News International sells its stake in Globrix

News International has sold its stake in Globrix, the free property listing site.

The newspaper group’s 50% share in the business has been bought back by founders Daniel Lee and Ian Parry.

The money they paid for their management buy-out has not been disclosed.

News International’s decision could be seen either as a further indication of its disenchantment with the online property market, or of its desire to make serious money out of internet publishing.

Earlier this year the company sold Propertyfinder, in which it also had a 50% stake, to Zoopla. Last month it said it was considering stopping Google from using its editorial content free, and instead using Microsoft which would pay for it.

Two years ago, Globrix was launched as a joint venture between Lee, Parry and News International.

The newspaper group said at the time that it had taken a “multi-million pound stake” and Clive Milner, group managing director, enthused: “Globrix is set to be a truly disruptive business in the online property search marketplace. It essentially turns the economics upside down and creates an unparalleled consumer offering from an innovative business model.”

Globrix launched with a bang into the property portal market, operating as a free search engine and threatening to derail the likes of Rightmove, whose business model it labelled as outmoded.

However, according to the latest Hitwise statistics (for October), Globrix lies sixth in terms of traffic, with 2% of market share.

Globrix, like all the other portals, massively lags Rightmove, which has a market share of 23.6%, according to Hitwise analysis.

Dan Lee said of this week’s news: “We have undertaken a management buy-out as we wish to continue our focus on the international expansion of both Globrix and our portal platform (technology) business now that Globrix is established in the UK.

“Globrix’s success in the UK in such a short space of time (we now send significantly more visitors to estate agent websites than any other portal) has led to many international opportunities for the business and we felt it was the right time to consider a new investment strategy to support this expansion.

“News International has been a fantastic launch partner for Globrix and we shall continue to work with them to power The Sun and The Times property search engines.”