UK Portals Battle for Decreasing Traffic

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

rightmove.co.uk vs brightmove.co.uk?

In the world of property portals a name can be everything, and the bigger the company is the more closely guarded the branding and brand identity will be.

UK market leader rightmove.co.uk is no different and has taken great exception to brightmove.co.uk using such a similar name, and having such similar advertising slogans and straplines.

As Estate Agent Today points out, it’s a real life David and Goliath: brightmove.co.uk has 1 employee, 16 agents and 239 properties worldwide; while rightmove.co.uk has over 240 employees, 11,500 estate agents and over 1m properties.

brightmove.co.uk describes itself on its website as an “Internet Property Portal and Property Service Provider, also termed a Property Retailer by the Office of Fair Trading”.

brightmove.co.uk was established in 2000, and claims to have registered its name on 4 January 2000. The rightmove.co.uk trademark was also registered that year.

brightmove.co.uk’s owner Mike Osborn has received letters from rightmove.co.uk’s lawyers suggesting he is passing off Rightmove’s name and implying that he is exploiting their huge investment in marketing.

As a result, Osbsorn has now dropped his strapline ‘Make the right move with Brightmove’, and also now refers to the website optimistically as ‘the future No 1 internet property website’, rather than its previous strapline which was ‘the number one UK and worldwide internet property website’.

According to Estate Agent Today, Osborn is also considering some legal action of his own, arguing that brightmove.co.uk was the first to charge for listings, and saying that rightmove.co.uk could be passing itself off as brightmove.co.uk. “Obviously Brightmove is the prime name and Rightmove is a derivative of this name,” he is quoted as saying.

propertyportalwatch.com doesn’t think this is the last we’ll hear of rightmove.co.uk vs brightmove.co.uk - or is it going to be brightmove.co.uk vs rightmove.co.uk?

Read the full details at Estate Agent Today .

rightmove Announces Major Contract

UK market leader rightmove.co.uk this week publicly announced that it has renewed its agreement with Connells, the UK’s second largest estate agency group. The extension to the agreement runs into 2012.

Publicly announced signings of large agencies seems to have become something of a trend, whether to boost confidence in the market or indulge in a little one-upmanship is unclear.

The announcement certainly goes some way to refuting the Estate Agency Today poll that claimed 75% of agents were threatening to quit rightmove.co.uk.

Last month rightmove.co.uk assured the public that it was on track to meet market expectations for the current financial year, and re-signing Connells is clearly a gain in this market and will help them fulfill this claim.

Connells have over 470 branches, trading under well-recognised High Street brands such as Connells, William H Brown, Fox & Sons, Barnard Marcus, Allen & Harris and Sharman Quinney. It has been voted the ‘Best Large Estate Agency’ company in the UK in four out of the last five years.

In the statement issued by the company, David Livesey, group chief executive of Connells, reaffirmed his confidence in the portal:

“Rightmove has become and will remain the leading UK property website. With its unparalleled reach, Rightmove is something house sellers expect from their agent. Rightmove is an essential element of our marketing. Signing up now for a long-term deal gives us certainty of cost, and this has a clear value to us.”

“This is the best possible start for 2009,” said Rightmove’s Managing Director Ed Williams:

“With our largest marketing campaign ever launching on Boxing Day, a major redesign of the website just completed and the collapse of property advertising in newspapers, Rightmove continues to build on its position as the most effective marketing service for estate agents as well as the place where home hunters can see more property than anywhere else.”

“In such a challenging housing market, Connells recognises the value that Rightmove brings. From the earliest days of Rightmove, Connells have used their Rightmove membership as an effective marketing tool against their competition as well as utilising the value-added services we provide, such as our market comparables report, which has helped make them such a respected firm.”

mouseprice Increasing Agent Numbers

Free-to-list UK property portal and valuation website mouseprice.com has unveiled some rapid growth.

Although it only began accepting listings six months ago, it now claims it has one third of the number of real estate agencies signed up as market leader rightmove.co.uk does. Although there’s still scope for growth, it means that 3,500 estate agency offices are connected to mouseprice.com with more likely to join.

Like most portals, mouseprice.com is working with software suppliers to provide easy and free uploading.

The news was reported on Estate Agent Today. mouseprice.com said they had “taken a slower route to building its property databases – eschewing the ‘screen scraping’ used by some free portals in favour of direct feeds. It says this ensures that agents are in control of how their properties appear, and that the listings are more regularly refreshed”.

mouseprice.com’s parent company, Calnea Analytics is a statistical consultancy to banks and financial institutions specialising in the field of automated valuation models (AVMs). Calnea Analytics is the statistical consultant to HM Land Registry and the creator of the official Land Registry House Price Index.

mouseprice.com is popular with the press for their valuation reports and statistical data. Almost all their services are free for users and home sellers.

immobilienscout24.de Price Increase

German market leader immobilienscout24.de have announced a price increase.

The portal argues that the increase will enable them to provide a better service, and that it will enhance their ability to attract buyers for their agents.

The increase comes at a time when many portals are reconsidering price structures, as agents struggle in a difficult market. UK market leader rightmove.co.uk has already suggested it will not be increasing pricing for 2009.

immobilienscout24.de is owned by Deutsche Telekom and is part of the telco’s Scout Group which also operates portals in the other major classifieds categories. It is the clear market leader in Germany.

One blog puts the price increase at around 1 euro per item.

Along with new packages and prices for immobilienscout24.de comes a new booking facility called FLEXplus.

With trends indicating immobilienscout24.de typically takes the lead in setting prices, it raises speculation that this could set a precedent for other German portals to hike up their prices.

The new price list for immobilienscout24.de can be viewed here.

Read our overview of the German portal market here.

rightmove.co.uk Launches Huge Marketing Campaign

UK market leader rightmove.co.uk has announced the launch of its biggest ever marketing campaign.

The campaign will begin in late December and is modelled around the slogan “See More”.

The campaign is valued at around £10 million and rightmove.co.uk aims to increase its percentage of unique users, which is already 60% of unique users of the most popular portals. The company is hoping the campaign reaches over 44 million people.

Kathryn Harris, Rightmove marketing director, says:

“At Rightmove, consumers can see more property for sale than any other single place, and during our research phase, that was identified as the single most important thing to home movers. ‘See More’ is intended to encourage home movers to be more confident by seeing the possibilities and information available to them. As the UK’s number one property website, with over a million homes for sale, Rightmove is taking a leading role in getting the home movers who make up the almost 40 million visits to our site a month, and more, back into the market through an innovative, integrated, heavy-weight campaign that benefits consumers by making it clear we’re where the homes are.”

The campaign will extend from television advertisements to outdoor building wraps, posters, digital advertising panels in the London Underground, online ads, direct marketing to members and more.

Members can also expect to receive presentations for LCD screens and vendors, window cards and 2009 window stickers in December, and RightmovePlus will be full of information to help members win and retain motivated clients in 2009.

Miles Shipside, Rightmove commercial director, says:

“We think the campaign is bold and confident while still remaining warm and appealing. Our most important task as a company is to drive motivated home-movers to our members, and in this market, there is the added challenge of creating more of those motivated home-movers to begin with. We are confident that our members will ‘See More’ of those in the year ahead.”

In a comment to The Negotiator last week, Shipside revealed that there are no plans to raise membership rates for the portal:

“While we have proved rightmove.co.uk is a very cost effective way of reaching a majority of home movers, we have no plans to increase membership rates, outside of those already written into longer term contracts.”

globaledge.co.uk Top 50 Property Portals

Independent trade portal globaledge.co.uk has recently relaunched to celebrate its first birthday.

The new improved website is designed to help real estate agents and property developers do business overseas, providing networking and business opportunities as well as advice on industry matters.

New features include development finder, agent finder, interactive events calendar, news and alerts with business announcements, plus data on portals which allows agents to compare pricing and google rankings, aimed to help connect the global real estate world.

The website also offers the Globaledge Search Index where agents can research consumer demand for overseas property and make better business planning decisions, and marketing reports and online marketing advice to help improve lead generation and sales.

Now they’ve revealed the latest top 50 overseas property portal rankings.

Interestingly, themovechannel.com came out top, appearing on Google for 60% of the 535 regions analysed. It beats rightmove.co.uk, findaproperty.com, and primelocation.com.



The top five overseas portals are:

1. themovechannel.com
2. findaproperty.com
3. hotprop.com
4. rightmove.co.uk
5. leadgalaxy.com (venture.co.uk)

Many estate agents look to this rankings list and the information it provides on pricing and Google rankings as a guide to help them choose where to spend their advertising budgets.

The bulk of the information is only available to premium subscribers of globaledge.co.uk. Further information about the methodology behind the rankings is available at the website.

rightmove.co.uk, propertyindex.com, prian.eu honoured

The OPP Industry Awards were recently held as part of the OPP Live 08 conference in London.

OPP Live celebrates the Overseas Property Industry in an annual business-to-business conference and exhibition attended by property professionals. And the awards are intended to single out the best of the best.

In the Best Online Platform category the honours went to:

Winner: Rightmove Overseas (UK)
Highly Commended: Property Index (UK)
Commended: Prian (Russia)

Mark Bodega from sponsor HiFX said:

“Speaking to people here tonight about what the future holds, the consensus is clear: 2009 will be about service, innovation and, crucially, developing strategic alliances to access buyers and investors in a variety of countries.”

Registration is now open for the 2009 awards.

A full list of 2008 winners in all categories is available here.

propertyindex.com Launches UK Sales Team

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.

rightmove.co.uk Takeover Bid Rumours

The property press is awash with rumours of a rightmove.co.uk takeover bid.

Both propertyowl.co.uk and Estate Agent Today have reported the takeover rumours, although rightmove.co.uk have declined to comment officially.

Estate Agent Today and propertyowl.co.uk said the mystery buyer allegedly looking at rightmove.co.uk is thought to be a high-profile American hedge fund owner, who is already a shareholder and who appears to have been building up shares and voting rights.

Last Thursday rightmove.co.uk released an interim management statement, which contained some interesting facts about the UK’s leading property portal in this difficult economic climate:

The number of advertisers on the rightmove.co.uk site at the end of October 2008 was around 17,500, down 9 percent on last year. In particular, overseas advertiser numbers were down 4 percent.

Activity on the website is similar to the same period a year ago - page impressions in October are up 4 percent on 2007 and October enquiry levels to advertisers were up 10 percent year-on-year and continue to run at 1 million per month.

But the information that really had the press talking was news of a fall in agent membership:

“Rightmove estate agency membership fell to 10,700 by the end of October, a 15 percent decline from a high point of around 12,600 a year ago. At least three out every four estate agents who have left Rightmove over the last year have either gone out of business or were removed for non-payment (which in practice is frequently a precursor to going out of business).”

According to a much debated Estate Agent Today poll earlier this year, 75 percent of agents said they would leave rightmove.co.uk when their contracts come up for renewal.

The interim management statement wasn’t all bad news. It also revealed that the number of lettings agents or agents with rental properties advertising on rightmove.co.uk increased despite a price rise of around 30%. Lettings only agents have grown to 2,900, up 25 percent on last year.

The company says:

“Rightmove’s own business is proving much more robust than other forms of property advertising in this challenging environment. Consequently, the Board continues to have confidence in meeting its expectations for the current year.”

rightmove.co.uk certainly seems to be doing everything in their power to keep leads coming through to agents. A recent story in Estate Agent Today said the company has redesigned its lead emails to agents and, after extensive testing of colour and text combinations, has discovered that using orange generates 30% more leads than other colours.

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