Words: Ashley Rigg
Published: 6th August 2009
Property Portals - Expect Casualties
Tough trading conditions, chronic over-supply and the launch of Google real estate are set to permanently change the overseas property portal market. It could be good news for agents and developers looking for simpler and cheaper ways to generate leads.
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User Comments
Very good article!
Google will just be adding to the growing problem on the internet, too many listings and not enough substance. Gives more power to the private networks that concentrate on investments and quality of information. OPP article that focused on this was certainly right. The strength for developers is to work with a network, not a massive volume of listing sites.
Investors buy from people, and as consumers they buy brands they can trust. The advice for all is to build your brand, and not just your ranking.
The home buyer portal market will certainly be affected, but the top UK brands like Rightmove will continue to be strong, as they have their focus and branding right. Cannot say the same for other listing portals. Many of them have a level of multiple listings of the same product with different prices and features. This is insulting to the consumer and very unprofessional. Will Google just take the money like the rest of them, or will they be more professional. The industry needs to become more professional and stop playing lip service in a totally unregulated platform and overseas property industry.
I am not sure how ethical it is for a search engine to be a competitor in an online market place. What's next? Luxury goods, Cars, Boats, Gifts etc etc etc.
Not very ethical - launch a search engine that becomes the most popular on the planet which enables the small business to compete with the largest for web space (that's ethical), and then launch your own facility in competition which becomes number one on guess who? (that's not) May be it is time to start using bing.
Mark Fiddes,
Millionaire Investments