Sheldon Bosley Knight custodian, Mike Cleary, launches See It Here First with Bayzos Estate Agency, a portal which could be be a gamechanger for house buyers.
Mike said: “It’s with great sadness to read Rightmove has failed to respond to the feedback from its member agents about its ‘monopolistic’ pricing, lack of innovation and high margins causing them to take what looks like strongarm tactics in the form of legal action. Rightmove is an invaluable tool which is unfortunately becoming an unaffordable tool for many agents. House buyers love it, so did we, until now.
“Four corporate estate agents built the Rightmove portal in 2000 and we all happily listed our properties in exchange for shares in the company with it initially free to list. Sadly however, slowly but surely, the relationship has changed.
“Fearful during lockdown of how Rightmove would respond, I got together with 30 local Warwickshire agents and we launched our own hyper-local website, We Are The Market, with ambitions to grow outside our patch. For many reasons, not least the war in Ukraine and the resulting inflation and now the economy, we shuttered this portal in December last year. However the death knell on reflection was the membership costs (only £150pm) which became hard to justify alongside the rise of other ‘essential’ portal charges.
“Recent technology however has been a gamechanger and I feel there is now a solution. Together with Bayzos Estate Agents, we have built a new portal, www.seeitherefirst.co.uk, which has all the functionality of the others but also the ability to create an early listing at the point a contract is signed.
“The listing gets added to when photographs are taken and is finally completed when the property is ready to launch on all portals. That delay between the signing of a contract and the listing being made live is a valuable commodity and gives serious buyers a crucial period to get their house in order (pardon the pun). We now regularly get strong offers to stop properties going to market… a win win.
“Not only has See It Here First been built in such a way we can offer it to agents to join for free, if an enquirer books a viewing and clicks to take mortgage advice or sign up to a conveyancer, we will send the agent a payment as a share of the income. In practice the portal can be used to generate in income…. Compare that to Rightmove….. that is an evolution.
“If there are any agents who would like to register their interest, please visit the website… final touches are being made to grow it beyond the founding two agents.”