IT’S BEEN A frantic few months in property portal world. The big chaps are busy buying or ‘acquiring’ each other while the smaller boys are heavily promoting their special niche services – and the babies are launching and finding their feet on an increasingly crowded street.

Towards the end of last year, Zoopla started munching other portals, starting with one of the original top players, Propertyfinder, then Thinkproperty and Hotproperty all being swallowed up and, within weeks, losing their identity to become a small name on a totally Zoopla branded site. More change was clearly afoot.

The industry website Property Portal Watch listed the 25 highest earning property portals in the world, using information on the portals’ main sites only, without ‘satellite’ sites for holiday lets etc., as at 30 June 2009. The Number 1 was the German property portal www.immoscout24.de.

Rightmove just slipped into the top five earners who each grossed over US$100m – at number 5, with US$104m, with Primelocation lucky at No 13 with US$32million and their sister site Findaproperty hitting Number 19 with US$19million. We can conclude from this that property portals are still a very tempting bandwagon.

The Digital Property Group (TDPG) welcomed Globrix into its portfolio. The usual tight-lipped response was received to questions regarding the price paid, but mutterings in the market suggest that it was more of a keep-the- brand-afloat agreement, rather than an expensive day out. Globrix started life in January 2008 as a joint venture between News International and the founders, Daniel Lee and Ian Parry, with ‘millions of pounds’ invested. At the time, many of us wondered how you could make money from a free-to-list site and it seems we may have been right to question the business model, but it obviously offers something that TDPG wanted.

Mark Milner, CEO of TDPG said, “Globrix has quickly achieved significant brand awareness, and become a trusted brand, known for its more innovative approach amongst a desirable demographic for advertisers. This is consistent with TDPG’s portfolio approach, delivering a different consumer experience from our current portals and additional opportunities for our extensive customer base.”

Eight days later, TDPG snapped up a couple of relative minnows with the purchase of dothomes. co.uk and also extate.co.uk from BytePlay. Mark Milner was still in hearty mode. “The primary reason behind the acquisition of these domains is to strengthen our already strong consumer reach and drive more home searchers to one of our core brands. In the past month, with the incorporation of Globrix.com, dothomes.co.uk and extate.co.uk into The Digital Property Group, we’ve significantly enhanced our agent offering which translates into more visitors, enquiries and instructions.”

Rightmove hasn’t been on the acquisition trail but they maintain their position as the Number 1 portal, helped along by their New Year campaign which included very prominent adverts on primetime TV, featuring estate agents in an African bush setting – the Serengeti to be precise, with Joanna Lumley urging viewers to visit their local estate agent to get the right advice. We thought it was very nice of Rightmove to portray agents in such a positive way, although it was all a bit strange, but Rightmove say it had the required effect and brought in hundreds of thousands of new hits to the portal.

Property is a new portal, launched in February. It’s the new baby of One Property Solutions which provides a range of private and professional services; One HIP (Home Information Pack), One Conveyancing, One Inspect, One Utility, One Letting and One Investment.

Their gameplan is to ‘support the development of professional resources to the property industry’ and this has led to the commission of the new One Property Portal dedicated to the UK property market and completely free. Well not quite – but all that’s required from agents is to order one ancillary service from them per month, eg. a HIP or a survey to guarantee unlimited monthly advertising.

The website has a contemporary look with user friendly navigation. The property search function is designed to provide the user with more relevant results, more information and better pictures.

Another new portal, Chainfree. com, may be new but the owners are not. Chainfree is a free to list portal that provides consumers with easy access to ‘chain free’ properties. It has been launched by Spicerhaart Corporate Sales can list their property on the website free using password-protected access. The site complements Spicerhaart’s existing online service, the auction site Mustbesold.com.

Mark Pilling, MD, Spicerhaart Corporate Sales said: “The launch of Chainfree.com is a lifeline for estate agents, allowing them easy access to a range of serious, motivated buyers looking to make a fast purchase to add to their investment portfolio. We have already had as many as 33,000 pages visited in one day, and this is set to increase rapidly now that the site is officially launched to the public. With free listings, estate agents would be short-sighted not to take the opportunity to market their properties on the site.”

Meanwhile, agency giants Countrywide launched Propertywide. Grenville Turner, CEO of Countrywide, said, “Propertywide provides cutting- edge technology to market all of Countrywide’s properties and services. The improved features have been extremely well received by our staff and customers, following its launch in September 2009. Propertywide is one of the biggest online investments Countrywide has made in recent years, which is unique as it provides a single online platform for Countrywide’s properties and services, with dedicated sections on estate agency, lettings, surveying, conveyancing, mortgage and insurance services. Technology has moved on since Countrywide first began launching websites and Propertywide will greatly improve our online presence, profile and the volume of leads we generate across all aspects of the business and will complement our work with property portals.”

Not all property portals are aimed at estate agents; we must be aware of the effects that the growing number of sell it or let it yourself portals may have on the traditional UK market.

U-rooms is scheduled to go live this month and will use social networking to connect landlords with tenants, as well as working with letting agents. Landlords will be able to post their properties to Facebook and tenants will be able to create connect their u-rooms account to Facebook and tell potential landlords who they are and what they’re looking for. For the landlord, they can match their own personality or requirements to their future lodger/ tenant.

U-rooms was founded by Mike Peirce, ex-CTO for lastminute.com and Mark Davies, ex-head of online for the UNITE group (the largest provider of student accommodation in the UK). Mike says, “Instead of simple listings, U-rooms will offer tenants an intuitive and interactive multi- channel service to enable them to build a highly personalised search profile that will deliver property shortlists anywhere, anytime, via PC or mobile and making use of social networking sites. This market is the last bastion of the high street that hasn’t been disrupted as other verticals such as travel, retail and music have, and we aim to change that since we have experience in all of them. “We will empower flat seekers and landlords with tools to ensure they have a ‘correct’ match, as well as services for pre-tenancy, tenancy and post tenancy.

We’re also actively encouraging letting agents to use the site.” ThePropertyScout.com is a new website for people looking to buy or rent property, aiming to save them time, effort and money (it’s all free). ThePropertyScout.com finds the most suitable properties based on information provided by the viewer and then emails the details directly to them. Searches can be as specific as you like, even down to a certain street.

This site, for now, is definitely ‘niche’ Ben Bloomfield said “We are launching in four postcodes to begin with - SW3, SW5, SW7, SW10. We will be going national in the early part of 2010.”

PropertyEarth.net is another niche portal that provides access for consumers to ‘chain free’ properties. Aimed primarily at property investors, it lists lender repossessions, part exchanges taken on by house builders, unsold stock from developers & building companies and properties being sold following a grant of probate.

Dominic Toller, MD, says that changes at the top end of the portal market won’t impact on the niche players; “It is interesting how quickly the portal market continues to change. The entrance of Google into the UK property portal market will threaten the hold of Rightmove and other large portals, but shouldn’t affect the more specialised providers. Smaller portals serving dedicated, niche markets will certainly still have a place under the introduction of this new technology.”

Zoopla.co.uk, in partnership with Real Estate Disposition, LLC (REDC), the American property auction firm, has launched a live online property auction platform for buying residential property. Bidders have access to vacant and tenanted houses and flats, including repossessions, part- exchanges, new-builds and investments, offered by developers, lenders in possession and estate agents acting for clients.

Sellers and agents agree a reserve price before the property is entered into the online auction and successful bids will be binding on the buyer. Zoopla’s first online auction of approximately 150 homes took place over four days ending on 14 February. The plan is for further regular live online auctions running from Thursday afternoons to Sunday evenings.

The platform, offered by Zoopla, aims to provide agents with the ability to offer vendors a unique, additional route to market, which should result in maximising the sale price achieved and reducing the time on market, along with providing agents the opportunity to boost their commissions by approximately £500 per average transaction. Private sellers will not be able to participate.

REDC’s first traditional auction programme in four UK venues last year met with mixed response and no further events are being published so far this year, as they see the online innovation as the way ahead. Alex Chesterman, CEO of Zoopla.co.uk, said: “We see our offering as one of the most exciting developments for estate agents in the UK for years. We are delighted to be partnering with REDC, their expertise in online property auctions combined with the Zoopla.co.uk audience creates a unique and transformational opportunity for our agent members to maximise the price achieved, reduce the time on market and significantly increase their fee potential.”

Greg Spiro, Executive Vice President International Division of REDC, added: “We are very excited to partner with Zoopla.co.uk, the UK’s most innovative and fastest growing property website, to make live online property auctions a reality in the UK. We currently successfully sell approximately 1,000 homes, worth over £50 million each month via our online auctions in the US and we are looking to create the largest online property marketplace in the UK for buyers and sellers to transact openly and transparently.”

Rightmove, Zipporah, Nestoria and Globrix already have iPhone apps.

Now, FindaProperty.com has released its new free app with some excellent features. The usual property listing is there but in addition, all the properties in the user’s criteria can be displayed on a map, which is automatically provided by the user’s location. Clicking on the property you fancy quickly gives full details, a photo display and directions to the agent or the selected property.

Findaproperty say that a heavyweight marketing campaign will support the launch with advertising in the press and online.

Chris Boorman, FindaProperty. com Product Manager comments, “We resisted the temptation of being the first to market, with the objective of being the very best within it. The FindaProperty.com search app is best in class and will undoubtedly improve the user experience of our home searchers, to the benefit our member agents.”

iPhone addicts may also search for specific agents, see floorplans in addition to property images and syncrhonise the iPhone search with their ‘myFindaProperty account’ on their home or office computer.

The smartest feature is the iPhone accelerometer which lets the user change the orientation and swipe through properties and images which is really useful.

Boorman continues, “The application provides a seamless link between our portal and app, which means that users will continue to interact with agents and properties. By allowing users to search specifically for agents, we’re providing a very direct path for estate agents to communicate effectively with a growing market of tech-savvy home searchers.”