Overviews - We Need Your Help
September 30, 2008 by Simon Baker · Leave a Comment
At Property Portal Watch we are keen to increase the number of overviews we provide of property portals around the world. Now the best way to do this is for the property portals themselves to send a brief overview of their site to us. Your site will be included in the Site Overviews section of PPW.
To make this easy, we have identified 11 sections that we want to overview on each portal. Therefore if you are interested in having your portal featured, then all you need to do is send an email to editor@propertyportalwatch.com and write a few paragraphs around each of the following sections.
- Ownership
- Market Position
- Key Measurements
- Market Coverage
- Advertising Model
- Financials
- Site Sections
- Technology
- Key Management
- History
- Recent Press
An example is the overview of realestate.com.au
We look forward to hearing from you shortly.
countrylife.co.uk
September 26, 2008 by Simon Baker · 2 Comments
countrylife.co.uk is a niche property portal site operating in the UK market. Apart from providing immediate access to the finest homes on the market in the UK and abroad, countrylife.co.uk provides property news, advice and expertise tailored to the discerning buyer, be they upsizing, downsizing, buying a second home in the UK or abroad or taking that first step to owning a house in the British countryside. The four pillars are the property search, property news, countryside matters and a thriving classified section.
realestatecommercial.com.au (Updated 9/2008)
September 26, 2008 by Simon Baker · Leave a Comment
realestatecommercial.com.au is the latest entry into the Australian commercial property portal market place. Launched in July 2008, the site is already gaining traction with 200+ agents using the site (although it is not clear how many are paying for the service).
However it has a long way to go to compete against the clear market leader, realcommercial.com.au - owned and operated by the REA Group, and second place, commercialrealestate.com.au.
IPMG May Be Looking to Sell homehound.com.au
September 25, 2008 by Simon Baker · 1 Comment
It is rumoured that Independent Print Media Group may be looking to sell homehound.com.au - Australia’s third largest residential portal site.
homehound.com.au is the result of a partnership between the Independent Print Media Group (owned by Michael Hannan) and Property Page Pty Ltd (owned by Ray White, Raine & Horne, LJ Hooker and Century 21).
Over the last 12 months, homehound.com.au has dramatically increased traffic to the site from 213k UB’s in August 2007 to 427k UB’s in August 2008.
realestateview.com.au (Updated 9/2008)
September 23, 2008 by Simon Baker · 2 Comments
realestateview.com.au is Australia’s 4th largest property portal site, primarily focusing on the Victorian real estate market.
Founded in 2001, realestateview.com.au is a joint venture between the Real Estate Institute of Victoria and leading Victorian real estate agents.
realestateview.com.au focuses primarily on advertising Victorian properties but also offers other property related internet services for agents such as research data and a multi-loading system that allows agents to upload their data once and have it distributed to a number of the major independent portals.
myhome.com.au (Updated 9/2008)
September 23, 2008 by Simon Baker · Leave a Comment
myhome.com.au is a recent entrant to the Australian property portal landscape. Launched in 2007 as a joint venture by Publishing & Broadcasting Limited (PBL) and Microsoft, the site promised take on the encumbents realestate.com.au and domain.com.au at their own game.
However after only 1 year and investment of over $20m in building and marketing the business, the business was sold to Shane Dale of Surroundpix for a reported $1.5m.
myhome.com.au continues to operate in the Australian market and is estimated to be in 5th place.
homehound.com.au (Updated 9/2008)
September 23, 2008 by Simon Baker · 3 Comments
homehound.com.au is the 3rd most popular site in the Australian market and promotes itself as the industry owned site that takes a simplistic ‘google-esque’ approach to searching for property.
homehound.comau has undergone rapid growth in UB’s over the last year and now has 420k+ unique visitors to the site each month. However this is still 12% of the traffic to the market leading realestate.com.au.
Will Networks Take on Rightmove in the UK?
September 22, 2008 by Simon Baker · 5 Comments
Over the last few months we have seen the rise of the “Network” in the UK - in particular the Propertyfinder Network and more recently The Digital Property Group (TDPG) from DMGT.
A network is a group of sites that, in total, reach a broader UV base than a single site. In fact, in the materials i was sent by The Digital Property Group, they claimed that “the gap between TDPG and Rightmove stands at just 355k unique users”.
So what makes up the Propertyfinder Network and The Digital Property Group. The Propertyfinder Network is made up of the sites owned by Propertyfinder - propertyfinder.com, ukpropertyshop.co.uk and hotproperty.co.uk. The Digital Property Group is made up of the property sites owned by DMGT - findaproperty.com, primelocation.com, findmeanewhome.com and homesandproperty.co.uk.
As a network, both TDPG and Propertyfinder are much closer to rightmove.co.uk than any of their component sites.
| Total Unique Visitors (000) | |
| RIGHTMOVE.CO.UK | 2,400 |
| The Digital Property Group | 2,045 |
| Propertyfinder Network | 1,501 |
However the real question is, are these “networks” a real threat to rightmove.co.uk or are they just another marketing spin on the numbers to make the gap between rightmove.co.uk and the rest look smaller than it really is?
eBay Looking to Buy Classified Sites
September 22, 2008 by Simon Baker · Leave a Comment
It was recently reported in the Wall Street Journal that eBay is looking to expand its classified ads business by buying promising private companies. eBay’s strategy will be to target classified ad sites that have leading positions in geographies and industry segments in which they don’t currently compete.
They are taking advantage of the global economic slowdown and hope to buy these companies on the cheap. Jacob Aqraou, the GM of eBay’s global classified business, said that the deepening credit crunch has depressed prices to such an extent that it makes more sense to acquire a market leader than to build a new business.
Traffic to UK Property Portal Sites (Aug 2008)
September 18, 2008 by Simon Baker · 8 Comments
The ComScore numbers are out for August 2008 and all sites are down month on month and more importantly year on year. rightmove.co.uk continues to be the stand out leader in the market with 2.4m UV’s with findaproperty.co.uk in second place with 1.3m UV’s and propertyfinder.com in 3rd place with 1.1m UV’s.
| Unique Visitors | Aug-08 |
| Real Estate Category | 7,572 |
| RIGHTMOVE.CO.UK | 2,400 |
| FINDAPROPERTY.COM | 1,304 |
| PROPERTYFINDER.COM | 1,123 |
| PRIMELOCATION.COM | 929 |
| NESTORIA.CO.UK | 508 |
| THINKPROPERTY.COM | 414 |
| UKPROPERTYSHOP.CO.UK | 377 |
| HOMESANDPROPERTY.CO.UK | 321 |
| HOMESONVIEW.CO.UK | 300 |
| HOTPROPERTY.CO.UK | 296 |
| ZOOPLA.CO.UK | 261 |
| GLOBRIX.COM | 253 |
| OURPROPERTY.CO.UK | 232 |
| FISH4HOMES.CO.UK | 214 |
Source: ComScore MediaMetrix August 2008
However, deeper analysis of the top three sites shows that although the UV gap may not be much, the frequency, total visits, total minutes, and page impression gap is much larger with rightmove.co.uk having over 6 times the number of page impressions as second placed findaproperty.co.uk. In fact rightmove.co.uk alone accounts for over 40% of all page impressions from UK real estate sites.
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