?
Great point, leaders lead from the front....supposedly.
It's a "class action", you all agree to leave, then leave - not one by one.
The 'fear factor' will usually win. It's not that agents 'want' to hand over the exorbitant amount of fees Rightmove demand it's that they believe they can't afford not to.
Yes Alex, and that is the point when all agents need to act?
Before RM had such a stronghold, the buyer still had choice to go directly to the agents/portal/paper.
If you allow RM to continue to bully agents, they will eventually decide to cut out the middleman... Like Purple Bricks, by independent RM agents before eventually being Right Move Estate Agents across the country...
I really don't understand this endless debate. There are 3 portals with big advertising spends that include TV ads from time to time. They attract the most views by punters so are worth paying for. Make a business decision to subscribe to somewhere between zero and three of them, plus perhaps some others that you may think worthwhile, and move on. If you judge any of them too pricey then don't use them.
If you are from Edinburgh you will probably need to subscribe to 4 - the local solicitors' property centre market share of listings is sometimes higher than Rightmove's...
Surely it is simple - all the agents in 1 town need to have a met - all agree to come off - when I was an agent we had a local paper charging 1k a page -- we all cam,e out on the same day - new price £200 page
Ive tried that, not ALL will follow, some/many have but others wont
Pathetic, "lions led by Donkeys" was what the Germans said in the war. this could not be truer about the say No to Rightmove campaign. Rightmove will be laughing there socks off at the limp wristed action taking place by the campaign leaders - they will only drop their prices in one instance and that's enough people leaving. So called industry leaders have taken the negotiation (appeasement) approach and as sure as eggs are eggs everyone will now be paying the pre covid Ransom again.
The approach they should have took is really simple
Say No To Rightmove advises all members to leave i.e serve notice - this will probably spread to agents who aren't members as well.
With a loss of 25% of their agents looming probably paying a considerably higher % of their fees (because corporates pay less) Rightmove will panic because of the potential of a snowball effect causing a collapse .
They will immediately engage "say no to Rightmove" and/or individual agents with vastly reduced fees to try and maintain the status quo.
Then a decision based on whether Rightmove will reduce there fees enough (50+%) will decide if people rescind there notice or hopefully if people move to all support another major portal, that will then become the de-facto place for people to look by market share and the stragglers still with Rightmove will come across.
I'd recommend moving to On the Market or Zoopla because they already have enough Market Share to suddenly become the place to look and should they try and do a Rightmove on Estate Agents further down the line the agents could simply do the same again.
Having finally got a captive audience thousands of disgruntled agents it feels like they are gonna squander it through a complete lack of balls - sad to watch.
Ps were approaching the end of our second year without Rightmove and savings in the region of £40,000 - Come on Murray Lee, Rob "Acorn" etc stop the waffle and lead from the front before all the agents all drift away from the cause.
With respect I have Marcus. As have Paul and David. We cancelled our contract as of 1/10.
Along with Phillip Wise of Ashmore who was part of my original group.
The other 2 of my original firms are trying extricate themselves from existing contracts
I am also aware of some other local agents who have also left
Sadly as you say, not enough
So I have stood by my word.....
This may sound strange, but what to stop RM launching an alternative/competitor portal (IE Move Right) to the other portals and undercutting them until they wilt and then being 'bought out' by RM and that takes care of their competition...?
RM had a huge advantage in their inception, that they were partially owned by 4 of the largest corporations in agency, representing about 30% of the EA market, they were contractually obliged to list on RM and no other portal. Causing the rest to struggle until conglomeration created the likes of Zoopla and OtM ......
Now heres a man with a similar view as reported in The Negotiator
"Steve Wayne, who runs estate agent firm Benjamin Stevens, says he’s unhappy about how the portal has been ‘belligerent’ in the way it has refused to engage with his agency about pricing or negotiate on fees."
While we appreciate what they did for us over lockdown, we haven’t spoken to any of our reps for the last six months and that this cannot continue,”
FYI to those doubters, I have seen correspondence that RM will NOT be reducing fees again and one assumes raising them when the opportunity offers itself at contract renewals
For all the doubters...
Well this is the end of the 1st “no RM “week and we are going cold turkey….
I wanted to tell you we are doing ok although it seems a tad quieter, maybe unconnected just a slow down in our area.
HOWEVER I thought this might be of interest
We listed a flat to rent on our page, Zooplas and thenothern postals we upload too yesterday about 5.31pm
We were given the keys around mid afternoon yesterday
In fairness we had had the instruction in the past but we re-instructed as sole agent after a refurbishment
We managed to re-take new photos and re-list the property later in the afternoon
The 1st enquiries started coming through from Zoopla (ok and 1 from OneDome) 10 mins later
We had about 3-4 more soon after and again this morning
Appointments were made for today and early this afternoon a deposit was paid at the full rent and the letting agreed around 430pm this afternoon
Less than 24 hours after instructions and only with Zooplas help!!
Im not sure we have done one quite that quickly before even when we listed on "they who shall be nameless" portal
So for all those who are worried...dont be...there is a world beyond RM
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