A sit down with Robert May, founder, rummage4property
* *Sitting down, separately, on the phone, social distancing by 260 miles!
The Yorkshire Property Guide has been following the progress of Robert May’s rummage4property project since we first spotted tweets about it over three years ago.We got it then and get it even more today especially now that property search websites are at the forefront of agents’ thinking due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In our wide-ranging chat, we got an insight in to his extensive property career, how the site came about, what still drives him forward and what his plans are for the platform he’s created.
Below is Part One of our extensive conversation that we have previously published.
YPG: You’re regarded as a veteran in the industry Robert, can you please share with our readers a brief resume of your career so far?
RM:
I started in agency back in 1986, joining a local independent estate agency in a sales role, having recently moved to Devon. I sold my first property within four days of starting. Following the MIRAS market crash of 1988, I became a self- employed sales associate at the firm until moving to work for a builder, managing part-exchange properties. In 1994, a career diversion saw me move into agency software sales, working for CFP Software, the market leader at the time. I became National Sales & Director in 2001 and during my with them, I created the engine that drives the BTL market which is still regarded as the standard today. I also became a Deloitte Technology Fast 50 winner. From 2009 to the present day, I have been a consultant to the industry as well as working on my own projects.
YPG: You are directly linked with the action taken to suppress ‘portal juggling’ by some agencies. Please explain to our readers what the term means, how it affects the consumer and how you tackled it?
RM:
If your company is on Page 2 of Google, you really, really want it to be on Page 1! It’s exactly the same with listings on the pages on Rightmove. When a property used to be uploaded to the site, it displayed a ‘Date Added’. Properties were displayed in chronological order. You could remove a property from the site and put it back on a short time after while attaining a new ‘Date Added’. Voila, back to the top of the listings! I monitored listings which suggested this practice was widespread; listings were being skewed by repeated removal/re- uploading and by duplicate entries as well. It was, and still is, a breach of industry set regulations; some firms were gaining a commercial advantage by doing it, I wanted to stamp it out. When approached, Rightmove denied it went on stating that their feed was being policed for such activity. When I presented my considerable evidence to them face-to-face, they created a new unit within the company of around a dozen people. Its sole purpose was to cease this skewing of the platform. These days, though a ‘Date Added’ is still attributed to each listing, if a property is taken off the market and then re-listed within 14 weeks, the original ‘Date Added’ is shown. It is imperative that the end user have confidence that a ‘New Listing’ is exactly that. Sadly, portal juggling is still a thing and actually on the rise again. Proximity search, the focus of my property search platform, rummage4property, prevents any element of portal juggling.
YPG: Can you tell our readers how you were able to show that the listing to completion ratio published by the online-only property firm, Purplebricks, was so much over-stated?
RM:
Easy! Just bad maths! You have 100 properties available and 88 properties that are under offer, what’s your conversion rate? It’s 88/188 = 47% NOT 88%. R4P looked at listings over a 10 month period, then waited three months for the Land Registry to update its records. The research showed that Purplebrick’s actual listing to completion ratio was a little over 51%. From this point on, I termed selling via this online agent as a ‘coin toss’ as it was so close to 50%.
YPG:We heard you did some interesting work that was eventually picked up by The Land Registry in order to improve the accuracy of their records, we’re sure our readers would like to hear about this!
RM:
As early as 1995, I was trying to develop an Automatic Valuation Model for the industry but eventually realised that it was not possible to produce an accurate enough version. The base data to be processed was not, in my view, of sufficient efficacy. Upon examining one particular month’s Land Registry data, I noted an £85m property that came up twice. I also noticed false transactions, other duplicate transactions and instances of incorrect coding. My analysis threw up 120,000 inconsistencies! The Land Registry said I had to inform them of each individual error. I did and crashed their system! Then they started talking to me about my work! I went on to build a machine with sufficient processing power that allowed data-processing in real time.
YPG: You pointed out in an article on an industry forum back in 2010 that a ‘duopoly’ had been created in the property portal sector. What did you base this on and why did you feel this was such an anti-competitive move?
RM:
The global financial crash of 2008 saw a tremendous reduction of activity in the UK housing market. Transaction volumes and selling prices fell sharply. All the while, the choice within the UK property portal sector, which was set for expansion, suddenly contracted itself sharply, mirroring the market. Zoopla, the portal owned by ZPG, was considerably strengthened by the absorption of, firstly, Think Property, then DMGT’s Prime Location and FindAProperty. Globrix was incorporated in 2012. By creating two behemoths, I could see that there was only one way subscriptions were going - up! Portal fees rose considerably during a really hard time for everyone involved in the industry. They have continued rising ever since.
YPG: When and why did you decide to personally get involved in the property portal sector and create your own?
RM:
It has always been my view that agents should have a major stake holding in the portal service that they subscribed to. I strongly supported the NAEA’s ‘PropertyLive’ and was very disappointed to see it drop from sight. I was involved, as a consultant, with another agent-owned portal, Radar Homes back in 2010. Sadly, this site similarly gained little traction. I held a lot of hope and expectation for the next agent-owned portal, OnTheMarket, that came along in early 2015 . Though OTMoffered a better priced service with a better plan behind it (agent ownership), the product itself, in my view, was wrong. It was based on continuity, last century, Generation 3 tech, the same as used by Rightmove and Zoopla. At this stage, I believed I could develop something better and so set to work on my own property search tool.
YPG: How did you come up with the name for your website - ‘rummage4property’ (R4P) - the first part for which we read you have coined the term ‘brurb’?
RM:
Think of ‘Hoover’ and ‘Google’, words as nouns that acquired verb status through their continual usage in a ‘to do’ manner. I like to call these words a ‘brurb’. To ‘rummage’ is to make a thorough search or investigation. While you might search for an item, such as keys that belong in a specific designated place, when they’re not where they are meant to be, it’s usually only by having a good rummage do you end up with a successful result.
Thanks for taking the time to speak with us Robert. Part Two of our conversation will feature in the June issue. Our readers are invited to visit your property search platform
atwww.rummage4property.co.uk.
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