I'm in Christopher Watkin's studio in Grantham, and he doesn't bother warming up. He wants to know about the property portals.
"Neil Martin, do the portals have too much control over UK estate and letting agency? Talk to me."
I tell him it's a topic we could talk about for a while. Then I give him the bit I actually believe. "The only reason they have control is because they've been given it."
"By who?" he asks.
"The agents."
This was August 2019, one of a run of short videos I recorded with Chris for the Letting Agent Podcast. If you run an agency and you've ever moaned about what you pay to be listed, here's what I told him.
Free, then not free
I compared it to how pretty much every small and medium business leans on Facebook. A platform turns up, it's free, and we all pile in. "Oh, that's free. Fantastic."
Chris chipped in with "Nothing's free in this world." He's right. As I said, "And then it stops being free, and then it slowly creeps up in price."
People keep paying as long as they think they're getting value for money. I wasn't going to get into whether any particular portal is worth it. That's a call every agent has to make for their own business. But I did say this. "Do I think you can get great results without being on the portals? Yes." Social media can get you a long way.
I was honest about the other side too. If you're a member of the public looking for somewhere new to live, there's one site you go to first, and in the UK that's Rightmove. Order a Coke somewhere that serves Pepsi and you'll hear "It's Pepsi. Is that okay?" Most people say yes. The brand is still the one sitting in your head.
"It's our first port of call. Which means if I'm not on it, I'm missing market opportunity. That doesn't mean I can't be successful not being on it."
If you leave, have a story
Some insurance companies are proud to tell you "We're not on comparison sites." I said if I were an agent who wasn't on any portals, I'd do the same thing. "We're not on portals, and this is why."
"And it doesn't really matter what your story is, you've just got to have one."
Some stories land better than others, though. "And if it's because we're trying to save money, that's the wrong story."
The right one is about the client. When we sell your property we take a fee, and here's a more cost-effective way of using it. Then you back it up, with things like how quickly properties move once they're on your books.
Chris put the other version more colourfully, which was basically that the portals take too much money off you. "Nobody cares," I told him. "That's about you. It's not about your client." It's the same thing I keep coming back to in Your marketing isn't about you.
And I was straight with him. If I was buying or selling a house, my first thought would be "Why is it not on Rightmove?" Your story has to answer that before anyone asks.
Agents have done this before. Chris pointed out that plenty came off local newspapers back when you supposedly couldn't sell a house without them. "But who buys local newspapers these days, right?" If you can prove you reach the right people, you don't have to be there. "But you have to be able to position that from the customer's perspective."
Spending is voting
"Do the portals have a place? Right now, absolutely." Whether they'd still have one in five or ten years, I said, was down to the rest of the market.
There was a lot of political stuff going on at the time, and everyone was talking about the power of voting. So I pointed out that you vote every single day with your behaviour, and most of all with how you spend your money. "If you're an agent and you're spending money with the portals, you're voting for the portals."
Want rid of them? "Stop supporting them, right? Because if you're supporting them, they'll grow. If you stop supporting them, they won't."
And if a world without them feels too scary, that's allowed. As I said, "then that's how you choose to vote."
Chris came back with "Because making no decision is the decision, isn't it?" That reminded me of a line I'd first read some years before and had gone back to recently.
"In any situation, what's the best thing to do? The right thing. What's the second best thing to do? The wrong thing. What's the worst thing to do? No thing."
Watch the full chat
First published August 2019 on Christopher Watkin's Letting Agent Podcast.
