Zoopla has bought the property portals owned by the Daily Mirror’s parent company, Trinity Mirror, for £3.3m.
The entire Trinity Mirror Digital Property business is now part of the Zoopla group and includes Zoomf, SmartNewHomes, HomesOverseas and Email4Property.
The overall £3.3m sales price was far less than Trinity paid for just SmartNewHomes alone when it bought the business for up to £16.6m back in 2005.
The TMDP business posted revenues of £2.9m last year, turning in an operating profit of £0.5m – far distant from the figures of Rightmove, which Trinity was rumoured to have tried to bid for.
Zoomf, which has been redirecting traffic to Radarhomes, is to be closed down.
In practice, Trinity Mirror appears to have closed it some months ago and the software provider, Homeflow, behind both Zoomf and Radarhomes, set up the divert. Both Zoopla and Radarhomes emphasised that Radarhomes is not part of the acquisition and will be unaffected by it.
Zoopla said it plans to continue to operate SmartNewHomes and HomeOverseas as stand-alone portals and will invest “significantly” in developing and marketing them as part of its multi-brand strategy.
Zoopla also said plans are already under way to further develop and rebrand Email4Property as the UK’s leading agent directory. Traffic to Zoomf will be redirected to Zoopla “in due course”.
In addition to the acquisition, Zoopla and Trinity are working on a long-term commercial agreement whereby Zoopla will power the property search for the national and regional newspaper websites.
Alex Chesterman, Zoopla’s CEO, said: “The acquisition is a great strategic fit. It allows us to continue to build our portfolio of niche brands in the digital property space like SmartNewHomes, HomesOverseas and PrimeLocation alongside our core national brand Zoopla.
“The portfolio of websites further extends our audience and registered user base for the benefit of our members and we will be investing significantly in each of these niche brands to ensure that we continue to be the most effective marketing partner for each of our members.”
Trinity Mirror’s decision to sell its digital property business is unsurprising and now leaves the Mail as the only national media group with such interests: it is the majority owner of Zoopla and also owns other businesses, including floorplan company Metropix. The Times, which had owned Propertyfinder, withdrew from the sector when it sold, also to Zoopla.
As a newspaper group, Trinity Mirror was never quite the player it had no doubt intended to be in the property portal stakes, despite owning one-quarter of Fish4.
In 2005, the year it acquired SmartNewHomes for an initial £11.3m plus a further £5.3m depending on performance, Trinity was among several said to be interested in buying Rightmove and PrimeLocation.
In the event, PrimeLocation went to the Daily Mail and Rightmove opted for a stock market flotation.
Last month Trinity Mirror posted half-year pre-tax profits of £30.3m. However, it has also slashed costs including 200 jobs, and reported a 12% drop in press advertising. Its current chief executive Simon Fox succeeded Sly Bailey who left with a reported £2.3m pay-off.
Comments
Co- ordinate (sorry)
Its a shame us agents don't ordinate for the better good.
Keep agents divided and conquered = more profit for the portals
Just choose one portal and believe in it,,customers will ask which you are on,, you will say your preferred one becuase it generate more leads..
if a vendor leaves you cos they cant sell it is their overpriced property that is the issue not which portal you are on.
alas i remember when agents used to be able to sell, not rely on portals.
@ Ray Evans.
"Fewer yes - but probably more than one may think. Depends on many other factors?."
Too true Roy....Like how quick and relentless your competitors are at pointing out the fact that "their" agent has removed their property from the place that by far the majority of buyers look.
Why ? to reduce their own overheads.
@ Richard on 2013-09-06 10:59:49
'How many instructions would you get if you were not on rightmove, zoopla etc? '
Fewer yes - but probably more than one may think. Depends on many other factors?.
While everyone is focusing on rightmove, zoopla and agents mutual (a site that has not even got a domain name yet), sites like Allagents is creeping up behind them with a free listing portal
If you can't put two and two together Propguru it probably says you don't know quite as much as your self appointed granduer would suggest.
You give credit to Agents Mutual for its potential impact on the market but haven't grasped that RadarHomes which is evertything Agent Mutual hopes to be is already live and working.
@ Three point three million quid? What are you talking about? Article is very clear that this has nothing to do with radar homes?
@ Richard. Where we go in next 5 years is going to be interesting. I think Agency Mutual will have the biggest impact on the sector BUT NOT in the way its supporters think. It will turn the portals (who have so far held private sellers/vendors at bay) towards them as an alternative and be the start of the end. It is suicide for hte sake of savng a few quid.
The internet has changed the property market forever in the last 5 years. However the traditional estate agency model has been propped up by the big portals who, when not competing with each other, have a vested interest in ensuring that EA's survive and continue to pay them. How many instructions would you get if you were not on rightmove, zoopla etc? What would happen to EA's if rightmove became a private sale site and charged vendors a per property fee? It will happen one day but not until there is a genuine threat from Facebook or similar social network and rightmove have to answer to their shareholders.
I think they should spend more money on making the site ore user friendly.
Poster below has raised an interesting point with the 5 years thing,
Im sat here in my shop unit, staff are here, windows full of houses, double page in the local rag, direct debit for the main portals and charging a percentage of the sale price / let………..i am what’s called ‘traditional’ im an example of the type of agent that has been told for a very long time (more than 5 years I reckon near on 15) that this internet thing is going to finish me good an proper and im an idiot for not evolving, im sentenced to a life of poverty an misery and it will be well deserved etc, etc
So, the question is; why is it taking so long? The things you can do online in every area of life have evolved dramatically in the last 10 years; if you could access and use a 10 year old version of the web right now it would not only be amusing but really show how things have marched on
I know there aren’t as many travel agents, book shops, record shops and so on but estate agents have had a stay of execution of 10 years at least based on what some say. Meanwhile Foxtons, the agent for the savviest of savviest Londoners is worth god knows £500m or something, Romans in the home counties have just gone for £50m these are companies trading with high street offices in wealthy areas full of internet using clever people who could have gone ‘online’ so why don’t they? This internet thing has been around for ever now and the move to online seems as illusive as the HPC we’ve been promised for the last 6/7 years
Jonnie
fantastic, Facebook private sales!
That is a lot of money spent to try and stop Radar Homes gaining momentum Alex.
The Trinity Mirror/ Zoomf/Radar deal never got publicized but it was obviously enough of a threat to have Alex digging down the back of the sofa for cash he otherwise didn't really need to spend.
It certainly will, Will.
It's already changed a lot from 5 years ago:
RightMove, Property Finder, Think4Property, Fish4Homes, Zoopla, FindaProperty, PrimeLocation, Smart New Homes Globrix
To:
RightMove, Zoopla, Agents Mutual, Property Network, All Agents.
Let's see where we are in 5 years.
Facebook Private Sales?
Its going to be an interesting few years with the property searching.
-Rightmove still dominating and going strong
-Zoopla believing multi brand portals are they way forward
-Agent Mutual wanting a 2 portal set up
-Property Network believing that their social network angle is the way forward
-and then you have Allagents believing that their customer review angle is the way forward
fair play to Zoopla for mopping up but epic fail it seems by Trinity returning c£3m from over a reported £20m spend. email4property was the watershed moment of madness of the era going for around £4m when IMO it looked and operated and generated revenue like the proverbial turd.
all these brands failed to generate visitor traffic despite the mirror's backing and quietly slipped away. hence zoopla now partnering to power property channels etc will achieve little other than loads more pretty logos to be chucked in our face.
Trinity - if you are reading, think about your next move. do you really want to alientate your readers further by acting as a conduit to zoopla? aren't local media businesses supposed to connect with its readers on jobs/property/cars?
waters further muddied but rightmove will remain wholly unaffected by todays news...not a blip of change.