Estate Agents Manipulating Rightmove - Legal?

kilby_007

I'm a rightmove addict. I have a couple of searches set up which I leave up on my laptop and phone and refresh every half hour or so. Earlier I caught a local EA in the act of manipulating the system by "reducing" a property by £10K only to bump the price back up again 10 mins later. This bumped the property to the top of the list and it also still has the "reduced" badge and came up in my daily email digest as such.

Is this legal? Saying a property has been reduced when it hasn't?

melstar11

You don't think it was just a mistake then? How on earth would you prove it was deliberate?

kilby_007

melstar11 wrote: »

You don't think it was just a mistake then? How on earth would you prove it was deliberate?

I'm certain it was deliberate. The property has been marketed since October and they're just bumping it to the top of the listings and making buyers think it's been reduced when it hasn't. I've seen it happen before with the same agent (a "reduced" tag when the property is the same price it always was) but this is the first time I've actually seen any evidence of the reduced price before it was quickly put back to its original price. I have property bee and I can see that they didn't log in to make any other changes than the asking price manipulation.

Anyway that wasn't the question, the question was is it legal?

hazyjo

I'm also a RM addict but haven't noticed this. Reckon it was just a mistake otherwise they would reduce it by a penny or something. They probably did it to the wrong property.

If you're suspicious, keep alerts on all that EA's properties and see if it's something they do regularly or if it was indeed a one-off.

Jx

hazyjo

We cross-posted. I think you've answered my question re them doing it before. I can't see how it would be 'illegal', and I don't get why they don't just make a change to the listing or reduce it by a pound or penny or something if they want to bump it to those with new alerts set.

Miss_Samantha

What is the problem, though?

At the end of the day you offer what you are happy to pay.

melstar11

How many people actually trust estate agents though? People who are seriously looking will not get taken in by such tactics as there are various ways of tracking listings and a house is worth what someone will pay for it. If you are that bothered, complain to Rightmove.

moneyistooshorttomention

Probably (make that almost certainly) legal.

If it was a property I was interested in - I would be just so inclined to give the EA a ring and say "I'm interested in property x - but I would be viewing it on the basis it was the price it was at 10.59am and not the price it was at at 10.49am or back to again at 11.09am"

I just wouldnt be able to resist letting them know that I knew what they were up to.:rotfl:It wouldnt do any good - but it would make me feel better....:cool:

Davesnave

If it's deliberate and it works, I'd call it creativity and give them a pat on the back.

OTOH, it could be that things are really slow in their office, as a busy agent will have many more important things to do than this.

Miss_Samantha

When you market a house on a website you obviously want it to appear at the top of the listing.

Those websites have algorithms to decide which properties go at the top, e.g. the newest ones, or the ones with a price change, so the 'game' is to understand how that works and to try to use it to your advantage.

So people make a big fuss about it, and are even trying to make some of it illegal, but I really don't see what it so bad about it.
It's like in the old days of message/ad boards: When you came to display your little ad you put it in front of older ones, then if others did that to you you would swap ads back, right? Well, it's just the digital version.

G_M

What happens when you do a google search (on anything)? What determines which order the search results appear in? Why is this any different?

And why does it matter?

Any serious buyer will look at more than just the 1st (few) properties listed. No one (sensible) spends £X00,000 without looking at all the options.

As for the price change, again - so what? What matters is what a buyer is prepared to pay, and what a seller is prepared to accept. That meeting of the minds happens (usually!) after viewings, based on the property, not on a Rightmove ad.