UK Portals Battle for Decreasing Traffic
December 23, 2008 by Emma Sorensen · Leave a Comment
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
propertyfinder.com
December 17, 2008 by Emma Sorensen · Leave a Comment
propertyfinder.com is the second of the UK’s “Big 4″ property portals. It was begun in 1995 and has been owned by the REA Group and News Limited since 2005.
It receives over 1.9 million unique visitors every month and lists over 350,000 properties from just under 4,000 estate agency offices.
Luxury Property Portals on the Increase?
December 12, 2008 by Emma Sorensen · Leave a Comment
In these challenging economic times you’d think property portals would be focussing on the cheap and cheerful, but the luxury end of the market still seems to be expanding.
Most recently the iproperty.com group launched a magazine to accompany its own luxury portal, iluxuryasia.com. iluxuryasia.com was established earlier this year and draws on its contacts in all countries through its sister websites in the iproperty.com group to collect what it claims is the largest database of luxury real estate for sale and rent from key Asian cities.
In the UK there’s old favourite primelocation.com which launched in 2001. The Digital Property Group are actively keeping it separate from their other three portals (findaproperty.com, homesandproperty.co.uk and findanewhome.com) in an attempt to retain the top end of the market. primelocation.com claim to have over 2 million visitors per month use their portal to view 230,000 “prime” properties to buy, and 60,000 “prime” properties to lease, from 4,000 agents.
In October we also reported on the rather quiet launch of propertyfinder.com’s luxury offering propertyfinder.com/premium, which will be going head to head with primelocation.com.
In the US, condogala.com also launched this year and showcases condos and luxury property developments from all corners of the globe.
A recent post from renthusiast suggests that things are hotting up the US. The website of long running New Jersey based magazine uniquehomes.com has been recently redesigned in order to keep attracting affluent home buyers.
It will face competition from luxuryhomes.com and luxuryrealestate.com which both offer wider global representation. There’s also Leading Real Estate Companies of the World’s offering, luxuryportfolio.com, and established player intlistings.com, just to name a few.
propertyindex.com Launches UK Sales Team
December 3, 2008 by Emma Sorensen · Leave a Comment
UK portal propertyindex.com is ramping up their approach to UK agents in an attempt to convince them to advertise on their ‘pay for results’ portal. Their latest initiative is the introduction of a UK sales team.
propertyindex.com started as an overseas property portal for the UK market in 2006. But since September this year it has been taking on the major portals with full UK residential sales and rental listings.
The national field sales team for the UK will give the online portal a face in the real world, and no doubt more growth and a larger footprint in the market will follow.
As Estate Agent Today revealed, the new team looks familiar, since most are staff who were made redundant last month by market leader rightmove.co.uk.
The new team comprises of the fresh recruits from rightmove.co.uk, who join existing sales staff and will be overseen by up by UK Commercial Director Ben Grove, who formerly worked for propertyfinder.com:
In a statement issued by propertyindex.com, Managing Director Lee Bramzell said: “With proven track records, this team will help take us from strength to strength. We offer a fresh approach marketing solution to agents who are tightening their belts, and our new recruits will be aiming to show estate agents that propertyindex.com can generate high quality leads on a pay for results basis, even in a difficult market’’.
In an interview with propertyportalwatch.com earlier this month, Lee Bramzell said that propertyindex.com’s innovative ‘pay per results’ business model has so far been received well by agents. It requires no set-up fees, no monthly subscriptions, no commission on sales and no minimum term contracts. Instead, agents pay for leads. UK agents pay £1 for a buy lead and £5 for a vendor lead, while overseas agents pay £10 for a sales lead.
Top 5 Crazy Names For Property Portals
November 28, 2008 by Emma Sorensen · 4 Comments
Around the PPW office we’re always hearing of new portals with crazy names. So we thought we’d put together a list of our favourites.
And the Best UK Property Portal Is…
November 27, 2008 by Emma Sorensen · Leave a Comment
UK Newspaper, the Daily Mail has unveiled the winners of the UK Property Awards for 2008.
Three portals were highlighted in the awards.
REA Group owned propertyfinder.com has been awarded Best Property Portal UK with 4 stars, alongside property search engine globrix.com, who received the same accolade.
But the real winner was smartnewhomes.com who received a 5 star ranking. The portal was praised for its all round quality of service.
smartnewhomes.com is one of the UK’s leading websites for new homes and according to the company the portal attracts more than 1 million searches per month. smartnewhomes.com is a wholly owned subsidiary of Trinity Mirror, the UK’s largest newspaper publisher, which operates a portfolio of more than 500 media brands and many websites, including a quarter share of the fish4.co.uk group.
The inaugural International Property Awards were presented in 1995, and in 2005 the Daily Mail UK Property Awards were launched under its umbrella. Other regions covered under separate awards include the Middle East, Asia, Americas, Europe and Africa. 5 star winners like smartnewhomes.com go on to be judged for the overall International Property Awards.
For a complete list of award winners in all countries, visit propertyawards.net.
Why rightmove should acquire propertyfinder
November 12, 2008 by Simon Baker · 7 Comments
Times are tough in the UK market at the moment and it seems to me that the best value creating play would be a merger of rightmove and propertyfinder and therefore increase the gap between rightmove and the rest of the market.
REA Group Projects 50% Revenue Growth
November 10, 2008 by Emma Sorensen · 1 Comment
While many in the property portal world are worried about a possible downturn in advertising revenue, Greg Ellis, CEO of REA Group, remains optimistic.
Ellis made the positive comments in an interview with The Australian newspaper published today.
He said that the online real estate classified market shows no sign of succumbing to the advertising slowdown. He also said that the REA Group expects to maintain revenue growth of about 50 per cent this financial year.
Ellis was quoted as saying:
“People are spending a very small proportion of their annual budgets online… The saturation point of that is years away.”
REA count realestate.com.au in Australia and propertyfinder.com in the UK among their stable of international property portals.
Mr Ellis was also reported as saying that an Australian mobile site would go into beta testing before the end of this financial year.
A lot of attention has been on the REA Group of late, with rapid international expansion, the appointment of Greg Ellis as CEO, News Limited increasing their stake in the company, and record breaking 45 percent increase in revenues last financial year.
Is Globrix Under Pressure in the UK?
November 6, 2008 by Simon Baker · 9 Comments
The much hyped Globrix was recently quoted as saying that pay-to-list portals have had their day, however with decreasing traffic is it Globrix that is under pressure?
Traffic to UK Property Portal Sites (Sep 2008)
November 5, 2008 by Simon Baker · 2 Comments
The ComScore numbers are out for September 2008. propertyfinder.com and zoopla.co.uk were the big winners with propertyfinder.com moving back into second place with findaproperty.com slipping to third place and zoopla.co.uk increasing traffic by 32% month on month.
The big losers were primelocation.com that slipped futher behind big broter findaproperty.com and propertyfinder.com, thinkproperty.com that slipped 20% and the much hyped globrix.com that also slipped 21% and is now the 17th most visited property portal site in the UK.
| Sep-08 | Aug-08 | Change | |
| Real Estate | 7,719 | 7,572 | 1.9% |
| RIGHTMOVE.CO.UK | 2,431 | 2,400 | 1.3% |
| PROPERTYFINDER.COM | 1,308 | 1,123 | 16.5% |
| FINDAPROPERTY.COM | 1,201 | 1,304 | -7.9% |
| PRIMELOCATION.COM | 824 | 929 | -11.3% |
| NESTORIA.CO.UK | 473 | 508 | -6.9% |
| UKPROPERTYSHOP.CO.UK | 371 | 377 | -1.6% |
| HOMESANDPROPERTY.CO.UK | 348 | 321 | 8.5% |
| ZOOPLA.CO.UK | 345 | 261 | 32.2% |
| HOMESONVIEW.CO.UK | 337 | 300 | 12.2% |
| THINKPROPERTY.COM | 330 | 414 | -20.2% |
| HOTPROPERTY.CO.UK | 279 | 296 | -5.7% |
| OURPROPERTY.CO.UK | 261 | 232 | 12.7% |
| FISH4HOMES.CO.UK | 210 | 214 | -1.9% |
| GLOBRIX.COM | 200 | 253 | -21.0% |
Source: ComScore MediaMetrix September 2008
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