More importantly there were so few estate agents there that it appeared to be a complete flop.

Exhibitors that caught my eye:

TSi Touch Screen Inventories looked a pretty impressive technology to make life easier for agent/inventory co.

Metropix: Although I had previously seen it demonstrated this is a brilliant tool for agents and many congratulation to the Metropix team on providing a great product at a fair price.

Seminars:

Bob North (Estate Agency News) hosted a discussion between Globrix, Thinkproperty, Property Index & Rightmove.

One very alarming point that he made was that 50% of leads distributed by all portals across the industry are NOT actioned. I cannot believe that agents pay to list on portals and then don’t follow the process through to try and gain business!! MADNESS!

Gloxbrix CEO Daniel Lee made a similar point urging agents to analise and monitor where there leads/business is coming from keep there own website in tip top condition as it is now more important than there shop window!

I was astonished to hear Ian Brown of thinkproperty say “We are longer good value for money at £49 per month” this portal attached to the the GMG group has never seemed to get going and not recognised by our region as a viable option. I don’t expect that view to change even though he announced that it was going to be FREE from now on!

Our experience has shown that offering a service for free means that the agent aren’t committed to working with it and as it costs them nothing is of NO importance to them. This appears to me to be the end of a poor portal that really with all its software options and media ownership should be near the top of the tree.

Property Index chief executive Lee Bramzell made a good point for paid by performance, my massive concern is that he stated that they would qualify a lead before sending it to the agent and therefore charging. What is a qualified lead? This systems is a headache of dispute with the agents surrounding the quality and quantity of leads and I wait to see how successful they can be.

SPF continually analise data from a selection of agents to make sure that we are getting the quality to them and looking at our cost per lead we are by far the best.

Example: Portsmouth agent = £12.38 per rightmove lead       £0.73 per southernpropertyfinder lead.

Miles Shipside of Rightmove took a fair amount of flack but nowhere near what they deserve. One agent protested that his charges had gone from £150 per month to £1500 per month, this was as a response to Mr Shipside statementthat Rightmove had not increased there charges! Brilliant!

Another disgruntled agent stated that he felt that rightmove were actually playing a dangerous game by not trying to accommodate their agents in this very difficult market. Instead he felt that they wanted agents to leave so that they can charge them the new overinflated rates if an agent decided to return!

My conclusion is that rightmove has an excellent back end reporting (rightmove+) which is second to none but with all agents seemingly disillusioned then they need to start turning up the pressure on Rightmove and leave, the portals like Glowbrix and ourselves etc need to keep pushing hard to help the agent maintain and develop there levels of business so that all parties can be successful at a fair price.