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Should we expand our portal offline physically?

Discussion in 'Business Discussions' started by phablet, Jul 2, 2015.

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  1. phablet

    phablet Member

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    We have an online property portal (renting/sales listings)

    If it was you, would you even consider expanding into a 'bricks and mortar' type estate agents too (even just one outlet) or just stay digital only?
     
  2. Domain Forum

    Acorn Domains Elite Member

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    IWA Meetup
     
  3. nick-harper

    nick-harper Active Member

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    It really depends, how many people would physically need to visit you?

    Do you have telephone support /agents at the minute or just online?
     
  4. Retired_member41

    Retired_member41 Retired Member

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    Bricks and mortar all the way.

    Prove yourself in an area and when you have trading figures, expand into other areas or sell franchises.

    Or if your making enough just consolidate what you have and enjoy life, it's no rehearsal and you can't take it with you :)
     
  5. martin-s United Kingdom

    martin-s Well-Known Member

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    You say you're a portal (listings aggregator?), not an online estate agency at the moment?
     
  6. spiderspider

    spiderspider Active Member

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    If you have your own properties (not just scrapped ones), manage them, and you really could do with an office, then B+M.

    Otherwise, what's the point? You'll be paying utilities and rates on somewhere, that isn't really needed or going to improve your business.
     
  7. nick-harper

    nick-harper Active Member

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    That's what I was thinking, if you are going to continue to be an online portal then why bother unless you need to take on more staff and have space?

    If you are going to become and estate agent where you need customers to come in to see you, then you may need it!
     
  8. martin-s United Kingdom

    martin-s Well-Known Member

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    People don't go and see estate agents very often - estate agents go and see them!
     
  9. phablet

    phablet Member

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    Hi, Thanks for the great replies.. Got a good few insights here.. Well we do pretty well online and don't actually have our own properties to rent/sell etc. It's mainly feeds and direct ad sales for the homepage (such as featured listings).. but it churns leads really well.

    We get a good amount of traffic to the portal, just felt like an industry that really makes me happy to be in even personally, therefore liking the thought of expanding into actual estate agency work/outlet..

    I can see the overheads would be a pain - even a bank loan may help get it off the ground with a good business plan based on our current presence..

    The physical presence is far more complex than an online presence - the digital age moved everyone online, but there is still a world of money/business to be made non-digitally from what i understand and wouldn't refuse an offline business expansion/opportunity if that makes sense?

    We have tested far more complex web portal designs and are currently working on our master portal as we speak.. Our current portal seems basic to most but still works a treat as a temp site so we cant really complain until our finished product goes back online again etc.. Sometimes we upload it at say 3am just to see what it looks like online and make notes on what would be good to tweak with the feeds etc..

    thanks for all your replies :t


    Phab LET - The UK's Phab Property Lets.
     
  10. phablet

    phablet Member

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    We just offer email support at the moment..

    Exactly just feeds from a number of providers and converting leads sent to them..

    Such wisdom... brilliant way to put it :cool:


    Thanks guys!
     
  11. mojoco United Kingdom

    mojoco Well-Known Member

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    I'm assuming if you are aggregating feeds that they provide data on a national basis, if you opened a bricks and mortar outlet it would generally operate on a local level. I doubt if what you are doing online will transfer to a real world business unless you have other tricks up your sleeve.
     
  12. bensd United Kingdom

    bensd Well-Known Member

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    Two separate businesses...

    If you did open a B&M lettings office you could use your portal for advertising and providing leads.
     
  13. phablet

    phablet Member

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    Hi, just replied to your inbox mess regarding our urls Phab LET & Phab LETS..

    Yes feeds are national basis but was just liking the thought of a local level estate agency business for my own career/fun and was looking at putting money from the online part into a local level business (eg B+M)..

    yeah that's true could use the portal to leverage any online ads for free on our own portal etc and when we launch our full professional style portal upon completion of our current development it'll also link our own property listings on rightmove etc and on our own Phab Let portal..

    Thanks Guys..
     
  14. spiderspider

    spiderspider Active Member

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    We work with alot of Estate / Lettings agents. The local always been there, and the big boys. I can assure you, that it is not 'fun'.

    To manage your own properties, you'll have tenants and landlords. Get either one of them who knows the rules better than you, and you can quite easierly be shafted. You'll have to deal with everything from a dripping tap, to criminal damage, unpaid rent, evictions..... the list goes on. Take a look at landlord zone and you'll see how 'fun' it is. If you don't know what an S11 is (as an example), then letting isn't your game, yet.

    Or, with house sales you'll get sellers backing out after you made loads of effort, sellers whining you haven't done enough, probate issues, land registry issues, and so much more!

    If you've never done it before (other than putting a feed into a website), go and work in a lettings agents for 6 months, that will give you chance to get over the 'fun' aspect of it all.

    Not trying to put you off, just being realistic.
     
  15. martin-s United Kingdom

    martin-s Well-Known Member

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    One of my businesses is estate agency software, and I 100% agree with you on that! Both being an estate agent and dealing with some of them! :)
     
  16. phablet

    phablet Member

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    Wow these two replies make it all seem like hassle! :confused::confused:
     
  17. jasman United Kingdom

    jasman Active Member

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    Are you having a laugh? Is it http://phablet.co.uk/ / http://phablets.co.uk/ you're talking about? Isn't the site just a couple of pages with non-affiliate banners and widgets that link to Zoopla?
     
  18. phablet

    phablet Member

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    Sorry.. no, we are not having a laugh & It generally doesn't pay to be narrow minded.

    As we mentioned to an inbox enquiry the following:

    "As we are solely a property portal we very occasionally exclusively list externally sourced properties direct from sellers and from selling agents. These properties of which when sold or rented would earn a directly agreed contractual commission fee. We may also decide to simply charge a flat rate listing fee to appear on our portal either instead of an agreed sale conversion commission or in addition to such. All terms are simply dependent on contractual obligations.

    As an example we could decide to charge a '3% fee' in return for a successful sale and as our total required commission fee for accepting a particular listing. This would be due and paid in full in return for our lead becoming a successful conversion for the property owner and thus such contract on a single property sale at £300,000 would convert at a £9000.00 finders fee earned. For such a reason we do not bother with PPC adverts featuring on our portal, we would sell our own featured ad space to earn our commission. If the property is a rental property then we would decide on a % fee required from the total annual rental amount that they would achieve with our lead.

    Zoopla widgets are to simply provide visitors with additional property rental/sale sources to consider in addition to/or instead of our own offerings.

    Our main portal that is not currently live is pulling in Zoopla API - developer.zoopla.co.uk and looks far more professional than our current one.

    We are also integrating spareroom.co.uk affiliate and OwnMove which offers £40.00 per ref via http://www.ownmove.com/refer-a-friend

    So there are a number of ways to earn rev via property directly and indirectly via direct listings.

    Just because someone has a 'basic' site live - does not mean it is all they 'have', on the contrary.. We are rebuilding our property portal from scratch which isn't currently live and if we wanted to save time, we could even buy a premade 'property portal script' online and publish that live as our better version in seconds. A live site doesn't mean it's the final product, regardless of it's appearance on the surface.. Come on, you shouldn't assume.. :confused:
     
    Last edited: Jul 4, 2015
  19. nick-harper

    nick-harper Active Member

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    You may be trying to run before walking if the site isn't live yet.
     
  20. mojoco United Kingdom

    mojoco Well-Known Member

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    Have you actually made money from the site using this model ?
     
  21. bensd United Kingdom

    bensd Well-Known Member

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    You may need to do some more research if you think you're going to be able to charge 3% comission for an advert
     
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