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Written by Rosalind Renshaw

An angry estate agent says he has been told by the Digital Property Group that, even if he wants his properties only listed on one of their sites, he must pay for the full package.

The agent had his properties removed from FindaProperty on December 1. He has since been told that the removal was because he owed Digital money, having tried to leave Primelocation earlier when, as a shareholder, he
was contractually bound to keep his properties on the site until this month.

He says that at the time he was told that if he refused to pay to list on all Digital’s sites, which include Primelocation, he could not list at all.

Estate Agent Today asked Digital if this was correct, and we received a statement which we published on Wednesday this week.  The statement said:”Agents can continue to advertise on a single site if they wish to do so, while missing out on the proven value brought by advertising on all four portals.

“Being listed on FindaProperty, Primelocation, Homesandproperty and FindaNewHome helps member agents to reach wider audiences than ever before;
connecting them with more than 3.7m consumers per month.”

However, after our story appeared, the agent then asked for his properties to be reinstated on FindaProperty. However, he says he was told that while this would be possible, he would nevertheless have to pay for the complete package. The extra cost when compared to just listing on FindaProperty would be over £42,000 a year, though the combined cost is slightly cheaper than his previous deal.

The agent said: Following the story on Estate Agent Today, I queried the situation again and was told that I didnt have to list on all of the sites, but that I would still have to pay the package price I had been quoted. Admittedly the new package price is cheaper than the old, but we had taken the decision to list on FindaProperty and not Primelocation, but have found that this is no longer an option

“I had been paying approximately £1,500 a month for FindaProperty, and Primelocation would have been a further £3,500 a month. I can't justify it. In a firm I was previously with, Primelocation was costing us £50,000 a year but we couldn't identify any leads from it.

“The Digital Property Group claim that they have calculated the value of Primelocation  on the basis that the average price of the property is higher,  hence the fee to the agent is higher, and so they reckon they are justified in charging more.

“My point is that they don't know what our % fee is and why does it cost more to list a property at £500,000 than one at £250,000. They say I am wrong in looking at the
volume of leads, rather I should look at the value of them.”

In fact, the agent is now querying the value of all of the paid-for portals.

He said: “I track all our leads, and 47% come direct from Google, 22% are from our own website and 13% from Globrix. All the others are in single digits, although I can see that the highest of the rest come from
email4property, Rightmove  followed by Gumtree.”

Digital were invited to comment on whether it was correct that agents had to pay for a full package, but declined to make a statement.

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