Property AI Report
00:03:21 · Matt Goddard
[00:03:21] S1: I think um the the one main one that sort of sticks out, and we we touched on it before the show was um going through the show notes, I put something in there about um lettings agents having uh a third of them not having their fees on there despite sort of trading standards and that to happen. In a way, we sort of said, well, is that is that a surprise? Right move allegedly, not allegedly, no, on our uh aggressive fears uh misleading with this sort of level of data, is um is quite significant if you if you think about like the the encouragement that brings. I'm I'm really interested as well in terms of the figures that um it was just this morning property industry I've got another article in there, hasn't it, about sort of the the the data and how how that figures have come off, come back on again. And as you've sort of uh alluded to, there is sort of very different to what's reported in their annual accounts. So why why are you putting you back on the spot? Why why do you think this is the case?
00:04:13 · Mal McCallion
[00:04:13] S0: So it's it you're right. So again, this morning property industry, I um and a couple of others um would write move yesterday and sort of hand wove away the the actual um uh the accusations and said, well, you know, just a couple of pages from historic pages. Um now that these were up until the beginning of September still showing 900,000 for sale and 200,000 to rent, so vastly inflated. The actual number was near as 680,000, so nearly 40% more than they actually had. And that was still in early September in 2026, so not you know, historic, and it may have been a handful of pages, but these were the most visited pages, with the exception of the homepage in their entire site. So, you know, it is first of all, you know, that for for them to just kind of try and um and brush it off um by saying that I think is is slightly very misleading. Um and secondarily, you know, the the most visited page was it is the home page, and they only changed that in 2021. So up until 2021, that still had that claim in it, and they've removed it from there in 2021. There is a question about why they didn't remove it from the rest of the site. You know, is it you know, and and this is the question, is it because they knew that that was going to see their traffic decrease? And then last year, and this is the one that that really kind of really asked the question, last year in April, April 23rd, they still had these claims on their for sale and two red sites. So 900,000 properties, 200,000 uh sorry, for sale, 200,000 to let. And then they removed them. And by the 30th of April last year, they had gone. But then at the end of May, they came back. So what that suggests is that there is some kind of reason why they had a look at what was happening when they removed those particular claims, again, years after they were true, if they were ever true, and then they put them back. And that's on the watch of, you know, you know, Hans Vanstrom and the and the people that are there right now. And it just strikes me that if you had seen that they were incorrect in 2021 and take them off your homepage, but chose not to take them off your saying two red pages, that has serious questions around it. But then last year, to take them off for a month and then put them back, again, presumably knowing that these were not correct, again, is is serious.
00:06:24 · Mal McCallion, Matt Goddard
That the impact, like I said, over time can be significantly cumulative, you know, to the benefit of right move and to the detriment of pretty much everybody else in the industry, because consumers do make decisions based on these things. You know, this is Google, this is where you go and you you say properties for sale in you know, Basing Stoke, and it comes up and says 900,000 properties um for sale, and that is wrong and not true, and has not been true for a long, long time. [00:06:52] S1: And if you look at their you do think this is maybe something sort of uh for a better word, sort of considered rather than like a marketing intern who's maybe tweaked it and then someone's brought up in a following marketing meeting months later and gone, oh, why have we not got that? And then popped it back in again without without thinking that we removed it because of this unsubstantiated claim at some point.
00:07:15 · Mal McCallion
[00:07:15] S0: I think that's what they want you to believe. I think you know that the statement yesterday was very much hand-wavy, kind of like, yeah, you know, just one of those things, blah. But actually it it's not one of those things. This is 16 years of of a claim being made. It's a marketing claim, and it's one, you know, that has to be true. Because, you know, we would if we were all going around lying about you know what we actually have on our sites or volumes or discounts or freeze or anything like that, there are rules out there and very serious rules for very serious reasons. You know, I wrote an article on the Model Prop blog uh on Sunday um about kind of um how that there are some you know echoes of of the Man City case, right? And again, you know, without over-dramatising or over-ally allying it, you know, essentially for actually the same 16 years, um the city essentially was putting more money into their business allegedly. Well, actually, it's been they have been found by the Premier League to have been doing this, they are now um uh they are appealing against that, and the the decision is due in the next couple of months. Everybody else suffered. If this is true and it did proven to be true through the Court of Appeal, then yet Stoke didn't win the FA Cup back in 2011. You know, you had Sunderland that missed out on the League Cup, whatever it was, these are material impacts. You know, Harry Kane won the ballon d'or last night, congratulations to him, but he didn't win the league when he finished second to Lan City, whenever it was in the 2010s. So, you know, there is huge, huge, huge impacts all the way along, and obviously the counterfactuals, nobody can ever kind of go back and say, well, this is exactly what happened. However, what would that mean for on the market? You know, what would that mean for Super? What would that mean for the state agents who have gone out of business because they can't afford Ride Move fees or have seen their business heavily impacted because you know, Ride Move is is able to charge a significant amount more that they couldn't afford, so they couldn't be on it, so they haven't won instructions.
00:09:00 · Mal McCallion
So again, you know, I don't I don't want to over-dramatize it, but at the same time, I think it's really, really important that we kind of treat it as seriously as it should be treated, which is this is a business that has made 70% margins based on people believing that they had more properties than they did. Every time they went on to Google search for uh properties for sale, Zuba didn't come up saying 900,000, right move did, and that wasn't true. And there does seem to be this kind of weird change where they they they took it off the homepage back in 2021, they took it off the other pages last year and then put it back on again um a month later. And if you look at their um their financial reporting, then they are quite open about the fact that that these these properties weren't all there. So, you know, it is incumbent on them to make sure that these things are true and that these things are right, as is incumbent on all of us. We all have to abide by these rules. And then even yesterday, actually, if you went on to to Right News website, and again, kind of you know, this is something that you know it is is mind-blowing, that they still had a 900,000 claim on their new homes page. You know, so actually we've got 900,000 new homes um out there. So, you know, again, this is not the behaviour of a business that is, you know, the the that it's that should be the number one in their particular market, that should be, you know, absolutely clean and all that sort of stuff. Feels like there is there are there are many questions that they still have to answer. And just kind of waving it away and saying, well, you know, it's just old views, blah, blah, I just don't think that don't think really cuts it. So yeah, look, um, I'm sure that um, in fact, I'm I'm certain that over the coming days there'll be more that that kind of comes out about this. Um, but yes, you know, just in terms of of of our conversation, you know, the fact that um that that they they still had those um 900,000 on there, the fact that there was this change, um, I think are are really serious questions that that that they should be uh that should be put to them and they should be should be made to answer, in my view. All right, that is what we're going to call uh here the white roof scandal for this week. Um let's move on to um other property news.
00:10:53 · Mal McCallion
So we have some interesting stuff about lettings here. So rent in advance ban has caused problems for many tenants. Now, I'm almost certain that uh way back in the day we spoke about the potential for um people not being able to pay rent in advance and causing some significant problems for those who perhaps haven't got you know all of their stuff together, people from abroad, etc. So, yeah, just flesh out this story for us.