New portal lands firmly on agents'radar

News Category: Industry News

Six months after it launched, agent-friendly Radar Homes looks like being a serious contender in the property portal stakes.

It has recruited 450 member shareholders, has signed up its first corporate member, Your Move, and has now expanded into the Midlands.

When it began last November, the Exeter-based firm’s plans provoked a flurry of debate and interest on EAT. The model is for agents to become shareholders in regional groups, having input into the business and taking a stake in their own future internet marketing.

Within its first month, 270 offices had signed up to Radar Homes South West. Early shareholders included Marchand Petit and Webbers.

Founded in Exeter by estate agents Mark Flynn and Julian Partridge, the South West network now includes Bristol and Bath.

Flynn said: "There is no doubt estate agents are fed up with  being dictated to by portals over which they have no control, when it is these same agents who make the portals what they are.

“The whole internet marketing environment seems to have evolved, creating necessary evils which the agents now feel compelled to use, and worse still, often use against each other, therefore fuelling the fire that burns them.
 
“The idea of giving your content to a portal over which you have no ownership or control, and then having to pay for the privilege of doing so, is wrong. It’s like going to a supermarket to shop but having to pay to get in.”

Martin Weeks, senior area sales director for Your Move in Devon, Cornwall and Somerset, said: “Your Move is now the largest single branded estate agent in the country, with one of the best web presences, and Radar Homes adds value to this. We have been very pleased with the response we have had since we started to upload our customers properties to this site.

“I feel with the benefit of owning a share of the company, and also being allowed to have input into the site development, this property portal will grow from a regional site to a national site very quickly, to become a major force as a property portal.”

In the Midlands, CW Homes  – a group of agents with over 60 offices  in the Coventry area – has signed up to Radar Homes.

CW Homes director Max Jones said: “I truly believe that the future of estate agency is inextricably linked to the internet and the strength of the web portals that we use.

“The only way that we can expand and protect our businesses is through a nationwide agency that we, the agents, have a controlling interest in. Radar Homes is providing us with the opportunity to control our profit levels, the level of our future success and ultimately our own destinies.

“Do not leave these in the hands of arrogant, uncaring, money-grabbing portals. I urge everyone to embrace the concept that is Radar Homes.”


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