Tesco Suffers Setback With Online Property Venture

Thu, 05 Jul 2007
 
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Tesco's new online property website has suffered a major setback just days after launching with the news that a key partner in the project has decided to end its agreement with the retailing giant.

Fish4homes said it took the decision to pull out of its contract with tescopropertymarket.com. due to concerns that the retailer’s practice of listing private seller's homes for £199 may conflict with its own business .

The move will harm Tesco’s plans, as it will lose out on tens of thousands of referrals from up to 7,500 estate agency branches across the country.

Tescopropertymarket.com provides a DIY home selling service and enables people to effectively become their own estate agents by advertising and managing their own-home sale for a fee of £199. By doing so this eliminates the need for estate agencies, who typically charge up to 3 per cent of the value of any property they sell.

Joe Slavin, chief executive at fish4homes, said the company initially got involved in Tesco Property Market as it thought it would give its customers' property adverts maximum exposure.

But he added that he was not aware of Tesco’s plans to display DIY listings alongside their own.

"We thought it was going to be just another portal link. It was not clear when we signed up that they were going to have their own home sellers. It was supposed to be a classic white label partnership. Our agents win by getting traffic, they win by knowing who is in the market," commented the CEO.

A Tesco spokesman said that Fish4homes had come under pressure from estate agents "who do not understand our offer and have failed to see the significant benefits it brings to them as well as homebuyers".

Other online property portals have already refused to co-operate with Tesco due to the supermarket’s exclusion of estate agents in its DIY model, which are heavily relied upon by the portals for business .

All of the properties listed on the property site are currently supplied by fish4homes, therefore the withdrawal of the listings may initially have quite a large impact on the site.

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