Interview with Gill Markham – rentright.co.uk

Over the past 20 years, Gill Markham has worked for brands including rightmove.co.uk, Hambro Countrywide, and The Digital Property Group. Markham is now head of operations for the newly relaunched rentright.co.uk, and says the website “has the potential to rival any competition in the market place.”
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Interview with Ken Tsurumaru – iproperty.com.my

“Move fast, understand the drivers of the business and have fun.” That’s the advice Ken Tsurumaru, country manager of iProperty Malaysia, has for anyone planning to start up a new property portal.
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Interview with John Helm – mynewplace.com

Hitwise figures have had US rental apartments portal mynewplace.com in either 10th or 11th place for a number of months now. In this interview, founder and CEO John Helm covers topics including Google Maps, social media, and what it takes to build a successful real estate portal.
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Interview with Dan Daugherty – rentbits.com

US rentals search engine rentbits.com has just been redesigned, but before the new look was released it saw a huge spike in traffic. It was one of the Hitwise “fast movers” for January, climbing 51 places to land at number 75. We got in touch with the search engine’s CEO, Dan Daugherty, to find out how rentbits.com was created, and where it’s planning to head next.
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Interview with Ken Shuman – trulia.com

US property search engine trulia.com marked four years of operation in 2009, and spent the year releasing steady upgrades to everything from its agent profiles to its listing imagery. The search engine, currently number seven on the Hitwise list of US real estate websites, reported bumper traffic figures as the year came to a close.

trulia.com’s head of communications, Ken Shuman, spoke to propertyportalwatch.com about the website’s recent releases, its planned expansion into rental listings, and those Google acquisition rumours.
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Interview with Tammy Kotula – apartments.com

As its names suggests, apartments.com is a US-based property portal focusing specifically on apartments. After a substantial promotional push in 2009, apartments.com has recently moved into the top 10 US real estate websites list.
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Interview with Kelly Roark – frontdoor.com

frontdoor.com is a US based property listings and information website. It is owned by the Scripps Networks digital media group, which means it is also affiliated with the popular real estate and home cable TV network and website, HGTV.

Here, vice president of interactive sales and development Kelly Roark talks to propertyportalwatch.com about recent developments at frontdoor.com as well as the website’s business model, its use of social media, and its future plans:
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Interview with Anton Kreil – hablib.com

hablib.com, or “Habitation Libertum”, is a free residential property platform that was launched
in August. The For Sale By Owner website is the work of Anton Kreil from the BBC2 series Million Dollar Traders. Here, Anton discusses the creation, business model and future of hablib.com with propertyportalwatch.com:
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Interview with Douglas Pope – hotpads.com

Map based search engine hotpads.com has won its fair share of awards for online innovation over the past year. The website was launched in November 2005 by three college roommates from the University of Notre Dame.

Initially it covered rentals only, but in November 2007 added for sale listings and included vacation listings earlier this year. hotpads.com has grown to include around 3 million homes for sale and more than 350,000 rental listings.

propertyportalwatch.com spoke to co-founder Douglas Pope about the history and future of the website.
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Podcast Interview with Alex Chesterman – CEO of Zoopla

I recently had the chance to sit down with Alex Chesterman in London to have a chat about his business.  Recently Zoopla has hit the headlines with its announcement that it is acquiring Propertyfinder.com in the UK from the REA Group.  Alex talks about his business model and how he sees things panning out in the UK market.

Here is the podcast of that interview.

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