Property Portals - October 2008
Susan Fitz-Gibbon partner Fitz-Gibbon
The major portals; Rightmove, FindaProperty, PrimeLocation and so forth, tend to be the first choice for many home-searchers. But the development of massive property search engines like Globrix bring a new dimension to the world of online property searching and existing portals can't take their dominance in property listings for granted. Yes they remain the dominant sites at present, but home-searchers have no loyalty to any one site and it will be interested to see how property searching on the Web develops in the coming months and years.
Fitz-Gibbon was one of the first agents to subscribe to FindaProperty in 1997 at a time when very few agents had Web presence, and although we continue to utilise the power of leading property portals such as this and PrimeLocation, we also benefit from several smaller independent portals that are similarly effective. Fundamentally, agents must feel confident their subscription fee is being effectively reinvested into advertising, whether that be on the radio, in the press or on the Web so property portals must demonstrate they are spending a significant amount of their budget on marketing to encourage home searcher to log-on in the first place.
Globrix came into its own this year and whilst we wait to see how the engine will develop, it's certain that home-searchers are being drawn to it. Backed up with heavy promotion in the Sunday Times, this search engine aims to have pretty much every available property on its site and is a temptation we have found hard to resist. This engine looks set to become an exciting resource and we have grasped the opportunity to secure some of the limited advertising units on the search pages tied to key words entered on the home page. This potentially large gateway enables users to hop straight onto our website, fitzgibbon.co.uk, and we believe this will pay dividends over the coming months.
In the current climate, the major property portals remain a must, search engines like DotHomes and Globrix add some much needed competition to the mix and it will be interesting to see how local groups of agents continue to develop sites that are equally able to quietly do the job.