Hello Member Agents,
As a Network, we strive to promote healthy agent collaborations and because of this we feel the need to remind everyone of a few issues. Apologies for the long message, but please grab a coffee and take some time, this is important.
Professional Courtesy
Network Suspension
What’s New?
Listing Agents! Stick to the rules - update your properties regularly
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Professional courtesy
The market seems to be picking up nicely and so hopefully 2022 will be a prosperous one. Please do your bit and make it an efficient one FOR EVERYONE:
Qualify your clients
When planning to show your clients properties from another agent, be sure it genuinely suits their needs. Most agents will bend over backwards to make a viewing happen, but they don’t have time to be used as door openers when it is obvious the property is not close to the buyer's needs.Show up for appointments
Yes, sometimes there are valid reasons for a cancellation, but please be professional and turn up, don’t leave your colleagues and their owners or buyers hanging.
Network suspension
Unfortunately, we’ve had to temporarily suspend an agency from the network for publishing other agencies’ listings on portals without permission. Our policy is not to name offending agents, however, if agents continue to abuse the system, we may have to review this policy.
Please make sure you have permission from the listing agent before you publish their listings on 3rd party sites.
Can I publish other member agents’ listings to property portals?
What’s New?
Our IT team have been busy - click here to take a look at what we have been up to in case you missed something!
Listing Agents! Stick to the rules - update your properties regularly
We are getting complaints about listings in the shared database not being up-to-date, and we don’t blame them, apart from contravening our Terms & Conditions of use of the system, stale listings that were last updated months or dare I say more than a year ago are unacceptable, plain and simple.
Keep in mind that many agents will sort their property search results by Last Updated Date, you might know that your listings have not changed, but other agents won't know that. It goes without saying that quality presentation is also key, but your hard work goes out the door if your listings show as last updated 5 months ago.
No agent will send stale properties to their clients because they don’t want to have to say “that listing is sold/rented, the price has gone up, etc”. Apart from the embarrassment of looking unprofessional in the eyes of their clients, that agent will likely not work with you in the future.
How can I check if my properties are reasonably up-to-date?
Glad you asked, let’s check the damage! If all your properties show as Last Updated 3 months ago or less you are doing OK, but best update those 2 and 3 month ones.
The quick answer - edit and save!
Search for your own properties and sort by least up to date.
Revise the list, [Edit] the ones with an old Last Updated Date, edit the price or details if needed, click [Save].
Listings that are OK as is, still click [Edit] and then [Save].
The system will reset the property as last updated today.
The detailed instructions answer
If you are new to this, click on the links below for full instructions.
How can I update my resale or rental listings?
How can I update my New Developments?
How can I check if another agent’s out-of-date listing is still available?
Click the [Check Availability] button (Search 1.0) button on the property, or the house icon to the right of the listing if you are using Search 2.0. The system will send an automatic email to the listing agent asking them to confirm availability. The agent will be given 14 days to respond to the request, if they do not reply, the property will be set to Not Shared.
How can I control which properties display on my website?
When you are doing your property searches, if you see a property that you don’t want on your website, you can easily remove it from your website, click here for instructions on how to do it.
What about Under Offer or Sale Agreed properties?
How these properties display on your website will depend on how you are populating your website.
WebAPI V6
You can decide to display or remove Under Offer or Sale Agreed properties by using the [Status] field in your API Filters. Select the statuses you wish to display. This function is not available in WebAPI Versions 4 or 5.XML Feeds
By default Under Offer and Sale Agreed properties will display as Available on your website. However you can use the ShowFullStatus parameter to display the status of each property: Available, Under Offer, or Sale Agreed:&ShowFullStatus=0 all properties appear as Available
&ShowFullStatus=1 properties will appear either as Available, Under Offer, or Sale Agreed as per the database
iFrame
This function is not available on iFrames.
Going forward - new tools to help you
Our IT Team are currently finalising the specs for new tools that will be added to the system to help you manage your listings, these projects will be going into development soon.
Come on people, this is your bread and butter, help yourself and your fellow agents promote your properties with confidence so they will sell or rent.