I remember the first time technology really grabbed me.
My son was travelling India alone and after a month in Goa was starting an ad hoc train tour of India.
He asked if he could spend his first night’s late arrival in a hotel close to the train station in Pune. I agreed.
At 10.30 that night I got a call from him, knackered and outside the station being bombarded by tuk tuk drivers offering to take him to the hotel – which he thought was next to the station.
I got out an iPad, Google Mapped the hotel in satellite mode, and asked whether he was standing outside the station.
I asked if he could see a footbridge over the railway to the right of the entrance and as he was walking over it told him to turn right and then first left and asked if he could see the hotel. He could.
We all know technology is out there, but too often it’s technology for its own sake.
It’s easy to feel that we should (whenever using this word I stop and ask myself why) be using more technology and that not doing so renders us inadequate, or behind the times.
Tech has been a buzzword this year, particularly in property, but there seem to be some who view estate agents as gullible consumers.
Tech company investments are ‘sold’ with over-priced visions of huge IPOs, often arrived at by venture capital or crowdfunding, then worked back to what an agent needs to pay to extract that value.
Well, agents will not adopt something new unless they see a commercial advantage – or they have a Pune railway station moment.
At the centre of this is the dichotomy, not always grasped by those wedded to tech, that the selling and buying of property is an emotional process, and luckily, as of now, proptech hasn’t replaced that most defining of human characteristics.
Having recently seen some of the country’s leading agents I can confirm that there is sane development in the industry, designed to see how sellers and buyers can be better served – which is exactly how it should be.
The lettings sector is perhaps ahead of the game insofar as most lettings processes are fast and poorly served even by the internet.
It is also the most open to abuse and so tech that helps people find, see and reserve a property to rent is clearly a worthwhile development, and letting agents have no trouble seeing that.
Sadly, sales is still struggling out of the 20th century.
Anyone criticising legal practices is deemed an iconoclast, while getting a mortgage is more difficult, esoteric and fraught than at any time I can remember.
Portals are simply a better form of advertising and arguably present buyers with too much choice. Email inboxes create a daunting workload and the best communication is still via a tool invented in 1876.
If there’s a lesson here it’s that anyone with a great idea for the property industry should run it past an agent first.
* Ed Mead is now a director of outsourced viewing service www.Viewber.co.uk and an independent property consultant / commentator: ed-mead.com
How about the agents coming up with the great ideas? Most of the best ideas throughout time have been born out of necessity. We have five ideas we are developing and looking to develop with funding. I am sure there are many other independent agents out there that also have great ideas they would like help in developing. If you are one and interested put a comment in this thread.
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Guess no-one likes the idea of fellow independent agents pooling together to help other fellow independent agents combat the growing threat from the cheap fee online only fraternity. Disappointing above all else is that the online agents actually do seem to back each other up.
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I’m always open to ideas, I’ve e-mailed you separately.
I did think that a national portal juggling day could be fun, everyone takes their properties off, and reloads them as many times as possible, we could even have an awards dinner ( which we can pay for as many trophies as we like, obviously ). Robert May could judge the winner using his software which could show who juggled the most.
Enough publicity and bingo, we have just discredited any stats that RM and Zoopla produce, or the juggling agents put out.
Would this maybe highlight at least a couple of things wrong ?
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I especially like the idea of the dinner and the unlimited awards. Here are a few of my suggestions;
Best Vampire Juggle (on and off within the hours of darkness)
Highest Recorded Number in one minute (would Guinness be interested?)
Most Smooth Branch to Branch Switching Juggle (all about timing)
Hardest To Detect Double Listings Of Same Property
Highest Variation Of Price Juggle Within Seven Day Period
Jingle Bells Juggles – Most Sold/Unsold Switches On One Property Over The Festive Period
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A portal juggling day by agents who don’t normal scam the public would play right into the hand of those that do.
There is enough quality data to drive the wrongdoers out of the industry and giving me a stack of extra work to do would not go down well. It would only serve to confuse very clear patterns of consistent and deliberate wrongdoing.
We have managed to earn the attention and respect of the regulators and even Rightmove are making changes to accommodate a balanced realignment of the industry.
I will post a copy of the doppelgängers report to show it isn’t too hard to detect at all.
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Don’t worry Robert,
I don’t think we are going to really do it. It’s just a bit of a laugh talking about it.
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Hi AgentV – please can you contact me? We may be able to help each other! charlie.wright@easymatch.co.uk
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Hi Charlie I have sent you the email. Thanks
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Just a few hundred agents pooling together could create something huge. All for free. No cost, no time, nothing much at all except for a few minutes of their time.
My experience is that most business people are pessimistic, even if something is offered free of charge or even at cost. They just won’t have it.
Whatever you are doing, do it yourself and sell them the service. That’s what some people prefer.
There was an idea on here a few weeks ago (http://trueview.property/) which a lot of people loved. I think they loved it because it was priced really high so for them it had to be really good. If it was priced at a level an ‘app’ type of service should be priced at (ie a few pounds per property per month) it would have got the same treatment as most of the silly ideas that come and advertise on here. But they wanted 10 times the price.
Develop something, sell it at a high price, have 50% offers, make a lot of money.
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LondonR90,
Thanks for that. You seem to be outward thinking. Did you put forward an idea volunteering to develop some portal software a few weeks back…or was that someone else? Can you be contacted somewhere?
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You already have my contact details and we swapped a few emails. My name is AJ.
I have never approached agents about this idea because I do not feel they will go for it. I have done it in other business sectors and it works because those businesses are already involved in some form of SEO. They understand it. Most estate agents are either not involved or really do not know what they are doing.
My idea is simple, get together at least 300 agents in different areas and harness the power of their websites.
Benefit number 1 – free leads. We would build a very simple lead generation website and agents would be forwarded leads that from customers in their area. It would rank for general search terms on Google such as ‘houses for sale’ and ‘how to sell your house’ etc etc, there’s literally thousands of keywords with searches more than 1,000 per month. I think we could even rank for ‘estate agents’. We could literally cut Rightmoves traffic by a huge percentage.
Benefit 2 – local ranking. Each agent would help all other agents rank for local searches such as ‘estate agents liverpool’ and ‘birmingham estate agents’ etc etc, there’s a lot of keywords right there. So all member agents would start ranking very quickly and they would not even compete with each other.
Each agent would help the other non-competing agent to not only rank themselves but also rank the main national website.
It’s important to note that OTM look like they have not even built a single backlink. This means they are not doing anything to rank organically on Google, except for setting up pages with correct tags, titles etc. They have not built any links. The links they have built come from 1,700 domains. Some of those are member agents linking to them (sometimes not even from the homepage – which doesn’t make sense but I digress) and some of them are from newspapers and other blogs reporting on stories on it’s emergence and growth or just linking to interesting properties on the site. An example is PIE linking to it more than a few times. My point in OTM have done nothing except open an Adwords account and target a lot of expensive keywords. Their organic ranking has all been done by members linking to them pushing them up on Google for various competitive search terms.
300 agents could get together, harness their collective power and do a similar but better job for zero cost. All they will have to do is link to the new website the same as they link to Rightmove, Zoopla, OTM, allAgents, TPOS, Gas Safe Register etc etc etc. They’ll also have to publish a fair few articles (written by me) on their blog. That’s it.
It’s free apart from a decent server. It does not need time. It does not involve risk. They would rank locally for every keyword they can think of. They would gain free leads from the main website and never compete with anyone else.
About me:
I am an internet marketer and content writer. I worked in SEO in the ultra competitive flower delivery niche ranking websites along side more famous brands such as Interflora, Debenhams M&S, MoonPig and more. I have just recently gone solo setting up an estate agents in central London after doing my exams, getting registered etc etc. I would work on this if I was given all the London leads. Otherwise I am OK on my own.
No single internet marketer or company has gone into the estate agency field in a big way – it’s a very weak area and that’s why I chose it. Even the biggest London agents have weak online presence. Even the online agents cannot get it right. Internet marketers concentrate on niches such as loans, skip hire, flowers. That is, anything they don’t have to pick, package and post. So it’s their for the picking.
Will anyone go for this? Does it have any traction? Will there be suspicion because it’s free? I do not know. Let’s see. If there is enough interest then I will set up a site where we can go and register interest for others to see – a sure way to get more agents involved.
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Forgot to add:
The closest example of the kind of website we would be looking to build is hoa.org.uk. It’s very clever but not quite perfect. It does really well but 300 agents can do better.
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Hi AJ….yes you are right. I have been trying to talk to so many people I have lost track of some emails. Apologies, I will contact you again.
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Thanks for the mention LondonR90..
shaun.amner@trueview.property
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Give it a chance. I haven’t finished my coffee yet!
The thing is despite what the onliners would like the public to think, there’s not a single aspect of their marketing or systems that is anymore technical than what we have. I would go so far to say that its smaller independents that have the autonomy to try new things and push things to the next level.
Having said that, its not marketing tech that is going to win the war against online agents (we’ve already won that one), not when the majority of them have never even taken their cameras off of the auto setting. The tech I’m now interested in is the sort that levels the playing field, promotes agency as a service industry and weeds out the people that take the pi$$
Credit robert, chris, PeeBee and dobby
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Sorry, was in reply to you AgentV
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Thanks for your reply. Your suggestion is what I would like to achieve above all else. It would be good to contact you about your ideas.
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Tech company investments are ‘sold’ with over-priced visions of huge IPOs, often arrived at by venture capital or crowdfunding, then worked back to what an agent needs to pay to extract that value.
The internet wild west of the early 1990’s which so many have forgotten that went boom and bust. IT today has not offered anything that has radically changed selling and letting properties for the consumer, just easy access to marketing.
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But what about if there was a product that did help selling, saved your agency time and money, and helped generate new business…and was totally different to anything offered by the portals and other software providers?
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I’m always open to new things but what we seem to ever see is someones idea of what they think will help me, when in fact it is really them trying to sell me an idea which is best for them. Show me something that is different and better than what we have. A revamped idea, is no idea if you know what I mean. Impress me, mor more impostnantly provide something that my customers see as abadnonning everybody esles ideas. The holy grail?
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I agree with what you are saying. I wouldn’t try and develop anything that I wouldn’t buy and use myself. I am an agent trying to bring ideas to life….not someone trying to sell ideas to agents. However I guess not everyone is going to be interested. Not everyone wants or needs more business or wants or needs to save costs.
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However I think we should all be aware that PB are developing a new product that they believe will be a game changer. I just hope it is not along the lines of something we have had in mind…otherwise they may well start making serious roads into the independent’s market place.
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Firstly, great piece by Ed highlighting some of the current tech issues. All too often solutions are being created with little or no consideration for the agent in the process. Tech companies need to start adopting genuine agent experts as execs/non-execs to help create solutions that deliver for all.
We are currently in the build stage of a bootstrap start-up in partnership with TDS. As agents ourselves, we have spent a huge amount of time focusing on the agent experience and how to simplify integration and adoption. The aim is to transform the difficult process in to an easy automated digital process that is fully compliant yet delivers a clean, transparent digital user experience.
We hope to start testing the platform mid-Feb (we will be looking for a handful of agents to Beta) and, if all goes well, start rolling it out in April. We are also maintaining talks with key software suppliers regarding integration and have had mostly positive interactions to date.
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Put me on your list to Beta test
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I’ve got this great idea to help sell and let property.
What you do is get a placard and you get a sign writer to put information about the property like for sale or to let and then you put your website address on the it. Then you get a pole and you stick the pole ………………………………..
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