A ‘new’ property listing service has said it is in the final stages of planning, over a year after we first reported its apparently imminent launch.
This week, it said it aims to include every property listing from every agent across the UK, and will be free. Its founders have hit out at the ‘exorbitant’ fees charged by portals.
Proptyle, described as a search engine rather than a portal, is being launched by a new company, Housstech.
This has been formed in a collaboration between two firms: v360, the UK company behind Houseviz, which markets 360 degree tours, floor plans and photography to agents; and Indian tech company Proptyle.
The new search engine will not scrape or store data, but will automatically link to listings on agents’ own websites, using an intelligent bot.
The status of agents’ properties will be automatically updated.
Peter Fernandes, director of the new search engine, said that it would help estate agents to reduce their monthly advertising costs, and give control back to agents.
He said: “At the moment there are a number of different property portals which estate and letting agents use to list properties.
“The one thing they all have in common is that they are charging agents exorbitant fees to list their properties.
“There are also a number of so called ‘scraping’ sites that in our opinion are illegal as they scrape and store data. We do not do any of this. We have no conflict with agents.
“A new model for property listings is well overdue.”
He went on: “Rather than a portal – which requires agents to upload details of their properties to the site – our model is a search engine.
“The property equivalent of Google, our search engine pulls listings directly from the agents’ own websites. This means agents don’t need to register with us and it is free for them to use (exactly the same way that Google lists searches).
“It will search the website of every estate agent across the UK. This will help agents to reduce their monthly outgoing costs as they will no longer have to pay to use portals.
“Because it is a search engine rather than a portal, it uses information that is freely available in the public domain. So there are no copyright issues and the engine doesn’t infringe on any existing portal or website.
“It has been strenuously and legally checked to ensure total compliance.”
The new search engine will monetise itself by advertising optional property market services, supplied by Houseviz.
Fernandes said: “These services – e.g. interactive tours – will help estate agents to sell properties more effectively and are already being requested by vendors.
“We will be introducing other services that agents could use.”
He added that the search engine is currently in the later stages of development and is now seeking investment.
He said that Housstech is particularly keen to talk to software developers and agents who want to get involved. The eventual aim is to roll out the model to other English-speaking countries. Anyone who wants to get involved, or is interested in knowing more, can email the address below:
peter.fernandes@proptyle.co.uk
EYE did cover this apparent launch a year ago: https://www.propertyindustryeye.com/next-generation-listings-platform-offering-gets-set-to-launch-free-for-agents/
It said then that it was a property search engine “which works like Google” but displayed as a portal.
We have asked Fernandes for an update.
Sounds a lot like Globrix , anyone remember that ? Died on its a@se . Unless your going to tell people about it you’ve not got a viable product that will help us as estate agents .Also a question for Peter should he want to answer it , if you have a listing to my property from my website on your portal/search engine /strenuously checked legally compliant thingy…… which would appear first on google ? Is your aim just to steal my own traffic and then sell me ancillary services?
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Is your aim just to steal my own traffic and then sell me ancillary services? Now who do you all think that already applies to?
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It’s an interesting concept, but some agents may not have their own website….just list on the portals. I think there are some tweaks that could be done with this idea to make it very very interesting.
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what agent doesn’t have a website
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Lots of smaller agents don’t have their own web sites, could be down to cost but I suspect it’s because it allows them to circumvent advertising exact fees. Fees only need to be published on an agents own web site and in their offices, portal based micro sites just carry a generic fees schedule which our local tso says is sufficient within legislation even though it puts others at a disadvantage!
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Several words worry me “Indian tech company” , “free” and “Google”.
Google do not do free, and indian companies always want something for nothing to make money for themselves. NO THANKS.
As for Globerix, that company if I remember was owened by the Times newspaper group and if they could not make it work this crowd certainly won’t!
No such thing as a free lunch!
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Words that worry me more are ‘casual racism’.
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Get a life, its reality…… Rhod Gilbert was far more rude and p8ss taking about estate agents, and he is Welsh! Racism, for heavens sake.
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Not quite sure what Rhod Gilbert and his comments on estate agents have to do with your unqualified view of all the companies in India, but I’m sure it makes sense to you. Over there in ‘reality’.
Oh and Google is free btw. Hope you haven’t been paying for it.
Cheerio!
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It’s amazing but when someone does not have a clue what they are talking about they sign off with”bye or cheerio”!
Just goes to prove how much you know about Google commercial activities, but then again you are it seems a small mined person who likes things “free”. Your not Indian are you!
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Surely it would be “You’re not Indian are you?!” that is definitely a question.
Nice casual racism to sign off with as well.
Thank goodness for people like you in this world.
What a hero
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One of the big challenges is being able to access mixed and mass data sets to launch and introduce new models. Still ”some” softwares are not helping their agents by thinking its their right to say where the agents data can and can’t go.
Equally, hats off to the softwares who go above and beyond for their client agents who partner new ways and new ventures.
Our industry and much of its leadership is in the brown smelly stuff and there are many charlatans about claiming to be prop tech or industry guru’s who are good at social media, but really don’t have the experience or years under their belt to bring ‘better’ to the industry.
In the coming 2 years, 50% of what we take as granted will have changed. Budget isn’t the answer and will be a glitch in the time line along with a lot of the cr@p tech.
But good luck to Peter and all those others who are trying to help agents
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Trevor, keep the faith help is on the way.
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Speaks volumes that any negative comment (however slight) is being rewarded by immediate ‘Dislikes’ (just watch below…)
Childish. Unprofessional. Not a good way to impress your potential client base, Propwhatever.
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I “Liked” this comment because its message is so true. 18 and counting PeeBee – any more for any more?
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Plenty more where they came from I suspect, mrharvey – there’s an awful lot of people in India paid to do stuff like this, you knows! ;o)
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said that it would help estate agents to reduce their monthly advertising costs, and give control back to agents.
Absolutely spot on, agents were short-sighted when they created the animals we currently have as property portals. Giving away control of your industry was the biggest mistake and now most are afraid of taking back control or find themselves in a no get out of jail scenario. Fear rules many agents and what is the future for them with these same portals supporting budget agents, who’s sole aim is to put you out of business. Any new portal (or like) venture needs to offer agents guarantees, otherwise treat them like the plague.
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Great idea.
I can’t quite see what there is to be negative about….apart from the fact that everyone who posts on PIE seems to find it difficult to be positive about anything. The negatives here are exactly the same people who moaned about Rightmove for years and then didn’t get behind OTM…….and then moaned about them.
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An interesting concept for those of us paying huge fees to the major property portals. But have they considered that anyone using any of the Property Software groups estate agency packages may have a problem. Most of their software uploads property to the agents own website so given that they own Zoopla as well what’s the likelihood that they put a blocker on external sites linking to the agents own website.
Hope Proptyle have thought this one through as I could see this being perhaps the only serious contender to the major sites provided they launch it with enough media advertising to make it a reality in the eyes of the public.
Globrix was a good site until it was swallowed up by Zoopla.
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The trouble with globix … who? It was never a brand name, the public never knew they were there. Without the agents providing free advertising and promotions for a web portal on a national scale, any venture is unlikely to succeed. Take away RM or Z and the public would return to the high street (some hope) and all those anti-agents budget jokers wouldn’t be able to peddle trash (more hope).
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Thank you all for you comments and questions. We are aware that people need to know about it which is why we are seeking investment. But, this site is in the interests of agents, so why don’t you agents tell your vendors and buyers that your properties can be seen on proptyle.co.uk which points them directly to your website? This in turn is not taking traffic from your site, it is actually directing it to your website, increasing traffic for you.
There will be other services that can be purchased – at a fraction of the cost you are currently paying. We can provide details over the coming weeks.
Regarding Globrix, we believe it had far less inventory. This is a different model which shows all properties on every UK website. We would encourage all agents to have their own websites so that they are in total control for the benefit of their clients as well as themselves.
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Once bitten, twice shy! Small print and guarantees please.
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Hang on please!
“New property portal’ challenger gets set to launch – free for agents
Now you say “why we are seeking investment”
Now, please tell us; what is it?
As stated by PIE’s headline (which as we know are subject to exaggeration or negatives as you know Ms Renshaw) or are you seeking investment BEFORE and to enable its launch?
Please be upfront about the situation…. if you do not receive investment then what? It will NOT be launched or it will anyway?
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The only way this or any other property site will lower our costs is to generate such a significant volume of traffic to our business which then allows us to drop either RM or Z.
Without multi-million pound advertising that is never going to happen especially as this is a ‘free’ service.
If Proptyle are lucky they will end up towards the bottom of the first page on Google SERPS which effectively means towards the bottom of all similar property listing sites.
I’d like to know how and why Peter Fernandes thinks this can work.
PS
Google ‘estate agents in (your town) and you will see a PPC ad by HouseSimple which states they are the ‘Best Estate Agent In (Your Town/City), sell in 25 days compared to your average 65 days, and save the average seller in your town/city £5,549.
This ad is the same for EVERY town and city in the country that they advertise on Google!
I have sent a formal complaint to HouseSimple stating that on every single key performance indicator in my areas they are definitely not or anywhere near the ‘Best’, they are not selling in 25 days and that as the average sale price in my area is a touch under £200,000 the average fee savings cannot possibly be £5,549.
Unless , within 7 days, they send me information which supports each claim I have informed them that this complaint will passed to the ASA.
I suggest all agents reading this do the same.
Google PPC ads are a largely unpoliced form of advertising but are nevertheless very influential in diverting local search traffic away from high street agents. We can’t stop the onliners advertising but we can’t allow them to get away with these flagrant breaches. These PPC ads are covered by ASA rules just like any other form of advertising.
Report them!
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Spot on AgentPink
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Stupid question : but here goes anyway.
So if I do a search on a search engine for property in North London or specifically Uxbridge what comes up?
Secondly If I want to do a specific search on rightmove for property in Birmingham with 2 beds between £200,000 and £400,000 will I get a more accurate result?
So how does a search engine work for property only ?
It would need to know, beds, price, location then it trawls sites for this result. It therefore relies on how the estate agent presents this information on it’s own website for the bots to pick up on the right information.
So my stupid question is How does it work ?
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@AgentPink92 – we too have opened a dialogue with Housesimple in our 3 territories and will follow this through with the ASA UNLESS (an impossibility in my view) they can substantiate their outrageous claims !
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I agree Agentpink 92
Look at RM’s recent property price index for England and Wales.
Draw a line from Bristol to the top of the Norfolk hump and you can clearly see a north/south divide.
Property price average north of this divide is around £175,000 and average price south of this divide is £440,000.
Average price in central London is around £650,000.
So how on earth can housesimple save on average £5000 north of this divide?
Based on the RM price index of these 10 regions only one region in England and Wales could save on average £5000 and that would be Greater London.
This is based on a fee of 1% plus vat based on these averages.
North of this divide agents would have to charge closer to 3% plus vat to achieve a £5000 saving based on these averages.
Certainly no where near these £5000 quoted savings.
I fall into the northern part and my average fee is around £2000 inc.
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Knew id seen this somewhere before , launched a year ago with more properties than Rightmove , be interesting to see how the years traffic has gone ?
http://www.propertyindustryeye.com/next-generation-listings-platform-offering-gets-set-to-launch-free-for-agents/
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Yes, danny – same 5h!t, different day, it seems… fourteen months apart, to be precise!
Here’s the interesting bits:
The article last February stated that the company ‘Proptyle Limited’, as owned by two brothers based in Lahndahn by the name of Tej and Yash Patel. They had no industry knowledge or experience as far as I can establish – coming instead from banking and telecomms backgrounds. Success was therefore odds-on.
Except… ‘Proptyle Limited’ apparently lasted FOUR MONTHS. It was Gazetted within weeks of Incorporation and Dissolved on 28 June 2016.
This Proptyle (‘Housstech’) was apparently born on 25 March 2017. No immediate signs of The Brothers Patel – but there’s actually no signs of ANYONE at home according to the Companies House listing.
Question is – will this reincarnation have the same lifespan as the first – or will it be as dead as a Mayfly before we turn the calendar to June?
No doubt ‘houseviz38’ will be keeping us informed on his/her regular appearances here on EYE…
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I like it.
I am not sure what ‘imminent launch’ means, because I can go to http://www.proptyle.co.uk/ and it is there working.
I particularly like the Find Agents function, http://www.proptyle.co.uk/find-agents, because when I put our main central city post code in it comes up with the number of properties of each agent, and I know our number and it comes up with the correct number for us. That gives me a quick reference for how all the agents in town are doing. A downside is that I can see one agent with a large inventory in our city is not listed on there. I think that, as pointed out above, she (Sue!) has a website that is a frame for her Rightmove entry and so maybe the bots have not been able to crawl it and find her stock. Also, it has not picked up our, very significant, Letting side, again, probably because our own current website is too arcane for their bots to crawl and find everything we do. Otherwise all the agents are whereabouts I would have guessed their inventories to be. And we haven’t had to pay for some fancy software to do that for us. So that’s nice.
Which leads me to its freeness. We have just had our Rightmove renewal letter through and guess what..? That’s right ‘your charges are going up’. And our inventory is currently lousy. So what is the justification for putting our ‘service’ up..? No, I don’t know either. (Well, shareholders to feed, obviously). So to me, anything that strays into RM’s lane (not Zoopla!) are a welcome addition. Of course, we here are all industry knowledgeable bods, so we now know about it but the general public will not. I understand that against the millions invested in and being turned over by the main portals that they will struggle to ever get a look in. But if certain online agents can continue to get millions from investors and never make a penny, then there is probably still room for a good sales pitch of the site. I will be happy to personally give them a small push at the coal face.
Now the experienced cynical side of me expects that, if it is a success, at some time there would reach a point at which there was a communiqué stating that they were looking to make the next big step and that would require a small service fee to start to be levied. And with enough success you will eventually have another Rightmove. That’s where we will still carry on with https://www.onthemarket.com/ It is now 2 years old and 3 years away from the point where I want it to be challenging the duopoly. All of the aforementioned portals are much of a sameness and we still wait for one of them to truly innovate to beat their opposition with a stick.
I’m going to keep an eye on Proptyle. See if you can beef up your bot crawlers.
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