Zoopla Lays Down The Gauntlet

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.