Other Sources of Property Portal Information
August 31, 2008 by Simon Baker · Leave a Comment
During my online travels i have come across 3 other sites that provide information about property portals. If you are interested about this area, you should check them out.
They are Classified Intelligence, Globaledge.co.uk and Inman News. Here is an overview of each …
The Times Online Dumps Propertyfinder.com in Favour of Globrix
August 31, 2008 by Simon Baker · 6 Comments
In a strange decision last week, The Times Online dumped propertyfinder.com as its real estate search partner in favour of globrix.com.
Now News International, the publisher of The Times and The Times Online is a 50% owner of both propertyfinder.com and globrix.com. In fact, the other 50% owner of propertyfinder.com is the REA Group from Australia and they are 58% owned by News Corp, the owner of News International, therefore News Corp really owns 79% of propertyfinder.com and only 50% of globrix.com.
Now what makes this an even stranger decision is that propertyfinder.com is a real busines with real revenues. In the 12 months to 30 June 2008, propertyfinder.com had around GBP 10.5m in revenues. (Source: REA Group Full Year Financials)
Property Portal Financial Models From Around the World
August 31, 2008 by Simon Baker · 3 Comments
When looking at property portals around the world, there are various financial models that are being chased. The main ones are subscription, pay per listing, free to pay - pay to upgrade, lead generation and pay per acquisition.
The models that are truly delivering returns to the operators are the Subscription Model and the Pay Per Listing Model.
Each of these models is discussed in detail in this article.
Group Seloger Acquires Belle Demeures
August 30, 2008 by Simon Baker · 1 Comment
Group Seloger, the owner of the largest property portal site in France - seloger.com, recently acquired the Belle Demeures Group which consists of a monthly print publication of top end properties and a web site (www.belledemeures.fr). The Belle Demeures Group targeted top end properties and therefore this is likely to be a move for Seloger into this segment of the market. The business was acquired for 3.5 million Euro.
Having acquired combined print and online businesses before (Squarefoot in Hong Kong and Albabworld (now propertyfinder.ae) in Dubai) i can say that there is some merit in taking this approach. The acquisition will bolster their revenue however it will come at the cost of margin. The majority of the revenues are likely to come from the print publication and the hope of management at Group Seloger will be to convert the print based advertisers into online advertisers.
What is interesting, is that i believe Seloger used to publish some print publications around the New Homes market and slowly closed these down due to the cost of running them and due to the significantly lower margins versus online.
realtor.com Reports Strong Month on Month Traffic Growth
August 29, 2008 by Simon Baker · 1 Comment
Earlier this week Move Inc, the owner of realtor.com, reported that they had strong month on month growth in their traffic to the realtor.com site.
According to ComScore Media Metrix, the realtor.com site had a increase in traffic of 29% from June to July and that the overall time spent on the site increased by 26%. I am not sure whether they are referring to total minutes on site or average session duration. If it is total minutes on site, then of course that will increase in line with an increase in the number of people visiting the site.
Now I dont put much credibility in month on month growth in traffic purely because it can be affected by so many variables:
- June has 30 days while July has 31 days
- June may have more public holidays than July
- An extensive Pay Per Click campaign may have been run in July to bolster traffic numbers
- A new content distribution deal may have been launched
- Even the underlying panel data or the methodology may have changed during the period
What is more important is to look at year on year growth for the business using comparable months. Luckily the Move Inc guys also reported the growth of realtor.com on a year on year basis.
zillow.com Meets John McCain in Cyberspace
August 29, 2008 by Simon Baker · 1 Comment
For anyone who has been following the worlds longest election, the US election, you would have seen recently that John McCain, the Republican nominee, was asked how many homes did he and his wife own. Now the question in itself is relatively innocuous however the fact that he didnt know the answer made it headline news.
Therefore a couple of days ago, the enterprising Diane Tuman, the Content Manager at Zillow, posted a very interesting entry on the Zillow Blog - it was an attempt to work out just how much John McCain’s real estate empire was worth and where the houses were. She mashed together the attempts by newspapers to work how many houses he has, with google maps / earth and the Zillow Zestimates to work out how much they are worth.
The blog entry is well worth a read. Check it out at http://www.zillowblog.com/john-mccains-houses-number-6-no-8-maybe-11/2008/08/
findaproperty.com in the UK Launches New Blog
August 28, 2008 by Simon Baker · 1 Comment
Earlier this month findaproperty.com in the UK launched its own blog called Winging It. (http://blog.findaproperty.co.uk)
The blog has a great personality and provides interesting and sometimes quirky reading about the UK property market. Some of the more interesting articles are
- What happens to property details when estate agents have too much Photoshop time on their hands?
- Why global warming might be the only hope for first-time buyers?
- Who’s hotter, Kirstie Allsopp or The Beeny?
- Why Donald Trump’s curious hair may be a good enough reason to deny him planning permission?
Now findaproperty.co.uk is not the first portal site in the UK to have a blog. propertyfinder.com has been running blogs on its site for a couple of years (http://blogs.propertyfinder.com/) however findaproperty.co.uk has raised the bar and it will be interesting to see how propertyfinder.com responds.
Recently i wrote about Trulia in the US offering its visitors the chance to set up their own blogs. (http://propertyportalwatch.com/2008/08/trulia-ramps-up-offering-in-the-us-market/)
Enjoy the reading.
The REA Group Appoints Greg Ellis as New CEO
August 28, 2008 by Simon Baker · 2 Comments
Today the REA Group announced the appointment of Greg Ellis as the company’s new Chief Executive Officer. Ellis is currently Marketing Director Asia Online Services for Microsoft. He will take on the new role on Monday, 8 September.
Ellis has over 20 years business experience, 14 of which have been in senior line management positions. He has worked in Australia, Asia and Europe.
Before his current role at Microsoft, he was Managing Director of Online and Search at World Directories in the Netherlands.
Ellis also spent five years at Sensis and 11 years at Telstra. At Sensis, he was most recently General Manager of Sensis Interactive. At Telstra, his most recent role was National General Manager, Marketing Strategy & Planning.
You can check out Greg Ellis’ full bio on linkedin (http://www.linkedin.com/in/gellis)
Top US Portals in July 2008 vs August 2007
August 28, 2008 by Simon Baker · Leave a Comment
When looking at the performance of property portal sites in a market, you often look at a point in time and try to draw some conclusions or you may look at two adjacent months. However to really get a feeling for movement in the consumer views of a market, it is more important to look at the movement over a longer period of time.
Therefore below are the Hitwise visits market share numbers for the top US residential property portal sites for August 2007and July 2008.
You can make some interesting observations:
- Realtor.com has slipped significantly, losing 2.07% of visits to property sites or 22% of its traffic.
- Yahoo real estate has been a big mover increasing market share by 1.16%
- Zillo.com and Ziprealty.com also were strong movers
- Trulia entered the top 10 over the period
- Realtytrac decreased significantly over the time, losing 2.67%
So what does it mean?
Firstly, although realtor.com continues to be the clear market leader, they are coming back to the pack and the challenge will be to continue to drive traffic to the site. Perhaps a stronger focus on SEO is required.
Secondly, Yahoo, Zillow and Trulia are doing the right things in their approach to growing traffic to their sites. It would be interesting to see the frequency of visits during the period to get a feeling for for brand loyalty.
Finally, visits to realtytrac have dropped off either due to a decrease in interest in the foreclosure market or as a result of the the content distribution deals they have done, people are looking at foreclosure market information from realtytrac.com on other sites.
NAEA Launching propertylive.co.uk, What is All the Fuss About?
August 27, 2008 by Simon Baker · 2 Comments
Earlier this week I wrote a small piece on the launch of the Propertylive.co.uk site in the UK market. I have given this some more thought and i fail to see what the fuss is really about. Here is some food for thought.
Firstly, propretylive.co.uk will have, in theory, access to significant volumes of listings in the UK. However, will they have noticeably more listings than rightmove.co.uk, propertyfinder.co.uk, dothomes.co.uk and so on? I doubt it. Remember, when a consumer does a search in a suburb, they rarely see all the listings available and as long as the consumer feels like the content is significant enough for their needs, they are likely to be satisfied with looking at one or two sites.
Secondly, as they are not charging to place listings on the site, how much will they really have to spend on marketing? Remember, the UK market is extremely crowded with traditional brands such as rightmove.co.uk, propertyfinder.com, findaproperty.co.uk and primelocation.com having strong brand recognition. (See my previous article on propertylive.co.uk http://propertyportalwatch.com/2008/08/new-site-backed-by-naea-to-launch-in-the-uk/) Dislodging these incumbents is extremely difficult - even globrix.com, backed by News International, has a long way to go to break into the top echelons of UK property portals.
Thirdly, in a tough market, agents should be looking at the efficacy of the sites that they advertise on. While they may want to save money by not advertising on rightmove.co.uk, the reality is that they still need leads and therefore would rather pay to receive leads than save GBP 400 per month and potentially receive little or no leads. The true businesses likely to be impacted by the economic down turn are the print guys as they struggle to justify their high costs of advertising.
Finally, i dont know of any industry owned property portal site being successful in a market. The challenge is that most industry bodies find it difficult to make the tough decisions and dont have access to the funds. The often start with the right objectives but fail to achieve their goals.
The bottom line is that i dont believe that rightmove.co.uk or the other paid for portal sites have anything to fear from propertylive.co.uk. The bigger challenges for them are to justify the prices they charge for the volume of leads they generate and to manage their infrastructure as the number of agents in the UK declines.
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