Problems with Rightmove

dander

Interesting about the idea of the "tease". My estate agent said they deliberately didn't use fish-eye lenses, photoshop etc because they found when the details made a house look too good, then viewers were just disappointed in person. Makes sense to me. That's not to say the pictures were bad, but they definitely didn't make false promises, and I went SSTC after the first weekend's viewings, so I guess the theory worked. Although, maybe it works better in a smaller area like mine where there aren't loads of competing properties on rightmove.

Personally I'd disagree over the floorplan - I much prefer to have one, but I wouldn't rule a house out for not having one. I'd want to see room sizes in some form. If the estate agent didn't send that level of detail over after a call, I'd assume there was some problem with the property that they were trying to hide.I should think this is a tactic that only works with a very high value property where there's not a lot of direct competition.

Gavin83

Schwarzwald said:

i do agree that the filtering options are quite poor on any of the property sites, be it RM, Zoopla or any other.

Just compare it to car marketplaces, eg Autotrader, you have far more filter options, which can streamline your sarch very nicely.

people are joking with helipad, etc., but filter options like "cellar", "Off-street parking", etc. would indeed be quite helpful.

as this would be a quite easy and also marketplace standard addition to the site, it must be a structural "problem" that the property suppliers, ie EAs, dont want to provide it. I would guess it’s not really in the interest of EAs to be too specific upfront to increase number of eye balls reviewing online ads and also getting people to book viewings.

As I said earlier EAs will just lie anyway. As an example you mention off street parking. We viewed three houses listed as having off street parking and none of those actually had any to speak of.

I’ve seen lots of things written on Rightmove that are either down to interpretation or just straight up lies. We’ve had a few threads on here about whether a house is detached or not and people often can’t agree.

Ultimately I really don’t think such filters would be as helpful as people are expecting.

cass88 said:

So i've just accepted an offer on my property which went onto rightmove. I used a more premium local estate agent, cost 2.5x the price of some other agents costs but they offer a more "premium service", notably the photos and video are professionally done and you can really tell the difference...Anyways when the advert went live on rightmove there wasnt a great level of detail on the advert and no floorplan present which i was suprised at. 

Called the valuer and asked, she said that rightmove is all about the "tease", giving just the right level of information to spark peoples interest that they arrange a viewing to find out more information. It’s then the feeling a potential buyer gets when they view that actually sells it. The more information, filters etc means less need for viewings to make decisions and people scroll past. Made sense to me and ours sold in 6 weeks which included a period over xmas

I’d have to agree with some of the others here. No floorplan is a real issue for me and unless there was something else clearly amazing about it I almost certainly wouldn’t bother viewing. Generally speaking if something normal is missing from the sales info I assume the EA/vendor are trying to hide something. I’d actually go as far as to say the floorplan is more important than photos for me.

Anyway your EA was lying. The truth is they were just lazy and couldn’t be bothered.

BobT36

jrawle said:

cass88 said:

Called the valuer and asked, she said that rightmove is all about the "tease", giving just the right level of information to spark peoples interest that they arrange a viewing to find out more information. Its then the feeling a potential buyer gets when they view that actually sells it. The more information, filters etc means less need for viewings to make decisions and people scroll past. Made sense to me and ours sold in 6 weeks which included a period over xmas

When I was looking at Rightmove, if I saw an advert and there was no floor plan, it was a case of disregard and move on to the next listing. Ditto if there were next to no photos. I wouldn't waste my time booking a viewing if a property had an open plan kitchen-living room, or no windows to the bathrooms for example, and I don't want to travel to a viewing only to see in one minute that I didn't like the house. I'm sure others are the same. You want as many viewings for your property as possible, so both those like me, who want to see the information all for themselves before viewing, and others who prefer a tease and to phone an estate agent. Your house may have sold, but would it have sold for more if you had those additional viewers who moved on due to lack of floor plan?

Same. I'd feel if they couldn't be bothered to list a floor plan and advertise what they have, then I'm not bothered to look and will just find something else instead. 

Less information doesn't "tease" me, it just means there's less to "hook" me, and I'm more likely to see someone else's instead. Same if there's pictures of only 2/4 rooms etc. I'm just going to feel "what are they hiding?". 
I'm much less likely to go and view such a house as I might end up wasting both my and their time. I want to know the house is exactly the type of thing I'm looking for, before I bother to go view it. 

These EAs live in their own heads and up their own.... too much.

RHemmings

dander said:

Interesting about the idea of the "tease". My estate agent said they deliberately didn't use fish-eye lenses, photoshop etc because they found when the details made a house look too good, then viewers were just disappointed in person. Makes sense to me. That's not to say the pictures were bad, but they definitely didn't make false promises, and I went SSTC after the first weekend's viewings, so I guess the theory worked. Although, maybe it works better in a smaller area like mine where there aren't loads of competing properties on rightmove.

Personally I'd disagree over the floorplan - I much prefer to have one, but I wouldn't rule a house out for not having one. I'd want to see room sizes in some form. If the estate agent didn't send that level of detail over after a call, I'd assume there was some problem with the property that they were trying to hide.I should think this is a tactic that only works with a very high value property where there's not a lot of direct competition.

I agree with preferring to have a floorplan, but I wouldn't rule a property out because of it. I might turn up to the viewing with the mindset to look and see if there is a reason the floorplan was omitted. 

One of the estate agents around here uses an extreme lens for their photos. It makes the front of properties look huge when they are tiny, and the same for gardens. Somewhere I have photos where I recreated their shots with my phone, and they were just way different. If I was expecting the front part of the property to be big enough for six cars, and in real life it would be hard to fit in one, then that would make me negative right from the start of the viewing. 

Elliott.T123

EssexHebridean said:

Yep - lack of a floor plan is also a straight "no, move on" from me as well. There were certain things we did/didn't want which the floorplan would either confirm or deny - and my view was very much that if someone couldn't be bothered with a floorplan, then I couldn't be bothered looking any further. 

Totally agree, floorplan is my biggest thing with deciding to view or not. Décor etc can all be changed but without lots of work and money you cant start moving walls (although I have in my current property).

If I cant confirm the house has roughly the right layout I don't care how good the pictures are I'm done.

Scotbot

Floor plan is essential for me. That said I am going to view a property tomorrow without one. At least without one on this listing, I found one on the previous listing on Zoopla. There don't seem to be any obvious issues so no idea why it was omitted.

Freehold is also essential. Quite a few houses where I am looking are leasehold, tenure is a field on Rightmove and you can guarantee if it says 'ask agent' it's leasehold 

DullGreyGuy

dander said:

My estate agent said they deliberately didn't use fish-eye lenses, photoshop etc because they found when the details made a house look too good,

The above is a photo of a room using a fisheye lens and so it's absolutely understandable why an agent wouldn't use one. 

If an agent wanted to maximise the sense of size of a room they'd use a wide angle lens and ideally a wide angle tilt & shift lens but these are very expensive and increasingly agents don't use professional photographers to take the pictures. When our Landlord sold our last place the photos were taken by the agent themselves using a not up to date iPhone, with an asking price of £650,000 you'd have thought they could pay a pro tog. 

If they aren't using photoshop that probably means they are being coy and just mean they are using a different application. They should be using something to do basic white balance/exposure refinement. They may have meant they aren't removing the stain from the carpet or airbrushing the crack in the wall in any photo editor which is right for them... really they should have moved the chair/rug over the stain or not photographed towards the crack but to remove it in post would be close to dishonesty... oh yeah, were talking about estate agents. 

RHemmings

DullGreyGuy said:

dander said:

My estate agent said they deliberately didn't use fish-eye lenses, photoshop etc because they found when the details made a house look too good,

The above is a photo of a room using a fisheye lens and so it's absolutely understandable why an agent wouldn't use one. 

If an agent wanted to maximise the sense of size of a room they'd use a wide angle lens and ideally a wide angle tilt & shift lens but these are very expensive and increasingly agents don't use professional photographers to take the pictures. When our Landlord sold our last place the photos were taken by the agent themselves using a not up to date iPhone, with an asking price of £650,000 you'd have thought they could pay a pro tog. 

If they aren't using photoshop that probably means they are being coy and just mean they are using a different application. They should be using something to do basic white balance/exposure refinement. They may have meant they aren't removing the stain from the carpet or airbrushing the crack in the wall in any photo editor which is right for them... really they should have moved the chair/rug over the stain or not photographed towards the crack but to remove it in post would be close to dishonesty... oh yeah, were talking about estate agents. 

Just a minor point, but nowadays a DSLR camera can be easily bought for about £400 for the cheapest new Canon, and about £250 for a Canon wide angle lens. There are wide angle lenses that clip onto mobile phones for a tiny fraction of those amounts, but I'm not sure if those really work. Returning to the DSLR, I would think that £650 would be very easily possible within the budgets of EAs, either EA companies or individual agents themselves. And, that's not the cheapest possible.

Certainly agents local to me are using wide angle lenses. It's not even subtle - but huge differences in apparent length versus reality. 

Gavin83

I don’t understand why EAs use wide angle lenses and over sell the size of the rooms either. Like most people I’ve viewed houses that look far smaller in person than they do in the photos. This just leaves me with a feeling of disappointment which doesn’t really install the feeling you need to want to buy a house.

Do EAs expect you’ll turn up and fall in love with the house so much that you’ll just ignore that it’s tiny?

Interestingly I’ve had the opposite as well. House looked far bigger in person than it did in the photos. This led to a positive impression and interestingly I ended up living there. Maybe making it look crap in the photos is the way forward!

Surrey_EA

cass88 said:

So i've just accepted an offer on my property which went onto rightmove. I used a more premium local estate agent, cost 2.5x the price of some other agents costs but they offer a more "premium service", notably the photos and video are professionally done and you can really tell the difference...Anyways when the advert went live on rightmove there wasnt a great level of detail on the advert and no floorplan present which i was suprised at. 

Called the valuer and asked, she said that rightmove is all about the "tease", giving just the right level of information to spark peoples interest that they arrange a viewing to find out more information. Its then the feeling a potential buyer gets when they view that actually sells it. The more information, filters etc means less need for viewings to make decisions and people scroll past. Made sense to me and ours sold in 6 weeks which included a period over xmas

I can't imagine a 'premium' agent not providing a floor plan!