Boomin has extended the time limit that its agent customers have to respond to its much-hyped SmartVal product. Where previously an agent had only 15 minutes to respond to a user's request for an online valuation of their property, agents will now have up to one hour to respond.
Launched last summer, SmartVal is designed to generate valuation leads for Boomin's customer agents. It does this by mixing data from an AVM tied to Boomin's data on housing with a real-life agent's valuation. Agents who mark themselves as online receive information about the property and have a limited time to come up with their valuation based on the data and their local knowledge.
Boomin claims that it typically takes seven minutes for agents to respond to SmartVal requests and ten minutes for them to start engaging in person with the prospective seller. The product has been heavily marketed in the UK and is one of Boomin's flagship products which the portal company claims make it more agent-friendly than some of the more established portals.
The portal's co-founder Michael Bruce told industry publication Estate Agent Today that the company has facilitated "40,000 SmartVals in January, 50,000 in February "and that "the current run-rate is going to hit one million a year".
The portal has some impressive numbers on YouTube which dwarf those of some of its more established competitors. Since launching in July 2020, Boomin's channel has had over 3 million views and attracted over 26,000 subscribers. To put that into perspective, Rightmove's channel only has 4,360 subscribers despite being active since 2009.
As we analysed back in June, Boomin has used partnerships with millennial celebrities to cultivate its online image and sees real value in attracting a younger audience with relatable video content. The portal's CMO Phil Lloyd said in a recent statement:
"We are a property-obsessed nation but until now property social channels have failed to provide suitable content to feed our addiction. People are looking for something new and fresh; they want to see the most exciting, jaw-dropping properties in the UK presented by the most influential people that are relevant to them, online.
"This is only just the start. We have huge ambitions to become the most entertaining property brand online, building a loyal subscriber base, and helping agents to connect with these audiences.”
Until now, Boomin has been secretive about the number of agents on its books, its traffic stats and where it is getting its funding from.
The portal is set to reveal how many paying agents it has on its books next week with Boomin suggesting it has "thousands" of branches that have committed to list on a paying basis.
Like most new portals, listing on Boomin has been free for agents and launched over Easter 2021 with around 5,000 agents signed up to list for free. With those free periods rapidly running out the company has been in a race to convince agents that they should sign a paid contract with many already paying for Rightmove, Zoopla and OnTheMarket.
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