REA Group Shuts UK Print Mags
April 23, 2009 by Emma Sorensen
The REA Group Limited has issued a statement to the ASX announcing that it will close its UK print operations at the end of this month.
Propertyfinder Publications Limited will cease publishing its three titles, Hot Property, Renting and London Property News, all of which were aimed at the London property market. London Property News was published in three separate versions for London: Central & South, North West & Central, and City Islington Docklands.
Propertyfinder Publications Limited is jointly owned by the REA Group and News International Limited.
The company says the closure of the print operations will allow its UK portal, propertyfinder.com, to focus on its online property advertising business.
Hotproperty, Renting and Overseas print publications, with a combined monthly circulation of 120,000, were acquired when Propertyfinder Holdings Ltd purchased Sherlock Publications Ltd for £5.6m last April.
The REA Group owns three websites in the UK:
- propertyfinder.com, its flagship UK offering and one of the UK’s “Big 4″ property portals
- hotproperty.co.uk, which became part of the REA Group in April 2008 when the company purchased Sherlock Publications Ltd and is run in parallel with propertyfinder.com, so that agents only have to subscribe to one site, but will see their listings on both.
- ukpropertyshop.co.uk, a directory of estate and letting agents, covering 17,000 offices in over 3,000 towns.
As part of its plans to increase website content and news, propertyfinder.com appointed Nigel Lewis as Editor in February of this year.
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only a matter of time before the Propertyfinder.com portal goes bang.
Our rep said yesterday that it was the worst place to work at the moment and the majority of staff are looking elsewhere.
Personally i think it’s a shame as it’s one of the few portals that we like using, however i must concede that they’ll never ever compete with RM,
We just don’t have any vendors asking for it, ever.
The site itself is good but without a TV campaign they’re a sinking ship.
Writing off 6m pounds after only a year?
It must have been a dog when they bought it.
It’s a shame they were classy magazines with good property content. And I was happy to advertise in them albeit I am now more focused on my online presence.
In resonse to Mark’s comment, I don’t think they’re a sinking ship at all. I am very pleased with Property Finder. They are delivering us some good quality leads and service. Plus I am extremely glad they don’t advertise on TV. It’s certainly not where more people spend their time anymore, it’s online. TV is a waste of money, they’d be hypocrites not to focus their advertising online when all portals keep telling us to do the same.
In reponse to ‘DAVID’s comment they are a sinking ship.25 more redundancies this month.
They do provide good quality leads for sure but until my customers ask for them like they do RM then they will soon be sunk.
TV i’m afraid is the only way to educate 75% of the population, i do agree with you that online advertising is a must but in conjunction with TV ads.
RM leads out number theirs 6/1
[...] and entered a marketing agreement with realestate.co.nz. This year, the REA Group closed its UK print operations in April and is finalising the sale of Propertyfinder in the UK to [...]