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Property Search Sites and Portals - Guide and Reviews
Sales, Lettings Score: Rightmove floated on the stock market in March 2006, with investors valuing the company at around £485m. A new site design in Winter 2007 has improved searching and the display of results, and the site is extremely fast. The vast majority of the UK's properties are advertised on Rightmove, making it the first stop for most home buyers.
Agents: Countrywide Assured Group, Halifax Property Services, Connells
Sales, Lettings, Hosting Score: The site was launched on 24th January 2001, and from September 2003, the portal has been producing a monthly magazine, currently distributed to around 110,000 private homes in London. Daily Mail and General Trust plc (DMGT) announced on 8th December the purchase of Primelocation for £48 million. DMGT also own Findaproperty following a £13.8m deal in November 2004. This deal removed the exclusivity requirements, which will please many agents. The site has been revamped in Winter 2007, with mostly successful results - however it can be slow, and some of the map based searching is awkward. The site continues to attract advertisers, and has a large number of properties listed.
Agents: Savills, Knight Frank, Cluttons, Russell Simpson, Lane Fox
Sales, Lettings, Hosting Score: Launched in 1997 by Hallmark Projects, Find a Property was sold for £2.8m in a management buyout backed by Barclays Ventures in Summer 2004. The site was sold again in November 2004 for £13.8m to the Daily Mail and General Trust. The site has had a major redesign in Summer 2006, with a more modern feel. Find a Property is extremely strong in the London and South East, and has a greater focus on editorial than other property portals. Charges are currently per property, but are moving to a fixed subscription model.
Agents: Agent List including Marsh & Parsons, Townends
Sales, Lettings, Hosting Score: Propertyfinder's original position as a high end portal suffered with the creation of Primelocation. The situation improved following the merger with Pureproperty in May 2004, and the closure of the Asserta branded portal in March 2005, when properties were transferred to Propertyfinder. An update in Winter 2007 has added various new mapping features, but searching can be frustratingly slow. Monthly rates are from £100 to £175 per office per month.
Agents: Foxtons, Winkworth, Kinleigh Folkard Hayward, John D Wood & Co., Chancellors Newspapers: The Telegraph, The Times, Channel4.com Linked From: Really Moving, Wanadoo
Sales, Lettings Score: Property data has been obtained by scraping agent's sites, which has meant that the site has launched with a large number of properties. This approach has two downsides: property details are sometimes out of date, and the heavy impact of their crawler has resulted in some agents blocking them. On the positive side, the site launches property details directly on the agent's own web site, which means Globrix will drive high quality traffic. The site is technically strong, and whilst eschewing the current enthusiasm for map based searching, the use of AJAX techniques to produce a highly interactive search engine is very effective.
Agents: Knight Frank, Hamptons, Savills
Sales, Lettings Score: This site been redesigned in Winter 2007. Fish4 is also introducing charging on a per click through basis. Fish4Homes is run by a consortium of major newspaper companies.
Agents: Foxtons, Anscombe & Ringland etc. Linked From: Lycos Property, MSN
Sale, Lettings Score: Look4aproperty was launched in February 2006 by Rainbow Projects. A vigorous marketing campaign emphasizing an anti-Rightmove position has seen a good number of large agents signing up. A £2m television advertising campaign is promised for April 2006. The site is busy, but well designed, providing a number of intuitive ways of searching. There are no links back to agents' sites, though useful regional information from Hometrack is provided.
Agents: Cluttons, Andrews, haart, Douglas & Gordon, Marsh & Parsons Sales, Lettings Score:
The original Vebra site was the result of the merger between Craft and Solex (property software databases) and their respective sites (Property File and home2view). Advertising agents on both sites are mainly limited to Vebra software clients. ThinkProperty charging is currently set at £59 per office per month for non-Vebra clients. The site provides 'intelligent' location searching, though bugs prevent searching by postcode. Agent exposure is poor, with no links to agent's sites from property details. In August 2006 Vebra was bought by an offshoot of the Guardian newspaper, the Trader Media Group, who run AutoTrader.
Agents: Kinleigh Folkard Hayward
Sales, Lettings Score: This site has been updated in Winter 2007, and is currently being vigorously marketed.
Agents: Plaza, Ludlow Thompson etc
Sales, Lettings Score: Operated by the Home Sale group of independent agents, the site provides good nationwide coverage. The design and searches are clear, and results displayed are detailed and well laid out. Unfortunately, there is a lack of agents covered in the central London area. In September 2002 this website was overhauled with a new front page and a quicker search mechanism. The search results are still lacking London properties; though results offer a good degree of information on properties and decent agent exposure.
Agents: James Anderson etc
Portal, Relocation Services Score: Launched in Summer 2002, this portal has been created by Partners in Property, a company offering a range of services to agents, including referrals and conveyancing, established in April 1999. The site looks good, and provides good links to agents' sites. We have seen no advertising yet, and the site has few London properties. The site has received a major update in November 2006.
Sales, Lettings Score: Launched in early Summer 2003 by Resource Techniques, who provide software and IT services to the Team affinity group. The site has a good design, though limited functionality. Users must register to request information about a property - which then generates an e-mail request. When most other portals are improving the quantity and quality of information available for properties, this is a step backwards. The site was launched with the entire Team membership on board, as well as agents from the Guild of Professional Estate Agents, ensuring that there are already a good number of properties on the site. Other agents will have to pay £25 a month an office to advertise on the site. Given that the portal is not planning to advertise, it remains to be seen if this can be considered good value. As a portal for the independent agent, the site will be competing with the better functionality of Pureproperty. For agents looking for a volume and quality of enquiries, Rightmove and Primelocation still dominate, though at a cost. A recent update in July 2003 has seen one or two improvements (including displaying the selling agent). However requesting property details from the site still does not work.
Agents: Team agents etc Sales, Lettings Score: Team are a marketing association of UK wide residential agents, covering sales, lettings and international property. The site has had a redesign in Spring 2006 and revised Summer 2007 to coincide with new branding. The search mechanism is reasonably simple and quick.
Portal Score: Property portal, launched in October 1999. The site appears to 'crawl' the search engines listed below, together with some individual agent's sites, to produce a 'mega search'. This produces large results of questionable accuracy, and exposure for agents could be improved. This site has been updated in Spring 2005 but we remain unconvinced by the search mechanism which makes searching in London difficult. Searching: Rightmove, Findaproperty, Vebra
Sales, Lettings Score: The listing site for the National Association of Estate Agents, the site advertises properties being marketed through a few of its members. The site has been redesigned in Summer 2006, though the new design requires an extremely large screen to view properly. Searching works reasonably well, and agent exposure is good. The site was originally marketing as www.propertylive.co.uk, though this address no longer seems to work.
Agents: Agent List
Sales, Lettings Score: Property search site tied to the Encore database system. The site has had a redesign in Autumn 2005 which has improved both appearance and searching, though bugs in the search mechanism make certain postcode searches ineffective.
Sales, Lettings Score: Launched in 1996 as a site for agents, the site has seen some minor cosmetic updates in Summer 2007. Searching is awkward, and presentation poor.
Sales, Lettings Score: Nationwide search site, primarily dealing with new homes, also covering commercial, international and mortgages. Users may be put off as registration is necessary before a search can be done, and the number of properties advertised is very limited in London. The company also has a basic property database system (Agency Plus), we suspect primarily designed to upload properties to their site. Agents: The London Office
Sales, Lettings Score:
A product of ITL technologies, this website offers both sales and lettings nationwide. Its messy presentation and crowded home page adds nothing to a clumsy search mechanism. Results are average, with no apparent agent exposure and many adverts to confuse users. A series of minor redesigns in early 2003 have included more links to property auctions.
The RestPropertyToday was established in late 2005 by newspaper group Johnston Press. The site has an awkward search mechanism, and search results suffer from a number of presentational problems.
Homes24 is a portal setup in October 2006 by newspaper and magazine company Archant. Currently strong in East London, Suffolk and Norfolk areas. The site predominantly shows details of properties advertised in Archant's local papers.
OneMove was set up in August 2005, with a 'super-portal' launched October 2006. Like a number of other sites, this crawls various property portals and redisplays their results. The site also provides moving services.
Primemove is a portal using Google map technology to search 1.2m properties provided by a number of major portals. Portal partnerships include Rightmove, Propertyfinder, Smart, HotProperty, NAEA and Fish4. Search results click through to the host portal where the property resides. The site was set up in early 2006 by members of the original Primelocation development team.
With the aim of selling in financial services provided by Money Extra this website contains both sales and lettings.
Amateurish site, lacking in both volume and property information; offering free text adverts to the public and agents alike.
The listing site for the Guild of Professional Estate Agents.
Rebranded in Summer 2005 as an international property search engine.
Ugly, slow and one of the worst search engines we've encountered to date.
This site 'crawls' other portals and presents the results on Google Maps.
New entrant in Winter 2005, but failing to attract many properties.
The Graveyard
1st4homes Launched in May 2004; gave up Spring 2007
Sales and Lettings Domain is up for sale
London Properties - Site has not been updated for a number of years.
Asserta - Launched in May 2000 by the Aviva insurance group, the site was closed in March 2005 and transferred to Propertyfinder
Really Moving - Launched in November 1999, the site now just offers links to other property resources
Letsmovehouse - Portal started in Summer 2003. Offline Autumn 2004, with no official note of closing.
Let on the Net - From Summer 2004, site displays an 'under construction' message. Telephones are dead.
Pureproperty - Launched October 2001 by Winkworths, Foxtons, Chancellors, John D Wood & Co. and Kinleigh, merged with Propertyfinder in May 2004
tmxhome - Previously positioned as a portal for the SpicerHaart group, but now rebranded as SpicerHaart
ITChomes.com - Now a general link portal.
Beeb - Portal run by the BBC. No longer has a property search, and acts as a home shopping channel. See also BBC Rightmoves
UK Property Gold - Now diverts, with the announcement of properties now available through Assertahome.
Property City - Offline with no announcements of closure since mid February 2002.
Property Sight - Originally part owned by GMW software, the site's ownership and future is uncertain - not updated since January 2001.
London Property Guide - Having dropped any kind of search function, this website now acts as a guide to other portals and providing London property background information.
Globalresident.com - This site has now scaled down its portal operations and is a relocation agent only.
Move.co.uk - The site has been off-line since December 2001 and is assumed closed, making this the largest portal failure in the UK to date.
Web2Let.com - The website now links to Homepages with no announcement of closure.
08004homes - Delivered unto the graveyard after the return of £2m to shareholders. Website now redirects to Primelocation.
Homemovers - Closed following an out-of-court settlement to Countrywide over unauthorized listings of properties. Company now merged with Property On-line.
HomeDirectory - The original site has closed, and the URL now links to Smart Estates.
Purplemoves - The property section now links to a Thai expat property site
Underoneroof - This has been acquired by Associated Media and is now part of the Evening Standard on line property section
Internet Property Registry - This now links to 'Roger's guide to nude celebrities' - a site of questionable relevance to the homebuyer.
Smove - Portal, launched in July 2000 and acquired by Asserta in November, and now incorporated into.
Property Base - Now Closed? Basic but usable, lacks (any?) London properties and a limited number in the South East.
The Property Centre - Now Closed? A well designed site, although it produces limited results for central London.
aproperty4u - Site now redirects to www.instructanagent.com, a site that faxes requirements to multiple agents
Tinde - A subsidiary of a Norwegian property company, rebranded from Est8, no longer appears to operate in the UK
E-propertyshop - Link has been dead for some weeks, but no announcements of closure. |
RPS 10.07 
RPL 9.54
= Properties
= Features
= Appearance 
Rightmove
Acquired originally by Countrywide Assured with backing from Halifax, Connells and Royal Sun Alliance, the site was launched early in 2000, and dominates the provincial market - with a steadily improving London presence. The introduction of charging (around £150 to £245 per month per office) does not seem to have hampered expansion - strong television advertising generating good traffic.
Primelocation
Find a Property
Propertyfinder
Globrix
Fish 4 Homes
Look4aProperty
Hot Property
Home Sale Network
Move With Us
Head4Home
TEAM
Home.co.uk
NAEA-Property Live
Homes On View
Homes Online
SmartEstates
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