The future of portals: 100 years of free listings

I was interested to see the launch of OneDome.com recently, which claims to be ‘the portal that pays you’. The idea is that if we give them our listings, and they share anything they make from selling mortgages and conveyancing as a result. I like their thinking. Why should we have to pay to list when a portal is also making money from our listings? OneDome have turned that on its head. And about time. 

But that’s not the only thing that caught my eye. OneDome are also guaranteeing free listings for 100 years. No more endless fee increases, and no more contracts that limit us in what we can do. It seems like a no-brainer to me.

I know what you might be thinking—does the industry need anotherportal? The field is currently crowded with portals, all of which charge ever-increasing fees to agents. So a better question for us to ask is, is this the right portal for us? If there was only one portal for property listings, instead of dozens, wouldn’t it be what OneDome.com has built? A revolutionary portal that works for both customers and agents. 

Since the news broke, I’ve had calls from agents across the country wanting to talk about how excited they are by this new, collaborative, and modern property search. It's about time that portals step into the 21stcentury. OneDome is the first so-called portal to take the problems that agents face seriously, and to try and do something about it. 

Refreshingly, they’re also trying to fix things for the consumer too, which should make agents lives better in the long run. The search is different – it works more like Google, so consumers can search for property like they search for anythign else on the internet. OneDome say their aim is to fix the entire home buying process which, as we know all too well, is a painful and frustrating process for everyone involved. Since there are so many components to buying or selling a home, agents are often caught in the middle of it all, getting blamed for everything, but with very limited visibility of what is going on with the deal. By creating a platform that allows agents, conveyancers, and the customer to see what is happening within the buying/selling process at any one time, OneDome simultaneously solves these issues and differentiates itself from the other big portals out there who seem to think the only issue is finding a property in the first place! 

All agents need to find ways to monetise data and OneDome enables us to do that. We need more leads and to cut reliance on the big portals that charge us more and more money. We all want a faster less stressful homebuying journey – with fewer fall-throughs. Whether OneDome solves that one we will have to see – but at least someone is trying to do it!

So what’s the catch? I guess that there will be those that will say that this is just someone else getting rich off agents. But the portal also allows agents to take equity instead of cash. So those that want to can share in the company’s success. 

Whether or not OneDome is right for you, it is a refreshing and different approach not just to portals, but to the whole end-to-end transaction. It’s hard to see what agents can lose from supporting new ways of doing things. The big portals have had it all their own way for years, and it's great to see someone challenging the status quo. Vive la révolution, I say.

 https://www.onedome.com/business/estate-agents/property-search-for-agents/