Publishers Blog: PORTAL WARS

Nat Daniels - Publisher of Estate Agent Today

PORTAL WARS:

Nat Daniels:

I just had the opportunity to interview Trebor South, a seasoned exec at a large corporate agency group.  After a long and successful career selling high-end housing at the coal face of Thatcher's glorious 80s, he went non-exec for his agency.  Since his retirement he's had a bit of a second youth and has learned about the web with his 8 grandkids.  He now enjoys a little golf, a lot of wine, and a bit of internet surfing.  We quizzed him on what he sees happening on the web, from his helicopter, quite literally.

Nat Daniels:
Hi, Trebor, can you hear me?  How are you?

Trebor South:
Hello young Nat, South here, Trebor South.  How can I be of assistance?

Nat Daniels:
The portal wars 'seem' to have gone a bit quiet now, why is that?

Trebor South:
Quiet?  In what way Nat, I think they're as active as ever?  The players change continuously, underneath the defacto reigning king, of course.

Nat Daniels:
Really?  How so?

Trebor South:
We've had a wave of "web 2.0" search engines come and mostly go.  That was the last chapter, and maybe the reason you suggest things have gone quiet.  But we're settled into the new era now, at least two new challengers to the throne, weeded out from that crop, and looking much stronger than the breadth of promising young turks a couple of years ago...

All that glitters is not gold – slow and steady wins the race – so we’ll have to see how the survivors fare.

Nat Daniels:
Yes there was a lot of noise last year about the new entrants, tell me what has happened to them.

Trebor South:
Speaking of noisy, it’s very noisy up here, could you speak up a bit?

Well, let's think, who was there... Extate-DotHomes-Biteplay, OnOneMap, Zoomf, Homefinder, Zoopla, Globrix, Nestoria, Homeflow, PropertyOwl, any others?

A veritable rash!  I think that was probably fuelled by the advent of ever cheaper web technology, pulling proper search technology out of the realm of enterprises like Rightmove, down to within the reach of new companies.  They all promised more listings.  Some, notably Globrix, crawling for comprehensive listings.  Many offering mapping technology as a point of differentiation.  Partly encouraged by the wave of "web 2.0" enthusiasm opening investors, or should I say speculators, purse strings for a couple of years 3-4 years ago, pre-recession of course.

Mostly those efforts have failed, folded or consolidated now though.

Nat Daniels:
So turning to the NOW - we know where Rightmove are, but how do you rate the nearest contenders and specifically what is the reason an agent should take note?

Trebor South:
Extate-DotHomes-Biteplay felt like it got sold half a dozen times, sloughing off various collections of URLs, supposedly getting picked up by somebody as the managers left the business recently.  Do you know who?

OnOneMap, in many ways the first of this new wave, seemed to run out of steam and packed up early, falling into Extate-DotHomes-BytePlay.  I notice that URL goes to Zoopla these days.

I suspect Zoomf essentially ran out of cash – it’s hard to say as the terms of the deal were undisclosed – but they got picked up by Trinity Mirror group, presumably in a bid to build themselves a viable alternative to the Fish4 proposition and bring a fresh approach.

Homefinder - what happened to them?  Any ideas?

Nat Daniels:
Who?

Trebor South:
Yes, well.

Trebor South:
Zoopla emerges as one of the most interesting from that group.  It's been through several incarnations, looking like it would be private buyer to start, morphing into a homes valuation engine for any house in the UK, changing to focus on the main market, advocating pay-per-lead strongly, then seemingly backing away from that more recently having bought into PropertyFinder as it fell out of NewsCorp.  Most recently they seem to be turning to auctions.

Globrix - had so much noise, attention and hope.  Web enthusiasts hailed its innovative interface, though many found it hard to understand and a bit of a usability mess.  They made great headway with inventory, and established some traffic, but ultimately NewsCorp lost patience with it, and it fell into the arms of the number two player TDPG.

Nestoria - was widely confused as a property search engine by most of the commentators - but in reality it's portal of portals!  They're simply an SEO play and a source of traffic to directing attention and property hunters between their various portal customers - they don't deal with agents directly.

Homeflow - has been steadily working away building a nice clean search engines which make great use of maps, a lot like Globrix, but cleaner.  They only operate through newspaper groups or other website owners, helping them build their portals.  They recently re-launched the Evening Standard winning that away from the TDPG stable, Moveto and a few other customers.  That could be interesting.

Property Owl - they had a nice looking site - but never achieved any scale of inventory.  They seem to have morphed into a blog or discussion group now, somewhat like your own site, Nat.

Nat Daniels:
TDPG are firmly in at No.2 now (as they have globrix in the stable too), shouldn’t agents be on all portals (cost no object of course!)

Trebor South:
Yes TDPG sit firmly in the number 2 slot - with FindaProperty / PrimeLocation and now Globrix, bought largely in a bid to aggregate more traffic and try to keep on the heels of Rightmove.

I guess it depends how you measure it, which is the subject for numerous squabbles.  But I think it’s generally accepted that the market share wars on a national stage, run something like:

(1)  Rightmove

(2)  TDPG (FindaProperty / PrimeLocation / Globrix)

(3)  Zoopla / PropertyFinder

(4), (5), (6), (7), (8) take your pick...

But let's remember the national stage is utterly un-interesting to anyone other than the very my old colleagues at the large national chains.  If you are a local agent, the only thing you need to care about is what your vendors / landlords think, and what the share of searches / leads that each of the portals generate in your local area.  There’s a whole topic in there, which we could discuss another time I guess.

I’m afraid we’re coming in to land, and I have 18 holes ahead of me before the most important one so I only have a few minutes I’m afraid!

Nat Daniels:
Lucky you!  Zoopla seem to be 'in favour' with agents, it’s all about enquiries to agents isn’t it?

Trebor South:
Zoopla do seem very active trying to build their brand with agents, yes.  They bring a refreshing voice to the market, though agents I've spoken to report they don't really understand if it is a subscription model old portal, or a next generation pay-per-lead portal, or a valuation tool (which they worry set’s vendor expectations wrongly and removes their opportunity to be that expert an win the instruction), or an auction engine threatening to change the game.

Nat Daniels:
Yes – they do have two different pricing models – the old model which was new, and their new model which is old!  Maybe we could chat about the differences between pay-per-lead and subscriptions another time?

Trebor South:
Sure, Nat.  Hit me up anytime, as my grandkids say!

Nat Daniels:
How do you the coming 12 months for portal outlook?

Trebor South:
The next 12 months... oh, I don’t think anything changes that quickly Nat...  I would imagine we'd see more of the same, it's a long game, much like my Golf in fact.

The crop of innovation of the Web 2 wave has passed, but the remaining survivors look determined and things will take a few years to play out.  I don't see anyone making any serious dent on the Rightmove domination in the short run.

What I find odd, is how agents are so reluctant to be supportive and positive to change.  You only have to read your forums to see that.  If we aren't willing to be supportive and open to the underdog, then we'll make our own bed with Rightmove for the next 10 years.  As I've argued on your site before, I think they can double their prices quite comfortably from where they are.  Agents will squeal - but I'd put money on the fact they won't pull out in meaningful numbers.

Nat Daniels:
We did a survey suggesting otherwise last year.  75% of agents were threatening to pull out on further price rises from Rightmove.

Trebor South:
What people say, and what they do are very different things.

I’ve got to go I’m afraid, we’re just coming in to land.

Nat Daniels:
Thanks Trebor.  Enjoy the Golf.

Trebor South:
A pleasure.