BeTheMiddleman.com » Happenings Elsewhere

Zoopla Integrates Acquisitions, Stays Aggressive

Zoe Piper — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 11:34:06 +0000

Zoopla, the property portal for estate agents, have been busy bees for the last few months. They acquired both Thinkproperty and Propertyfinder for undisclosed sums and are now integrating them into the main website, taking over their user bases in the process.

Zoopla seem to have taken a really aggressive strategy right from the start and it’s interesting after watching the start-up panel at A4uExpo last week. There’s a link I promise….

The panel at A4uExpo was dominated by Spotify and Seatwave, both of whom have VC-funding. Their start-up strategies were very different to what I’d consider ‘normal’ for a lot of entrepreneurs. Because of the funding, the management team were able to work on their projects full time – I gathered from their talks that they didn’t have day-jobs and they didn’t want for resources. Spotify even hired a whole class of development whizz-kids to get the platform off the ground.

Zoopla are also backed by two VC firms – Atlas Venture and Octopus Ventures. Of course, this funding might not have paid for their aggressive business strategy, but I bet it certainly helped

In general terms, VC funding seems to let you hire staff, pay for advertising and even buy competitors, all before earning a penny. Great for entrepreneurs, but don’t forget – the investors will want their money back!

I’ve always liked seeing what Zoopla do, just because they’re the most aggressive players in the marketplace today. With the backing they have, Rightmove should be worried!

Would Image Search Work For House Sales?

Zoe Piper — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 08:00:53 +0000

Houseofnothing.com is a classifieds portal in the US that works a little differently to traditional portals. Instead of having a homepage search box (like BeTheMiddleman.com for instance), or a category system, you just browse images to find what you want. Take a look at a screenshot:

This is a really interesting concept, but would browsing by image work in the property sector? Houseofnothing.com contains property listings, so obviously some homeowners think it’s worth a try.

How do we actually search for properties?

Well, most property searches start with a location. “Properties for sale in London” for example. Then you move onto the type of property you’d like – most likely you narrow down your search based on price. You might quickly skip over houses you can’t afford until you find those that you can afford.

Only then do you care about what the house or flat actually looks like….right?

Images don’t give you this sort of information. How do you know where the property is from a single image? How do you know how much it costs? Are you going to bother to click on every single image to view the actual listings page and all the info it contains?

Another dilemma we’d have running a site this way is deciding which images to show on the homepage. With no other information to back the images up, it doesn’t make the homepage very easy for visitors to use. Web designers need to think about what they want a user to do when they hit a page. In our case, we want you to perform a search – hence the big search box! Lots of pictures = no clear message.

When it comes to property search, good images can back up your listing and make your property desirable. Location and price are so important however we think they need to be presented to users immediately. Houseofnothing.com is a great gimmick, but we’ll stick to our way of doing things

Zoopla Lures Estate Agents With Offer

Zoe Piper — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 11:17:15 +0000

Further to Zoopla’s aggressive move to steal rival Rightmove’s place as the number 1 property portal for estate agents, they’re now offering agents 2 months free use of their website.

Ordinarily, agents using Zoopla have to pay £5 for an owner lead and £1 for an applicant lead. This special offer means that buyer and tenant leads will be free to every new estate agent that signs up. Zoopla doesn’t have a subscription fee, so for estate agents the next two months will certainly be the cheapest time to find new business!

I think it’s safe to say this is another part of Zoopla’s plan to crush Rightmove – Rightmove are still doing well however despite an 11% fall in revenue this year. According to Property Portal Watch, their costs have actually come down by 19% (to £13.7 million – wow!) so financially they’re not feeling the pinch just yet.

What will Zoopla do next? Answers on a postcard please

Zoopla Are Fastest Growing Portal In The UK

Zoe Piper — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 11:36:45 +0000

Perhaps unsurprisingly, what with their buyout of PropertyFinder, Zoopla have just released figures showing that they were the fastest growing property portal in the UK during July. Zoopla’s figures use averages taken from Nielsen & comScore:

Zoopla.co.uk 20.28%
Propertyfinder Group 17.07%
Nestoria 11.83%
Trovit Homes 11.23%
Globrix 11.00%
Digital Property Group 10.38%
Rightmove 5.66%
Trinity Mirror Network 1.47%
Home.co.uk 1.28%
Fish4Homes -13.80%
Total for Top 10 Portals 9.25%

It looks like Fish4Homes are the only portal to experience ‘negative growth’ (shrinkage?) – Zoopla are certainly well ahead of Rightmove. Of course, we have to remember that these figures were released by Zoopla, and as we’ve said before on this blog you can put any spin you like on the raw data to make sure you come out top.

Rightmove Make 19.9m Half Year Profit

Zoe Piper — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 11:11:03 +0000

Rightmove have just posted a £19.9 million half-year operating profit. This is slightly down on the same time last year – revenue from the company has actually fallen by 11%

Despite this and despite Zoopla making aggressive moves on their territory, Rightmove remain the market leaders with a 2% increase in the number of estate agents signing up to be members. It will be interesting to see if Zoopla’s drive to the top will have a negative impact on Rightmove’s business. Will Rightmove be able to hold them off?

Zoopla Lays Down The Gauntlet

Zoe Piper — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 11:29:39 +0000

Alex Chesterman, founder and chief executive of Zoopla, has signalled his intention to take on market leaders Rightmove in the property portal stakes. Rightmove is currently the leading property website for estate agents, with the Daily Mail group in second place. Zoopla have recently embarked on a series of buy-outs however, snapping up both Thinkproperty and Propertyfinder to gain more online space and market share. Of course, Zoopla also gets all of the estate agents and the listings they created on those sites.

It’s unknown how much Zoopla paid for Propertyfinder, but according to Estate Agent Today it’s rumoured to be around £1.2million. There were 40 redundancies at Propertyfinder before the sale – now however, all of Zoopla’s staff are working out of Propertyfinder’s offices in London. Mr. Chesterman says they’re undecided about the name the property portal will end up with when all the sites have been integrated – will Zoopla soon be known as Propertyfinder, or vice versa?

One thing’s for sure – Zoopla are using aggressive tactics to go after Rightmove. It’s going to be an interesting fight.

Zoopla Acquires PropertyFinder.com

Zoe Piper — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 16:54:44 +0000

Zoopla, the property website that puts you in touch with estate agents, has just acquired the PropertyFinder Group which includes websites propertyfinder.com, hotproperty.co.uk and ukpropertyshop.co.uk. It’s less than a month since Zoopla announced their acquisition of thinkproperty.com, so they’re certainly making a big effort at the moment to grow the business by acquiring more web properties.

What we’d like to know is what ‘acquired’ means! Have Zoopla bought the PropertyFinder Group? Thinkproperty.com was bought for an undisclosed sum and we’d love to know if this was also a buy-out. Whatever the business behind it all, we wish them all the best and can’t wait to see what they do with all this online real estate

Tepilo.com Gets Some Good PR

Zoe Piper — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 12:00:27 +0000

The new online venture from Sarah Beeny, Tepilo.com, has been getting some good PR this week with an article in the Telegraph and a mention in her interview on the RatandMouse property blog. Tepilo.com aims to help people sell their own homes just like Bethemiddleman.com and we’re pleased to see that someone as high-profile as the Propety Ladder presenter believes in cutting out the estate agent. In the RatandMouse interview Sarah has this to say about agent’s fees:

“I’d imagine that most of us who live in “normal” houses could find something better to do with ten grand.”

Our thoughts exactly

Of course Bethemiddleman.com also allows you to rent/let, find a room or a roommate so no matter where you are in the property chain you’ll be able to use the site. We really hope Sarah Beeny continues to raise the profile of private selling – as we’ve said before, we aim is to make estate agents a thing of the past so more power to the cause!

Rightmove Had 134million Page Views!

Zoe Piper — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 19:06:33 +0000

According to Rightmove on Twitter, they experienced their busiest week ever last week with 134 million page views! Now, we know a bit about the internet and can honestly say that’s a lot of traffic!

It just goes to show that the property market is still a big deal to the average consumer even if they can’t afford to buy just yet, and people certainly love using the internet to look for their next home. We’re really pleased for the guys at Rightmove and extra happy to see there’s loads of traffic out there. We aim to help everyone who goes online to buy or sell, so maybe 134 million is our figure to aim for too?

Globrix Redesign Site

Zoe Piper — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 19:06:51 +0000

Property search engine Globrix has had a bit of a redesign this week, concentrating on the homepage, ‘featured property’ page and property listing pages. We quite like the quick-loading maps on each property page – after all, we’re using Google Maps ourselves. A little too much space is devoted to links and information above the fold – we’d like to see lovely property photos put right in front of the viewer. After all, it’s the property that people want to see. We do like all the extras below the fold however – there if you need it, but unobtrusive if you don’t.

Information still features heavily throughout the site, and not just in the aptly named ‘Know’ section. From searching by the type of outdoor space, to finding estate agents in your area, the site is absolutely packed with choice. Globrix have really pushed the boat out to give all sorts of users access to all sorts of info – the browsing possibilities may be endless!

It’s always interesting to see what big brands are up to, especially when it comes to design (a subject close to our heart!). We’ll definitely keep an eye out for further developments. Until then, you might like to read Property Owl’s review – they’ve been following the Globrix journey for a while so it’s a good balanced read