Clever Link bait

A clever link bait email just got forwarded to me, basically a website is asking that you link to them to increase their market share in a way that it seem like it will benefit the estate agent but I believe this is just smoke and mirrors, the company may get a few ‘free links’ this way enough to lift them from obscurity but nothing more.
Here is the full email
I would like to invite you to participate in the Property Portal Experiment…
[Student Accommodation Website] attempting to become the ‘Rightmove’ of the student accommodation market and can only succeed at this if every Letting Agent and Landlord puts a [Student Accommodation Website] link on their site pointing to us
If this succeeds, all Letting Agents and Landlords will have their student accommodation marketed to 100,000’s of students FREE FOREVER!
But it doesn’t end there… if the Student Accommodation Shop site is successful, I will then launch a general UK rental site (using the same datafeed from Agents for all sites) covering all property to rent in the UK; this too will be FREE FOREVER!
If this site attracts the neccesary support, I will then launch the main site; a UK property sales portal with the FULL SUPPORT of the UK Rental agents… This site will also be FREE FOREVER!
There are many property portals currently offering an alternative to Rightmove, but at a fraction of the price;
Other sites won’t come close to Rightmove’s market lead because:,
1. There is no guarantee that other sites will achieve the requisite support to compete with Rightmove’s dominant position
2. If successful, most other sites will charge Agents a subscription fee at the earliest opportunity (as Rightmove did)
My theory reflects that of Facebook… “a website doesn’t have to charge everyone a fee to be commercially successful”.
If I can get the support for my niche ‘Student Accommodation’ site, I believe that I can provide enough confidence to Agents that my Rental site can work too, and if that site works… we can have a UK property portal equivalent to Rightmove, but without charges to everyone.
NB. Transparency is key to any successful relationship; and I have come up with a number of subscription-based premium services, which can help to finance the site, but these premium advertising services will certainly not jeopardise the spirit of the sites. Here is an example of a premium advert (in yellow) on my Student Accommodation site.
Finally, I would like to say that if you do place a link onto any of my sites, you can withdraw that link at any time in the future, and thereby, taking the wind out of it’s sails altogether…
I hope that my email is relevant to you and if you have any questions or comments, please do not hesitate to contact me.
We say: Adding a link on your site will only benefit them (not you) and will take people that want student accommodation (or the specific service of the company) away from you so I do not recommend this.