YourViva and other 'News' Items on SPI.

A 'News' item was recently posted on SPI by Mark Sucklin about an interview with a woman from Your Viva.

In response some plain and simple questions were asked about things like: how it differs from old Viva, what is their average commission rate, do they still hear of 'B' money deals, why do they advertise the same homes in some cases at higher prices than they are advertised on other portals, is this due to their higher commission?, etc etc 

Mark Sucklin then posted a rather angry knock back reply saying he would not allow such 'News' items to be answered in that way. Naturally others posted, I saw one reply saying as 'it had been brought into the public domain' this should be answered by Viva. 

I then went on assignment with a leading UK national broadsheet for a few days regarding Spanish property, and on my return, I noticed others had clearly posted but ALL replies were now deleted.

This is unacceptable by Sucklin, who is now censoring replies to his own items but also posts on the forums pages whilst at the same time he is gearing up a commercially led website now. SPI is no longer the leading site for honest Spanish property advice, naive buyers and sellers could easily fall foul of misleading or inadequate facts.

I know full well that really knowledgeable posters on that site such as Logan and other sover the years have left due to his journalistic and unreasonable control of his site. The site as it was known has died a death and is now focused only on promoting of Spanish property.

I will say that if Sucklin continues with this practice I will have to bring it to the attention of my UK broadsheet.

A property website should be unbiased, and topics and news which are neither libellous nor slanderous should be available for open and honest discussion, in other words Mr Sucklin if you post 'News' items and forum topics you should allow these to be dabated without exerting total control. 

Interesting. Haven't read that forum for a while. It seems to have grown into a property sales portal. A bit dishonest to push oneself as a "property expert" whilst deleting any comments they don't want the world to see. Can't believe it's the same forum....perhaps Stucklin sold it....or did he just sell out!

I will let others judge whether Mark Sucklin has commercially led interests and runs a commercially led website.

Here is what he says in 'The Local Spain' newspaper.

Quote' The money I make from the site comes through advertising - mostly from Spanish Real Estate Agents'

He says he also makes money from 'property consulting' and goes on to say 'I help Spanish developers and banks find buyers' and further says 'Many of my clients ( RE agents, developers etc) have been laid low' by the slump.

He denies his site is commercially driven despite it being laden with their adverts.

For over 5 years he has talked of and invited experts (who were involved in real estate) that the bottom of the market has been reached when it had not, potentially misleading unwary buyers into buying too soon and nursing heavy losses now.