Comments on: propertyfinder.com Sold to zoopla.co.uk

By: REA Group Revenue Up, Profits Down | Property Portal Watch

REA Group Revenue Up, Profits Down | Property Portal Watch — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 08:16:09 +0000

[...] the closure of the UK print business earlier this year, the company’s UK online operations were sold to zoopla.co.uk in August 2009. The company’s UAE operations were sold to its joint venture partner, the [...]

By: well_appointed

well_appointed — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 09:30:47 +0000

Thanks Tom for your counter-arguments. A couple of point I would pick up on; Rightmove can’t be compared to Google (or only in the sense that it is the dominant player). None of the prop portals come close to being strong enough to be a comparable Yahoo! or AskJeeves or Bing! and take TM on.
Too many of RM’s competitors buy too much of their traffic through pay per click, etc, and don’t have the money to market or advertise themselves; so how will they ever get the natural traffic and brand to take RM on?
Also, your argument that there should be as many portals as possible to encourage competitonson many levels is fair – but while four or five portals scrabble to gain a clear No.2 position (which they have been now for nearly TEN YEARS), RM continues its dominance. It would be better to have one, strong, well-funded, brilliant search engined rival – but I guess that won’t ever happen.

By: tom

tom — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 06:08:00 +0000

well appointed you obviously work for PF from your previous comments on here.. , we all need as many portals to survive in their own right it improves technology innovation and retains competion freshness within the industry . It is part of the landscape in that in property portal industry some will fall by the wayside ;so it not strange , just simply survival of the fitest. is RM the google of the uk property portal industry ? at the moment yes. But. it is the agents perogative to choose’ what is working for them ‘ without more advances in technology from more portals offering more to the end user and agent , they will always make the rightmove.
tom

By: well_appointed

well_appointed — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 22:33:38 +0000

Sadly propertyfinder hasn’t been sold because it was doing a bad job in the market for agents, as some people have commented here. It was because it lost money and vast amounts of it.

Cutting up to 70% of the staff (as has been done) was the only solution – or trying to charge agents more, but the USP of the Rightmove competitors is that they are cheaper! So all of the Rightmove competitors are caught in a vicious circle – I would guess few of them make much money or more probably all run at cost or small/big losses. I notice findaproperty is recruiting hard at the moment – but they had similar traffic and status as propertyfinder – so what gives?

The only way agents are going to break the Rightmove strangle hold is to stop using them and give the others a chance; otherwise nothing will change; even the best technology, millions of venture capital pounds and the hard sweat of techies won’t break it.

On another note, I gather propertyfinder was sold for less than £2 million – a snip given REA and News International spent in the region of £25 million buying and then keeping the business going.

Strange business isn’t it?!

By: Mark Shawcross

Mark Shawcross — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 17:45:27 +0000

work for a portal.

maybe you should, apologies for knowing the abbreviations for propertyportals!

By: Bob Anderson

Bob Anderson — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 21:12:11 +0000

It can only be good news, we highly regard Zoopla as a great property portal.

Bob
Comerty commercial property search
Solihull office space

By: Work for a Portal

Work for a Portal — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 19:28:39 +0000

Mark Shawcross – you obviously work for a portal, maybe ‘PF’?…you say all the right things or abbreviations, PF, FAP, RM. So get over the fact you were made redundant. Agents don’t read this blog.

Amul – I am with Trent C, stop commenting! You have nothing to bring to any blog. Mind you, neither does this comment I am typing now

Trent C – you work for PropertyFinder

Craig Daniels – mmm…propertyfinder or the AUS business??? mmmm…I think PF.

At least Kurt knows who he is, or where he is…at Inman. Lucky man. Pity I can’t translate his comment!?!

By: Trent C

Trent C — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 15:46:50 +0000

The more competition amongst portals the better for estate agents – simple really. If agents want to foster competitions they should like widely and spread their market budget widely amongst every portal. If they only put cash into Rightmove, they can’t complain if Rightmove subsequently rape them.

By: Kurz: Immowelt, Inman Connect SF 2009, Propertyfinder.com

Kurz: Immowelt, Inman Connect SF 2009, Propertyfinder.com — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 10:02:08 +0000

[...] in den letzten Jahren gekauften Immobilienportalen trennt. Propertyfinder.com aus UK wurde nun an zoopla.co.uk verkauft. Werden weitere Verkäufe folgen? Im deutschsprachigen Raum gehört AtHome zur REA [...]

By: craig daniels

craig daniels — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 07:21:55 +0000

Everyone needs to remember that Zoopla is backed by Venture Capitalists who will want to see profit in this venture. It was very clear that the private listings and pay per lead strategy were not working here, therefore they had to buy a traditional business. This now means that Zoopla have to compete with Rightmove and DPG on a level playing field which is going to be tough. If the VC backers are to make a profit then Zoopla will also need to make a healthy profit over the next 2 – 3 years which will mean that they need to make money (and that money will mainly come from Estate Agents). It is really quite simple, in order to create the profit of Rightmove you have to ultimately charge the same as Rightmove so I am afraid that this is not great news for Estate Agents. We should also bear in mind the millions that have been invested in Propertfinder and the fact that it was still worthless despite backers such as News International and REA. I have to say that once the dust has settled I cannot really see how Zoopla is going to offer more.