Rightmove has added a 'hide ad' feature; bonus: feedback if it's overpriced, sold, fraudulent etc

[KievLoverTwo]

I noticed this a few days ago. At the moment, it comes up in search results on the Mac, a desktop PC, an Android phone, but not on an iPad.

When you click the X box in the bottom right hand corner it lets you hide an advert. Then you can click another drop down that allows you (voluntarily) to tell them why.

With any luck, they'll be feeding back to EAs who can feed back to home sellers.

Feed what back to sellers?

Any of those six drop down options.

If 100 people hide an advert because the house is overpriced, it would be useful for the EA to be able to pass it on to the seller.

But ‘overpriced’ is hugely subjective. Sometimes it just means ‘I can’t afford it’ or ‘I wouldn’t pay that much for it’.

Also you could get one estate agent doing the overpriced thing to all their rivals properties etc.

Yeah, they're opening the doors for it to be abused, for sure. But they are the market leaders, so what do they care? The platform is absolutely pants as it stands anyway.

If it at least forces EAs to remove adverts they keep on as unsold for many months, it will help waste less of our time, which is a good thing.

They're reducing their chances of getting their commission if they take it off the site, so they're not going to do that unless it's withdrawn or sold.

They only need one buyer, so don't think they'll be too upset that you've hidden it.

This is not a new feature, has been around for a while. It would be interesting to know what they do with the data though.

I want to know how you've got the Price Change History showing, or is that only for account holders?

Well that depends on whether Rightmove use the data to take action or not.

If ten people report a property as sold, Rightmove might force an EA to take the ad down; after all, they have to host the servers, which costs Rightmove money.

Property Log for Chrome. Absolutely invaluable tool.

Does the EA not pay per property to have it listed?

No. They have packages. The basic package is £1400 or so a month. Then I imagine there are more expensive packages where agents can have X number of sponsored ads? Idk.

Oh, and they have put their prices up between about 8 and 11% a year for three years in a row, so they had better blooming roll out extra features to help EAs!

Why should EAs have to remove properties which buyers still want to sell just because they haven't shifted within a couple of months? If you don't want to see older listings surely you just sort by Newest to Oldest?

That's not what they do. They either leave properties up for months after they have sold with no sold STC listed against them, or they actually reinstate a property that has sold and take the sold STC off it, to make it look as though they have more on their books than they actually do.

I know, because I have seen old, sold listing suddenly reappear and when eventually making a call am told it has sold.

And no change is made to the advert.

I suspect this must vary by region, I can't say I've ever encountered this practice in the city I live in (and I've spent an inordinate amount of time house hunting over the past two years!)

I agree though that if they're doing as you describe then that is not on and should be cracked down on.

I thought it was just one or two spectacularly disorganised agents until I read about it in EA trade press as a known strategy.

They're all up North - at least the ones I have called about anyway.

It's been on there for a while, I know I hid a few last year.

There isn't the option for "I've already viewed this one" though, which is the main reason I was hiding them 😂

Dexters EA in London also do this, it’s bloody annoying when you get excited about a property and it sold months ago STC but they still have it listed as for sale.

This wouldn't be the first time someone has pointed out my spectacular lack of observational skills! o_o

@KievLoverTwo It took me ages to find the feature (after saying it should be one!) because it doesn't work on iphone 😂

It's not particularly obvious, I don't think.

Aww, thanks for trying to make me feel better!

Yeah, it's really not obvious at all, and it doesn't exist on my iPad app, but I can see it on my Mac desktop and Android phone.

Oh rightmove could do so much better. I wish they had more criteria for properties. Why would not they? Would be so much easier to search.
Sq meters, number of loos, no of floors etc

Because they have 85% of the market for property advertising in the UK; they have no incentive to make things better for the buyer (nor the agent).

However, OnTheMarket has recently been bought out and will no doubt see a large cash injection, so the competition is warming up, and hopefully all the portals will have to up their game.

I'm sorry to say they seem to be aggressively buying up other agencies, so you can expect to see more of this sort of thing.

https://propertyindustryeye.com/eye-exclusive-dexters-set-to-acquire-major-london-rival/

https://propertyindustryeye.com/dexters-acquires-multi-national-estate-agency/