My Experience With Letmatch To Advertise A BTL On Rightmove
31 Mar 2009Ok, a while back I wrote a blog post about how landlords can advertise their BTL on Rightmove, by registering and paying a small fee on Letmatch.co.uk: How To Advertise Your Buy-To-Let On Rightmove. Letmatch work in partnership with an online letting agent called Visum, who put the adverts onto Rightmove.
Visum does give you the option to advertise on other property portals such as Primelocation, FindaProperty or HomesandProperty. However, I was only interested in the Rightmove package to be honest, which costs £29 (PLUS VAT) per property for 4 weeks. You can view their available packages here.
Last month, for the first-time, I actually used Letmatch to get my BTL property up on Rightmove. This is how I found it:
Efficiency
I can’t fault them for efficiency. My property was up and running on Rightmove with in 24 hours. Not sure if that’s the standard rate they work at it, but it was how it worked for me. Happy days.
Rating: 5/5
Communication
Meh, communication lacked in my opinion. I would expect more automated communication. For example, when my advert went live on Rightmove, I never got an email informing me. I had to search for it myself to check my money didn’t get swindled down the drain. Additionally, when my advert was due to expire, I was never informed. I would have expected an email, containing something along the lines of this:
Hey Landlord,
Your advert on Rightmove is due to expire in 5 days time. If you would like to renew the package for a small fee of £XX, please go here…etc. Otherwise…
It’s the small details like that, which doesn’t take long to setup, that would have improved the service ten-fold. They probably would make more money from that kind of functionality as well.
Rating: 0/5
Enquiries
In the space of 4 weeks, I received approximately 6 enquiries. Not a GREAT deal, but obviously that had no reflection on Letmatch’s/Visum’s service. That’s purely based on the user activity.
Every time the property received an enquiry, I received an email from a chap called Mark Baldwin, who forwarded me the enquiry.
The only downer here is that the prospective tenant who made the enquiry assume they’re dealing with a letting agent, because the property is advertised under “Visum letting agents”, and NOT a private landlord. So on one of two occasions, the tenants were surprised to learn they were dealing with a private landlord, and not an agent. I mean, it wasn’t an issue for the tenants, but it’s just something to remember.
Rating: 3/5
Updating property details
For the life of me I couldn’t work out how to update the information on the property.
Ok, so in order for a landlord to setup an advert on Rightmove with Visum, they need to create an account on Letmatch (Letmatch is a smaller scaled version of Rightmove) for free. Then if you sign up to the Letmatch PLUS package (Rightmove package), the details get copied over. So I assumed that if I updated my Letmatch profile, it would automatically update on Rightmove with in 24 hours or something. That never happened.
At some point I wanted to update my images. I updated my images on letmatch, but as mentioned, I never saw the changes reflected on Rightmove.
There should be some kind of system where you can update details. That’s a pretty standard function, right? I tried emailing Letmatch, but got no response. So i emailed Mark Baldwin and explained my situation. He said if I emailed him the images, he’d update it for me. It’s not the most ideal and obvious setup, but at least it was do’able.
Rating: 2/5
Customer Service
Customer service on Letmatch is NON-existent. I’ve emailed them on 3 separate occasions with extremely competent and relevant questions, but recieved NO response at all. That was extremely disappointing. So, if you’re looking for good customer support, you’re going to be highly disappointed by Letmatch.
However, I must admit, Mark Baldwin from Visum is generally very helpful, and responds extremely promptly. I ended up directing my questions to him, by email. But you’d think Letmatch, the website you gave your money to, would be a little more accommodating with customer support. I guess the concept of “don’t f’ing bite the hand that feeds you” is lost on them.
Rating: 2/5
Finally, would I use the service again?
Ok, I probably WOULD use Letmatch again for this kind of service. While there are a lot of improvements that I can think of which would make their service much more desirable and efficient, you still get your moneys worth. For £29, I wasn’t expecting much, but I walked away with my property on Rightmove for 4 weeks, and I managed to walk away with a few enquires. I can’t really complain (although I have).
One of my readers read the blog post, How To Advertise Your Buy-To-Let On Rightmove, and decided to use the service. He actually found tenants through it, and was extremely pleased with the money he saved. You can read more about that, Finding Tenants Without Letting Agents Does Work- Here’s A Success Story.
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Talk / 23 Comments left so far
Thanks for your comments.
I personally don't think Letmatch is very popular. I mean, in a few months, my property only had 8 page views on their site. I ONLY used letmatch because of the opportunity it provided me with, to get onto Rightmove.
If any other website offered the same deal, with lower rates, I would have used them instead! It wasn't the branding power behind letmatch which made me choose them.
I only mentioned letmatch because it's the only online website that I know of, which offers the Rightmove service.
If you can offer the same service for a lower rate, then go for it. I'll even write about it :)
kind regards
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Do you work for Globrix by any chance? ha :)
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We currently use Globrix already and I can say that we get zero to no responses from it as I don't think enough people use it.
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I agree, I don't think Globrix generates enough traffic to perform exceptionally.
Moreover, I find the user experience (functionality) on Globrix pretty poor, consequently unable to squeeze the maximum out of their users.
But then again, it is free, eh?
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We will contact potential tenants before forwarding details across to the landlord so they are prepared for the landlord to contact them direct.
We will send weekly updates to the landlord which show the number of people viewing their property details on Rightmove and the number of 'click-throughs' into their property.
We are available for landlord and/or tenant enquiries 24/7 by email or phone so landlords are guaranteed that all tenant enquiries will be answered by a UK-based human being and you'll get a fast response to any questions or changes you have.
We've only been offering the service for a relatively short period of time but the feedback we've had from landlords who have used it so far has been really encouraging.
We also add the property details to 20 other property sites which, whilst they don't have the traffic or awareness of Rightmove, still provide the odd lead here or there which can only be a good thing for our customers...the landlords.
You're welcome to check out our site at www.gerardnicholas.co.uk and let me know what you think.
Sorry again for the self-promotion, but I'm a landlord myself and want to make sure landlords get real value for money out of letting agents.
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I notice you charge £39 for Rightmove and Globrix. How long does that last for?
Cheers
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I will be doing a write up on all the websites, which offer this service. That way landlords can choose from a bunch :)
Thanks a lot, guys.
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Globrix forwards web traffic to your individual property pages rather than email / telephone leads. It operates more as a search engine forwarding web traffic than a property portal, so it's up to you what you do with that traffic once it's on your site.
What are your reservations on the functionality?
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I actually used to work for a car classified website that had the same model. I'm quite familar with how it all works.
Hmm...oddly enough, I actually have a whole article writen in draft, about why I don't like Globrix, in specific detail. I just haven't published it yet, and have been in two minds about it, because I don't want to create any enemies for no reason.
I work on functionality and user experience, and I'm pretty internet savvy, yet I managed to get defeated by Globrix and the overcomplicated features. So i imagine a lot of "average" users also struggle. But that's just my guess.
All the javascript/ajax affects are bloated, and on a side note, extremely unfriendly for search engines.
So what's your role at Globrix, out of curiosity?
Apologies if I've caused offense :)
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I look after some of our estate agents who have enhanced listings on the site, but as you can probably guess I get involved with all sorts.
We're always working on our relationship with the search engines. We've had a bit of trouble with compatibility with the occasional site, such as comscore (undermeasuring our traffic), but have made some recent changes that have kicked our traffic up to 845,000 uniques in March. From those visits people still managed 13 million searches, but I agree that many users are not fully aware of all the functionality we offer.
I would be very interested to see your article. I may firstly be able to spread some light, and secondly forward your concerns on to our developers to see if there's anything we can do.
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I really appreciate your response. I'm glad you're looking to improve your service.
The only improvements I can think of right now are the ones I already mentioned. Refer to the "communication" and "updating property details" sections :)
Kind regards
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I have thoroughly enjoyed your review of the abovementioned service.
As co-founder of lettingaproperty.com, a website dedicated to residential lettings, I would like to draw your attention to our full range of landlord advertising services.
You can let your property on the site and 16 of our portal partners from only £29.
Efficiency - Once your property is uploaded onto our site (takes around 10 minutes) your property details are sent to our partner sites. You will receive an email in your private message centre informing you that the advert is live. It usually takes 24 hours for all the partners to refresh their data.
Communication - is key. At every step of the transaction, you will receive an email confirming the next steps. We communicate via email and telephone and as experienced letting agents ourselves, we are happy to offer advice over the phone.
Enquiries - All enquiries are registered at our head office. We inform the tenant that they will receive a call from the landlord (saves on surprises) and we call / email the Landlord with the tenants contact details.
Updating property details - Landlords can log into their account and make any amendments to the property details. We are automatically notified of the changes and update our partner sites.
Customer Service - Our business is built on delivering excellent customer service, but don't take our word for it...www.lettingaproperty.com/customer-reviews.
We would be delighted to offer you a free listing on our website so that you can assess the service for yourself. Please send me an email so that I can send you a free advertising token.
For all of your readers, I will offer a 10% discount on all advertising until the end of October. Just quote PIPLANDLORD when you check out!
Kind regards
Jonathan Daines
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I know this thread was left some time ago, however I thought it would be worth mentioning my service as well!
Rushton's offer private landlords (we also advertise for letting agents as well who are looking to cut costs) the chance to get on the major property websites including Zoopla. Your property goes on to 25 websites in total.
Also included is an Assured Tenency Agreement for the Landlord and Tenant so they both have the security of a formal contract. Also, we include a brochure which contains all legal info and advice for landlords to keep their properties within the current laws.
Letting agents offer a valuable service however sometimes it's a little too expensive for what they do. Our research found that when a landlord has the right information available, they are capable of managing the property themselves, which is why we include these valuable extras.
Have a look at our site for more information, it's www.rushtonpm.co.uk
Thanks
Rushton's
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Please leave a comment
I initially started this website because I wanted to document my every step from property idiot to property landlord,
in hope that people would find my site and help me along the way. I literally didn't have a clue about being a landlord
when I started this website.
Would you use a company that isn't as big and well known as Letmatch?
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