The battle of the property portals

The battle of the property portals roll on. Rightmove retains dominance, aside the young pretender, Zoopla.

Many attempts have been made to snatch their positions as the estate agents favourites, but so far all have failed.

2015 looks to be another year of desperate duelling, and more fights to the death.

In the week that one portal is finally killed off, another two attempt to battle their way into the hearts of the agents.

Neadaproperty needed more money

This week the property portal 'needaproperty' went out of business. Launched in June 2012,   'needaproperty' declared it had been “designed to provide a viable and cost-effective alternative to the established competitors in the market”. 

Unfortunately it clearly never became a viable business and presumably some start up investors have lost a big fist of tax efficient investment money on this bright idea.

Houser are a new kind of portal (yawns , oh yeh..?)

Looking at their countdown clock Houser.co.uk officially launch on Sunday. In their own words 'Houser.co.uk is not just another property website. ( Don't all portals say that?) It claims to ' a host of amazing features for sellers, buyers and estate agents' (Again, you're hardly going to say anything else )

They appear to say they are going to be stripping all the data from the other portals and plonking it on their database - I wonder what the other portals will say about that?

I had a look at the Beta site and just felt it was a confused mess of everything - too much, this, that and the other, but what do you think?

Onthemarket plays dib, dab, dog****

The new portal from the posh agents consortium of Savills,Douglas & Gordon, Knight Frank, Chesterton Humberts, Glentree Estates and Strutt and Parker launches on the 26th of January. The Agent's Mutual collective are playing a hard ball game with the other agents, saying you can only advertise with 'On the market' and  one other of the other big two, i.e., pick between Rightmove and Onthemarket, or Zoopla and Onthemarket,  but not all three. It's going to certainly upset the portal status quo, but it is a risky strategy that I think might backfire in the long term.

I can see a price war between Rightmove and Zoopla on fees, but when it comes to the switch off will agents want to switch off either of the big two?

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