Renthusiast2.0

Last weeks controversial Mail on Sunday article, claimed Rightmove.co.uk was selling confidential data to the Valuation Tax office. In today’s edition of Estate Agency News, Rightmove’s commercial director Miles Shipside defended the allegation, claiming the MoS article was “an attack on the estate agency profession”:

The Valuation Office is one of the largest employers of professional surveyors in the UK and naturally uses comparable evidence from a wide variety of sources, including, most importantly, the sale prices from the Land Registry. Like other surveyors, Valuation Office employees search on Rightmove as well as other property portals and estate agents’ own sites. The Valuation Office approached Rightmove to license our Market Comparable Reporting Tool, which is widely used by Rightmove member agents. Using this tool helps the Valuation Office achieve high standards of accuracy and saves them time and money that would otherwise be spent searching properties advertised online and on agents’ own websites. I can reassure our members and their clients that Rightmove does not pass any property data to the Valuation Office and that they have no access to personal client data. All the information which the Valuation Office has access to has been freely available in the public domain whether on Rightmove, other property portals or agents’ own websites.

In other Rightmove news; in a comment concerning yesterday’s announcement on the sale of parent company Countrywide, the popular website claimed that as of Dec 8, estate agent members had increased to 11,170 from 10,360 at the end of June and that total membership for all lines of business has grown to more than 16,000 from 14,680 at the half year.