Portal wars resume as Zoopla tells agents that OTM’s original plans are ‘out of the window’

Zoopla has stepped up efforts to win back agents with an email yesterday afternoon headed “Have you heard the latest!”

The text – complete with a link to EYE’s story last Friday morning – says:

“Hope you’re keeping well & business is good?

“As you will be aware, ZPG continues to invest significantly into marketing and technology innovation in Zoopla and PrimeLocation.

“We have also made several new business acquisitons (uSwitch, Hometrack, PSG, Expert Agent and Technicweb), with the main objective to be the most useful resource to property professionals.

“Our continued progression is providing outstanding commercial value to our members and enables us to provide additional revenue streams for members that no other property portal can offer.

“In OnTheMarket’s announcement last week, their one-other-portal rule will be dropped as part of their demutualisation plans;

https://www.propertyindustryeye.com/newsflash-agents-mutual-confirms-50m-stock-market-flotation/

“Agents’ Mutual was founded on the principle of being 100% agent-owned and run for lower marketing fees and not for profit. All that now seems to be out the window and the new plan is to float.

“Should this change your marketing decisions at all & you would like to have a further conversation about  joining ZPG, please don’t hesitate to give me a call.”

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22 Comments

  1. Andrew Overman

    Perhaps the ZPG would care to invest significantly into the Jupix platform, to make it more robust and return to us the full functionality before last weeks outages. We still have issues with Vendor Contact management!

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    1. NewsBoy

      Very unreliable – just like hoopla!

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  2. Typhoon

    If they stopped allowing “sell by owner” adverts on via the multitude of on line only firms( they are not agents!) and stopped over selling their mortgage offers over their agent firms who have their own mortgage divisions, maybe they will win the hearts and minds of some new cutormers.

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    1. Bless You

      I really dont understand why everybody didnt back zoopla when onthemarket launched.

      (in our case it was from local old boy network losing their balls at the last minute) Zoopla were 1/3 the price and all the corporates were on it.=no brainer

      Now we have learned (through watching onthemarket completly lose  the plot with buyer behavior patterns)

      that people only go to rightmove because they have all the houses and not because they are a lovely cosy brand like disney..

      It should only take a little nudge for us all to strike on rightmove for 3 months and go to zoopla..

      if we cant do this then i want this message to be repeated in 10 years time with a massive I TOLD YOU SO title.

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  3. marccox

    When did we all get tricked into believing we need two portals to win an instruction ?

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    1. Neutral

      Well OTM are about to try to convince investors that we need 3!

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      1. Typhoon

        They’re not saying that. What they are saying is we need an alternative to the two giants whose dominance over the industry is unhealthy

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    2. Bless You

      We need  2 portals to stop rightmove sucking up all our cash. without zoopla,, you would be paying £2000  now.

      Due to inept industry and team work we might have to wait for rightmove to get a monopoly…i wonder what they would have to do if deemed unfair??

      they would probably team up with purplebricks and create a second big player….oh , wait,,theyve just done that.

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  4. waco79

    OTM really have no shame.

    Integrity means to stick to your principles when faced with adversity or self gain…

    Mutual?

    Not for profit?

    run by agents for agents?

    one other portal?

    nothing like sticking to your principles folks- I just can’t believe the statements from OTM don’t come with more of an apology

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    1. JAM01

      ….and when the virtual, online-only agents are allowed to join….

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  5. surrey1

    Despite my current anger with OTM, I still think Zoopla is quite simply an awful, dog’s dinner of a site, which was dropped with little hesitation based on the number and quality of leads it produced. That’s before we even considered the rubbish valuation tool, and publicly listed page visits, and over selling of additional services.

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  6. Suffolk Agent

    Zoopla – didn’t need it before don’t need it now.

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    1. Bless You

      without zoopla,, you would be paying £2000 for rightmove now. Thats a lot of money when 90% of hot buyers and sellers search your own site as well.

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      1. NewsBoy

        Without OTM you mean!

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  7. El Burro

    Good to see the Z trolls are still alive and kicking.

    I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, ok so you aren’t on OTM and you find the whole way it’s been run and what’s been done, objectionable.

    So what? What’s it got to do with you and why do you care?

    I don’t give a monkeys if my competitors are throwing money down the drain, in fact the more the merrier.

    But if Zoopla is so much of a better option how come you aren’t able to use that as an instruction winner against your OTM competitors? Or are you just not very good at your job?

    Or is your job actually sitting in a bedsit somewhere with a job description that has one task, ‘Provide anti OTM blog fodder at every opportunity’?

    Time for your next Pot Noodle . . . .

     

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  8. RealAgent

    I would love to know what idiot at Zoopla believes it a good idea to go chasing after agents like a “chancer”

    Have they learnt nothing from the tainted image they created for themselves over the whole OTM bashing?

     

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  9. FakeNews

    Since when is a marketing email considered a ‘war’? #slownewsday

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  10. J1

    Having set up an agency to be the polar opposite of Purplebricks, and to provide an outstanding service, I decided to join Zoopla & RM

    The sales people are dreadful at Zoopla but the telephone support are okay I suppose

    They have provided very few leads, but I would suspect more than OTM would have as OTM is anonymous

    Unfortunately, I think we are all barking up the wrong tree if we think the portals care about our exposure as a brand/firm

    It may sound daft, but the newspapers (when people looked at them for property) gave agents a proper platform to advertise their services – the portals do not do this

    The one that decides to, will be to the one that wins in my view

    In the meantime we worry to much about them, they are a means of advertising the houses, and if being on the biggest two means winning more instructions when pitching to a client then that’s why they get my vote; not for any other reason

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  11. Trevor Mealham

    Dropping the one other rule will help OTM.

    More and more VC backed budget models are coming in which sadly survive regardless of making a revenue. But to add salt to the cut, Zooplas parent company invested in YOPA which is anti traditional agency.

    Zoopla should trade with some boundaries and not bite the hand that feeds them.

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    1. Neutral

      This is factually incorrect.

      Some of the YOPA investors include DMGT, Savills, LSL.

      DMGT is NOT a parent company of ZPG. It owns c29%, making it a shareholder, not a majority owner or “parent”.
      ZPG has not invested in any online agents.

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  12. dave_d

    Zoopla – please don’t do what you did last time by bashing OTM – it just makes you look uncredible.

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    1. Trevor Mealham

      @dave_d. My gripe was the OOPr being appliedon small portal and agent platforms.

      So if removed, my gripe removes too Dave.

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