Efforts to pull London’s residential estate agents together into a multiple listing system have failed in the past, but developer Peter Lukas says his attempt to do it is succeeding — so far.
Mr Lukas’ Property Data Services (PDS) has been in operation for almost a year now, and has a membership of 134 estate agencies, primarily middle-market firms. However, out of that number only 24 are paid members; the rest are being given free trial periods to encourage them to pay the £1,780 annual fee to join.
But PDS says that among those who have used up their free trial period, roughly 50% are agreeing to pay the fee to join.
Members give PDS details of properties on which they are willing to share commissions, and PDS sends out lists of these properties, in book form, to its members fortnightly. A separate rented property book goes out to rented property members. Listings are grouped by post code, then arranged by size and price within the post-code. Mr Lukas said the book covering properties for sale currently has more than 2,000 listings.
Peter Lukas says he plans to expand the PDS service to cover other estate agents’ needs, such as training courses, an employment agency for estate agents and a building measurement service.
