Welcome to 2015.
2014 was a momentous year for property portals. We had:
- Trulia and Zillow merging,
- News Corp buying Move,
- Leju and Soufun moving into the transaction stream,
- The valuation of portals taking a breather and coming off by up to 40%,
- Large sums of money being invested into India, Brazil and other emerging markets,
- Lamudi taking a systematic and professional approach to emerging and early stage markets,
- Massive competition arriving in emerging markets,
- Trovit sell for 80m euro’s, and
- much much more ..
However, what were the most read articles on Property Portal Watch during 2014? Here they are …
Domain’s CEO Openly Attacks the REA Group
Antony Catalano, the CEO of Domain, sent a clear message to Australian real estate agents that they should not be spending money on the REA Group as they are just paying more money for the same results.
REA Group’s casa.it Using Pop Unders to Generate Traffic
Casa.it has been claiming market leadership in Italy. However, research using Similarweb uncovers the apparent use of pop-unders to generate visits to the casa.it site.
Opinion: How the REA Group’s Casa.it Lost the Italian Market
In 2007 the REA Group acquired casa.it for euros 11.7 million. Casa.it was the clear leader in the Italian market and the Immobiliare team ran a site called eurekasa.it. Today Immobiliare is the market leader on all measures and casa.it is falling back into a distant second place. How did this happen?
What Should the REA Group do About casa.it?
Over a series of articles, Property Portal Watch looked at how casa.it had been using pop-under banners to drive traffic and how the real leader in the Italian market is Immobiliare. Property Portal Watch also showed how casa.it had been the clear leader in the Italian market and how they let this leadership position slip to a well executed strategy by the Immobiliare team. The question is what should the REA Group do now?
New Portal – Agents Mutual – Threatens to Shake Up UK Estate Agency
The new estate agency portal has signed up 1,830 estate agent branches, including those of Savills, Knight Frank, Chesterton Humberts, Glentree Estates and Strutt & Parker, which accounts for 12% of the UK market.
VivaReal Claims First Place in Brazil
Based on figures from Experian Hitwise (Serasa in Brazil), the first four months of 2014 show VivaReal.com.br with a clear traffic lead on long time incumbents Zap and Imovelweb. This change of leadership happened in January 2014.
UPDATED: Top 20 Most Valuable Property Portal Companies
The combined value of the top 20 property portal companies in the world is over USD 45 billion with AirBNB, Soufun and the REA Group taking the top three places.
The Agent Strikes Back, But for How Long? Part 1
Around the world real estate agents and their associations are looking closely at OnTheMarket in the UK and Squiiz in Australia. These two property portals are owned and operated by real estate agents and they are both competing in markets where there is a clear and dominant market leader and a profitable (and large) number 2 player. Will they succeed?
How the New Rightmove Competitor Can Win the Game
Agents Mutual, the new portal set up by over 500 UK agents including Douglas & Gordon, Strutt & Parker, Savills and Knight Frank has made all the headlines recently. One industry insider believes that the new site has the potential to knock off Rightmove for leadership in the UK market.
What Should Property Portals Fear?
Agents, franchise groups, MLS’ and brokers can potentially use the degradation of listings on a portal site to their advantage – but this approach must be taken carefully.
To find out what is going to happen in 2015, come to the Property Portal Watch Conference in New York on the 26th and 27th January. Over 100 C-Level managers from around the world have signed up.
