smartnewhomes.com Denies findanewhome.com Is No. 1

The battle to be top dog in the property portal business is not showing any signs of cooling down before the end of the year. In fact it seems to be heating up, particularly in the new homes market.

Earlier this week we published a story about findanewhome.com overtaking UK market leader smartnewhomes.com as the most-visited new homes portal according to Hitwise figures from November.

David Bexon, Managing Director of smartnewhomes.com, has since issued a statement refuting claims that they have been beaten to the number one spot by rival findanewhome.com. Bexham argues that the number one spot was only held by findanewhome.com for a short period of time (the final week of the Hitwise figures, 29 November), meaning smartnewhomes.com is still the market leader. He writes:

“The recent release issued by FindaNewHome.com, claiming to have been officially recognized as the ‘UK’s most visited new homes portal’ is both misleading and inaccurate.

Figures in the release, which state that FindaNewHome.com received 5.6% more visits than its nearest competitor – SmartNewHomes.com, are based on just one week’s worth of figures – ironically the only week in 2008 when FindaNewHome.com received slightly more unique visitors than SmartNewHomes.com throughout the whole of 2008 so far.

While I’m flattered that FindaNewHome.com clearly regard their recent success as a major victory, I would like to reassure our housebuilder clients that we are and remain the leading, most frequently visited website for the new homes market. We currently promote over 17,000 homes on our site, and have an average of over 270,000 unique visitors each month for this year.

Consumer traffic to SmartNewHomes.com has remained extremely strong in 2008. Whilst peaking and troughing at certain moments throughout the year, we have remained the UK’s number one new homes website, with an unparalleled level of visitors and new homes available for sale.

Further, I am confident that we will start the new year as we began the last – offering developers the most visited new homes website, and continuing to facilitate the home buying process for the majority of the country’s new home buyers. We will be re-launching our website early in 2009 with a new look, added functionality and enhanced mapping and search tools.”

Regardless of who beat whom, the competition is certainly tight and it’s one to keep an eye on.

We at propertyportalwatch.com can only wonder what 2009 holds – can smartnewhomes.com beat off the advances of findanewhome.com? Or will findanewhome.com build on the successes of this year to claim the number one position?

1. findanewhome.com

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2. Competition in New Home Portals

   findanewhome.com has overtaken previous UK market leader smartnewhomes.com as the most-visited new homes portal according to Hitwise figures from November....

3. UK Portals Battle for Decreasing Traffic

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4. Records at findaproperty.com, findanewhome.com

   The Digital Property Group has revealed that it's not only its flagship property portal, findaproperty.com, which has been breaking records. It's sister website, market leading new homes specialist portal findanewhome.com, has also broken web traffic records this week. ...

5. smartnewhomes.com Warns of Crisis

   Statistics released by some of the UK's leading property portals reveal some complicated trends in the market. ...