UK Portals Battle for Decreasing Traffic

Internet traffic analyst, comScore has released November figures for the UK. These will be a Christmas present for some, and a source of discontent for others, as the race to claim the overall top spot for 2008 reaches its final stages.

With declining web traffic overall to real estate websites in November, the competition has been heated.

rightmove.co.uk still leads with almost twice the number of unique visitors (1,994,000) as its nearest rival, findaproperty.com (1,069,000) at number two.

Over the last two months findaproperty.com has overtaken propertyfinder.com, who has been relegated to number three (1,030,000).

Controversially, the Digital Property Group, which owns findaproperty.com, as well as findanewhome.com (33rd with 96,000), primelocation.com (4th with 908,000) and homesandproperty.co.uk (8th with 300,000), claims to have closed the gap on rightmove.co.uk.

In November the difference between the number of unique visitors to rightmove.co.uk and the Digital Property Group’s portals was at an all time low of only 211,000. Mark Milner, chief executive of Digital, was quoted in Estate Agent Today as saying: “We have firmly established ourselves as second in the market place and are most certainly gaining ground on the market leader.”

However, the Digital Property Group makes its claims based on combining web traffic for all their portals together, whereas rightmove.co.uk is a single website.

It isn’t the only claim the Digital Property Group have made about the November figures. Earlier this month findanewhome.com claimed it had overtaken UK market leader smartnewhomes.com as the most-visited new homes portal. smartnewhomes.com issued a statement suggesting that the number one spot was only held by findanewhome.com for a short period of time, meaning smartnewhomes.com is still the market leader.

Meanwhile propertyindex.com has issued a statement claiming it has not only overtaken one of its biggest competitors, globrix.com, but also bucked the market trend by doubling its visitor traffic in November. propertyindex.com came in at number fifteen on the list (211,000), with globrix.com at number twenty one (171,000).

Visitor numbers to propertyindex.com in November were reported to be more than double the amount recorded for October and five times the volume of visitor traffic reported for June 2008. By contrast traffic to all real estate websites in the UK fell by around 20%. In November total UK real estate traffic was 6,595,000 while in September it was as high as 7,719,000.

propertyindex.com’s chief executive, Lee Bramzell is putting a very positive spin on the comScore results:

“The fact that we’ve seen our traffic increase in a declining market bodes extremely well for the future. It’s certainly not all doom and gloom…”

“Industry insights such as the comScore figures are invaluable to new portals and will no doubt send a clear message to all estate agents and developers planning how best to market their properties for sale and rent in 2009.”

The comScore Top 10 for UK real estate in November 2008 was:

1. rightmove.co.uk
2. findaproperty.com
3 propertyfinder.com
4. primelocation.com
5. realestate.com.au
6. nestoria.co.uk
7. vebra
8. homesandproperty.co.uk
9. Trovit UK Homes
10. houseprices.co.uk

James Caan Buys 25% of look4aproperty.com

James Caan, entrepreneur and star of the BBC’s popular business pitching show, Dragon’s Den, has become chairman of independent UK property portal look4aproperty.com.

The news was announced on look4aproperty.com’s blog, which says that James Caan sees the move as a clear sign of his confidence in the UK housing market.

Through the investment arm of his business empire – Hamilton Bradshaw – Caan has secured a 25 per cent stake in look4aproperty.com. The exact figures involved in the deal have not been disclosed.

look4aproperty.com was founded by young entrepreneur Aaron Turner. “Aaron Turner is one of the most innovative and successful entrepreneurs in the country and I am delighted to be working with him,” said Caan.

Aaron Turner established look4aproperty.com in 2004, after working for 12 months as a ‘young MD’ for The Caudwell Group, which is the parent company of several other major businesses, including Phones 4U and 20:20 Mobile Group. During Turner’s time at the company he was the subject of a BBC documentary for The Money Programme.

Caan and Turner say they plan to announce a series of new products to kick-start the struggling UK housing market in the New Year.

“I see this investment as an important move in the face of the current recession,” says Caan.

flatmates.com.au

flatmates.com.au is an Australian portal for share accommodation. It lays claim to being the first Australian share accommodation site, with two similarly names websites having begun life in 1997.

In June 2007 Student Services Australia Pty Ltd purchased the two websites – flatmates.com.au and flatmate.com. In February 2008 it was relaunched.

A sister site, studentflatmates.com.au is launching in January 2009 and will be aimed at students seeking house share accommodation.

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fizber.com Partners With condo.com

For sale by owner real estate search engine fizber.com has announced a partnership with condo.com, the world’s largest condo marketplace.

The partnership will let buyers visiting US based fizber.com search for the latest condo listings from condo.com in their local markets and across the country.

fizber.com offers the largest national database of for sale by owner (FSBO), pre-foreclosure, foreclosure, and new home construction properties, with more than 2 million properties across the country. It hosts over 1 million unique monthly visitors. The site offers to list for-sale properties on a multiple listing service for a flat fee, with properties submitted to other property search engines for an additional fee.

condo.com has over 600,000 listings for sale and for rent in the United States and 70 countries and receives over 1 million visitors monthly.

“This new relationship will make it easier for homebuyers, investors and real estate agents and brokers to search and view condo properties on our site,” said Julia Foster, fizber.com VP of Marketing.

Matt Pluznick, VP of Strategic Development for condo.com, added, “This exciting new partnership with fizber.com allows condo.com to reach a brand-new audience of over 1 million potential customers through the seamless distribution of our condo listings to the fizber.com site. This new audience combined with our current condo.com community of over 1 million visitors monthly – and growing – supports our mission to be a huge and valuable resource to the multi-family real estate industry making this partnership ideal.”

In November condo.com announced a partnership with themovechannel.com, which gave condo.com users access to over 10,000+ international properties located in Spain, Portugal, Turkey, Bulgaria, France, Cyprus, England, Italy and more.

TomTom Enters Online Mapping

TomTom, known for its popular GPS, has launched an online mapping solution.

TomTom Route Planner is free and allows door-to-door directions to be mapped for the US and Canada. Of interest to the real estate industry is that it will compete with MapQuest and Google Maps. Some property portals already supply driving directions to properties, in addition to map based search.

The online maps are currently in beta but already have the benefit of TomTom’s live traffic information, smart routing, and “Map Share” daily improvements to accuracy.

In a statement about the Route Planner’s launch, Harold Goddijn, TomTom’s chief executive officer said: “The introduction of the online Route Planner marks an important step in our strategy to make our award-winning navigation available for all users, regardless of the platform that is used. Users who do not have a navigation device can now also benefit from our high-quality routing”.

Depending on the success and feedback from the beta programme, the TomTom online Route Planner will gradually be rolled out to users worldwide.

Only last week propertyportalwatch.com reported on the area of online mapping hotting up, with redfin.com choosing Google Maps over Microsoft’s Virtual Earth.

Meanwhile Google is facing further trouble with its popular but controversial Street View application. A group of Japanese lawyers and professors have asked Google to close down its Street View feature of Google Maps in the country.

homegain.com What If You Could Predict the Future

Almost everyone would like to predict the future, and now you can. Well, almost. You can predict what might happen to the value of your property if you altered or added to your house.

US real estate connection website homegain.com aims to connect home seekers and sellers with agents and brokers. For example, users can compare locate and compare real estate agents, research home values, and view homes for sale. Real estate agents can use it to promote their services and market their business. It also claims to have been one of the first websites that offered free online instant home valuations.

homegain.com has just announced the addition of a new “what if” feature, which keeps them ahead of the game in terms of online valuations.

The “what if” feature allows users to hypothetically add a room(s), bathroom(s) and/or some extra square footage to a home, and see what the changes would do to the value of their home. The what if function recalculates a new estimate, based on the changes.

Home Sale MaximizerTM is an additional tool in the “Get Homes Value” section that helps homeowners determine which home improvements such as home staging, landscaping or painting may best increase the resale values of their homes.

homegain.com’s General Manager, Louis Cammarosano, was quoted on RISmedia as saying:

“Our new ‘what if’ feature gives homeowners an indication of the potential value of their home before they get started on major home renovations. This enables people to make more informed decisions about their home and to plan for the future. Visitors who have questions can directly contact real estate agents in more than 2,100 ZIP codes across the country.”

To see the ‘what if’ application in action, visit: homegain.com/homevalues.

trulia.com Founders on Top 10 Newsmakers List

As part of the annual Swanepoel TRENDS Report that is published each February in the US, the top 10 Newsmakers in Real Estate list is compiled by the company’s research team.

Representing the world of property portals on the top 10 Newsmakers list for 2008 are trulia.com’s founders, Pete Flint and Sami Inkinen, who came in at number nine.

Author of the list, Stefan Swanepoel, blogged about the Top 10, saying of trulia.com:

“As founders of Trulia these two leaders, in spite of the current financial difficulties and the market downturn, continue to go against that flow and have raised funding in the amount of $33 million, which solidifies Trulia as a dotcom company that could survive the economic and/or Web 2.0 downturn to become one of the new paradigm companies to shape the future”.

At number one on the list is William Foley, founder and CEO of Fidelity National Financial (FNF). The company’s real estate division, Fidelity National Real Estate Solutions, provides real estate information, media and technology for homeowners and professionals, including the cyberhomes.com portal.

At number seven is Saul Klein, CEO of Point2 Technologies. And at number eight is Charles McMillan, the 2009 President of the National Association of REALTORS.

Newsmakers are defined by the company as those people that during the year made headlines as individuals, as a result of their actions and leadership of the companies or associations they are involved with in the real estate industry.

The second list to be released is the Top 10 Events Impacting on Real Estate for 2008. Among the key events for 2008 are: the election, ActiveRain reaching 100,000 members, twitter, NAR celebrating 100 years and, of course, the bailout, which comes top of the list.

Find out more about the Swanepoel TRENDS Report at their website: retrends.com

zoomf.com

zoomf.com is a UK based property search engine for residential homes to buy or rent. Launched in 2006, it was acquired by Trinity Mirror plc in November 2008.

Search results link through to the source – typically to listings on agents’ own websites. Its unique selling point is the search itself, which is more specified and allows users to specify price, style, location, and other special features.

Read more

nestoria.co.uk Price Comparison

nestoria.co.uk’s parent company, Lokku, has been working on a price comparison website, nestoholic.com, as an add-on to their already very successful property search.

Rather like Google Trends, nestoholic.com compares the average property prices by location. It uses the average asking price data from Nestoria’s considerable database, which is added to daily by property portals and agents. In this way, the statistics represent trends of the market from the seller’s point of view, rather than the buyer.

For example, comparing Manchester to Liverpool reveals that Manchester is 4.31% more expensive than Liverpool.



The results are accompanied by nestoria.co.uk listings for the two locations being compared, and Google ads.

There are still some glitches, and the website has not yet formally launched. Renthusiast quoted nestoholic.com developer Ruben Martinez as saying the current incarnation of nestoholic.com lacks the “superior geolocation of Nestoria,” but will have superior geo disambiguation in the next version.

India’s Best Real Estate Website: propertywala.com

Indian property portal propertywala.com has been voted the country’s best real estate website in the 2008 Website of the Year Awards.

The awards are run as an annual ‘people’s choice’ poll and were established in 2004 in India by online market research agency MetrixLab in association with Neilsen Online, supported by partners including Mashable.

This year the awards polled over 1.5 million Internet users from India and propertywala.com was chosen from 12 websites that were nominated in the real estate section.

A statement from the winning portal says:

“PropertyWala.com offers the most broad and user friendly property advertising services free of charge for buyers and sellers in India and overseas. PropertyWala.com has been developed over a period of two years by its parent company Efextra eSolutions Pvt Ltd (an IT company) after an extensive exposure working with international real estate portals. The site has been developed from the ground up with ease of use and web standards in mind. Within a period of 8 months of its launch, PropertyWala.com has become top real estate websites in terms of traffic and search rankings.”

See a list of winners in all categories at the Website of the Year Awards website.

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