Estate Agent Today

We have 59 guests online

Today's Headlines:

House prices fall or rise (take your pick)
4 comments
House prices went up slightly – by 0.4% – in July, the Land Registry has reported. It

Knight Frank stay quiet after conman is jailed
9 comments
A tenant who faked his identity when renting through Knight Frank has been jailed for three

Rich overseas buyers keep prime London market aloft
0 comments
Chinese buyers are expected to replace Russian investors as major players in the prime central London

Moving occasion: today's the day!
0 comments
The most popular moving date is today, September 1, the Post Office has revealed. The two next

Prospective first-time buyers sink to new low
0 comments
The proportion of buyers expecting to buy for the first time in the next 12 months

Housing market 'edging towards double dip' claim
2 comments
Net lending plummeted in July to the second lowest monthly figure since records began in 1993,

Henry Pryor Blog
0 comments
Welcome to a new monthly blog by Henry Pryor, estate agent turned entrepreneur, inventor and expert

Rightmove profits climb 39% as more agents sign up
14 comments
A rise in the number of agents and an overall willingness to pay more to Rightmove

Portal creates new 'check out your competition' stats
1 comments
Property portal Home has created some new statistic pages on its site which we reckon will

Six in ten mortgages are now for house purchase
2 comments
The proportion of mortgages being taken out for purchases, as opposed to remortgages, is at its

News Story

Thinkproperty turns itself into free listings portal

Friday 24th October 2008

Thinkproperty has turned itself in a free property portal after saying it wants to increase its focus on serving the estate agency sector.

The Thinkproperty brand will also swallow up the existing vebra.com, homesonview.co.uk and live-lets.co.uk sites, and will allow all estate agents in the UK to advertise properties on the site free of charge with immediate effect.

It is the first time a property portal has changed from paid-for to free – an irony, given that most of the portals started off free before introducing charges.

Indeed, Thinkproperty itself became the paid-for, consumer-facing version of what started out as Vebra’s free offering to its software users, enabling them to list their properties as part of the package.

Thinkproperty’s switch to free mode comes as the debate between free and paid-for property portals hots up. Thinkproperty joins Mouseprice, Globrix, Nestoria, Zoomf, Home and the new Propertylive amongst others in offering free listings.

The Thinkproperty site has also just added a live news feed, which should improve its Google rankings.

Another improvement is the site’s directory of locations to include targeted news content, as well as local area information such as school performance results and Sold prices.

Mark Goddard, managing director of thinkproperty, said that the site, which holds over 600,000 properties from the UK and overseas, including 40,000 rental properties, is currently working with over 6,000 estate agents.

The site is owned by GMG Property Services, a division within Guardian Media Group, which also owns estate agency software businesses Vebra and Core.

Send to a Friend Today's other headlines

View Comments 10 comments

Report Abuse

Posted By Ian T on Monday 27th October 2008 09:17:08

Get Profile

Max, do yourself a favour and upgrade to Reapit, we did last year and haven't looked back.

Reply to this comment

Posted By Max Price on Monday 27th October 2008 08:34:27

Get Profile

we use Vebra Solex. Every time we want to send to a new web site, it costs us lots of money and the site itself also pays. In the past, they've thrown all sorts of spanners in the works like limiting the number of photos, only allowing the web sites a limited amount of time or bandwidth to collect with. There's a certain irony that after doing this for years, they set themselves up as the "agents' champions". In the end, Glibrix and ThinkMoney are just newspaper owned sites that are stalling for time whilst the market recovers and Rightmove collapses. They'll slam in the big bills in a couple of years!

Reply to this comment

Posted By Steve on Monday 27th October 2008 05:00:06

Get Profile

Rejoice and fill your boots ,free advertising and get working on that SEO...... still paying the others ! it dose not matter what they do its how quickly you can take advantage of the marketing oppertunity

Reply to this comment

Posted By Simon Tyler on Saturday 25th October 2008 12:35:55

Get Profile

I think this is more about spin than any real strategic business plan. The model simply does work and not for something as poor at delivering results as Think Property.

Facts are that they made around 15 Think Property people redundant after the PCS and made the announcement to the Vebra staff.

Reply to this comment

Posted By Peter on Friday 24th October 2008 11:41:06

Get Profile

Soon they will be paying us to list properties!

Reply to this comment

Posted By Rebel on Friday 24th October 2008 10:58:49

Get Profile

It will work if they use the same spidering type technology that Globrix use. If they expect manual uploads or XML feeds from agents, it may be a flop. Recency, volume and completeness are key.

Reply to this comment

Posted By brightmove.co.uk on Friday 24th October 2008 10:31:13

Get Profile

Free listing property web sites certainly appear to be in vogue suddenly. There's nothing like a little competition. May the best man/woman win!

Reply to this comment

Posted By Mild Shiplap on Friday 24th October 2008 10:18:58

Get Profile

I'll get m'coat.

Reply to this comment

Posted By Richard on Friday 24th October 2008 05:47:40

Get Profile

Looks like Barratt Homes have fallen out with rightmove: http://www.rightmove.co.uk/estate-agents/barratt-homes-west-london/viridian/67654.html

Reply to this comment

Posted By Richard on Friday 24th October 2008 04:04:03

Get Profile

Another site so thats where the buyers are their spending so much time looking at all the different sites they cant get out to view ah that explains the bad market

Reply to this comment

Post Comments

Please login to post comments:

Post Comments without login

DISCLAIMER: The views contained in these user comments are not endorsed by Estate Agent Today (nor its associates and advertisers) in any way and are provided by users who wish to publish their independent opinions on our news. Whilst every effort is made to moderate these comments, due to the instant nature of the posting not all offensive material can be removed instantly. Please help us keep the comments areas tidy by reporting details of any infringements to team@estateagenttoday.co.uk

Most Read News Stories:

Three quarters of agents threaten to quit Rightmove
Friday 10th October 2008

EPCs on all properties for sale: VERY LATEST UPDATE
Monday 8th September 2008

HIPs abolition order is signed and ready
Monday 17th May 2010

NEWS FLASH – HIPs suspended
Thursday 20th May 2010

NEWS FLASH:HIPs face certain death
Wednesday 12th May 2010

RSS Feed

Share this article:

Digg it

Del.icio.us

Newsvine

Nowpublic

Facebook

Feedback:

If you have any questions or suggestions about this article or our news section, please don't hesitate to contact us.

Editorial Contact Details - Rosalind Renshaw | rosalind.renshaw@estateagenttoday.co.uk | 01252 843 566.