Digital claims to close gap on Rightmove

SmartNewHomes has angrily refuted the suggestion that its rival FindaNewHome has taken over as market leader. Meanwhile, the Digital Property Group which publishes FindaNewHome claimed yesterday that it has narrowed the gap between it and Rightmove.

David Bexon, managing director of SmartNewHomes, said the recent statement by FindaNewHome, reported on Estate Agent Today, claiming to have been officially recognised as the ‘UK’s most visited new homes portal’ was both “misleading and inaccurate”.

He said FindaNewHome’s claim that it received 5.6% more visits than SmartNewHomes were based on just one week’s figures. According to Bexon, this was the only week in 2008 when FindaNewHome received more unique visitors than SmartNewHomes.

He said: “While I’m flattered that FindaNewHome clearly regard their recent success as a major victory, I would like to reassure our housebuilder clients that we are and remain the leading, most frequently visited website for the new homes market. We currently promote over 17,000 homes on our site and have an average of over 270,000 unique visitors each month for this year.

“Consumer traffic to SmartNewHomes.com has remained extremely strong in 2008. Whilst peaking and troughing at certain moments throughout the year, we have remained the UK’s number one new homes website, with an unparalleled level of visitors and new homes available for sale.

“Further, I am confident that we will start the new year as we began the last – offering developers the most visited new homes website, and continuing to facilitate the home buying process for the majority of the country’s new home buyers. We will be relaunching our website early in 2009 with a new look, added functionality and enhanced mapping and search tools.”

Meanwhile, the Digital Property Group, which owns FindaNewHome and is also publisher of Primelocation and FindaProperty, controversially claims to have closed the gap further on Rightmove.

It says the latest data from comScore demonstrates that in November the difference between the number of unique visitors to Rightmove and Digital’s portals was only 211,000 – its lowest level ever.

Rightmove’s monthly unique visitors figure now stands at 1.994m while Digital’s is 1.783m.

However, Digital has combined all four of its portals against the single might of Rightmove.

Despite this, Mark Milner, chief executive of Digital, said: “We have firmly established ourselves as second in the market place and are most certainly gaining ground on the market leader.

“The Digital Property Group’s growth in recent months has positioned it closely behind the industry leader Rightmove. These two businesses are now clear market leaders, dominating the property portal traffic.”