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Beware rise of the robots, estate agent warns

• Rightmove house price valuation app could encourage estate agents “to dig their own graves“ • Property website admits software could value North East homes incorrectly by as much as £25,000 – “a margin of error the size of the cost of some houses“.

The UK’s most innovative property expert has urged estate agents to be wary of a property valuation app unveiled this week by Rightmove

The website this week announced the launch of its ‘Move or Improve’ app, which will let homeowners value their properties using only their phones.

The new app offers a 15% range estimate of a property’s value meaning that the average North East home - £154,950 - could be valued wrongly by as much as £23,243.

The valuation of an average UK property- £272,000 – meanwhile could be as much as £41,000 wide of the mark.

Move or Improve will also specifically suggest homeowners to contact local estate agents for more accurate valuations.

Rightmove has claimed the app will offer “a better and more honest solution to the existing automated valuation tools” and has stated that the app is not designed to take the place of traditional agents but is instead designed to help them get new customers.

Ajay Jagota is founder and Chief Executive Officer of the UK’s most innovative sales and lettings business, KIS has concerns about the app.

The firm is famous for being the first letting agent in the country to abolish deposits, replacing them with a one-of-a-kind landlord insurance policy offering guaranteed rent, deposit replacement, legal assistance and round the clock third party emergency home repairs.

He said: “No-one is in property has embraced new technology more than KIS but sometimes you have to ask yourself this – is this new technology serving me or am I serving it?

“There is no way a computer programme – even a very clever one – can ever match the local knowledge of the local market of a local estate agent.

“Rightmove admit as much by allowing themselves an error margin the size of the cost of some houses and then telling users that if they want a valuation which is actually accurate they need to speak to an estate agent anyway!

“Rightmove are promising this app will bring new customers to agents, but what if their valuation is massively wide of the mark? Agents could come under pressure from customers to give a property a price they know to be wrong or risk losing customers they already have, let alone get new ones.

“My real worry as an agent is that giving portals like this too much data and too much influence makes them too powerful. They aren’t the property market, they’re the market’s digital meeting place, they can’t exist without local estate agents.

“If our industry had been a little bit more savvy we would probably have chosen to do what other industries have done and taken matters into our own hands. If as agents we had taken the initiative and developed our own portals the likes of Rightmove and Zoopla would probably not exist today as there would be no reason to invent them.

“This feels like they’re trying to bypass local agents altogether, and my fear is Rightmove are encouraging them to dig their own graves.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ajay Jagota .