There has been a lot of talk about Boomin, the soon-to-launch property portal, but PropertyHeads “is a serious contender too”, a spokesperson for the company insists.
The challenger and property social network last week acquired one of the main property portals in the UK, Mouseprice, part of Landmark Information Group and Daily Mail and General Trust plc, and now has its sights firmly set on competing with Rightmove, Zoopla and OnTheMarket for greater market share.
The acquisition of Mouseprice will provide them with an additional 250,000 listings from almost 4,000 estate agent branches and bring them significantly closer to Rightmove, Zoopla and OTM in those terms.
The purchase of Mouseprice was PropertyHeads’ second deal in a matter of weeks as its fast-paced growth strategy continues to take shape.
The acquisition of the long standing OurProperty.co.uk added a further 700,000 consumers to the PropertyHeads social platform, whilst the purchase of Mouseprice means the group will now have access to approximately 50% of the UK’s property listings.
The company completed a successful fundraising round in early August and it says it will be making at least two further significant announcements in the coming weeks.
Prior to last week’s acquisition of Mouseprice, agents could already list with PropertyHeads completely free of charge but their properties will now be exposed to over 1 million monthly visitors via the PropertyHeads websites.
They will also be able to showcase their entire business to, and directly influence PropertyHeads audiences through the company’s property social network, whilst they also have access to property appraisal reports including Mouseprice’s proprietary AVM.
PropertyHeads is trying to create a viable alternative to the traditional portals by offering several unique benefits to the investment buyer including the ability to connect directly with agents to learn of properties before they come to market, and to compare target properties using the unique Property Compare tool.
For property developers and landlords, there is the opportunity to showcase available properties to buyers and tenants using Property Owner Reviews.
Following the acquisition of Mouseprice, Ben Davis, CEO of PropertyHeads, said: “We have pulled together hundreds of thousands of property consumers, 20,000 property businesses, almost 500,000 property listings and sat them alongside one another.”
He added: “Our social platform is the perfect tool to build and maintain relationships with estate agents, tradespeople and other property businesses, and that’s been sorely missing up until this point. It ensures consumers can make better informed decisions, whether they be moving, home-improving or just looking to save money and means that quality property businesses can grow by word-of-mouth online.”
Comments (23)
What is it about these awful names-Booming (heavy metal rock band in the NE I believe) Propertyheads-is that the same take as Pistonheads etc. Anyone got a good idea for the next big thing!
Agree with smile please-agents buy the cheaper of the three and just blinking well go for it-problem is Agents will never go forward as one will they.
There is no room in the property market for more than three portals. It is a numbers game! Take a step back to a few years ago (you can go back further a few decades) to all those would be property portals that have been and gone, not one or two but scores. All these new to be portals are only chasing what many others have tried to do and failed and it doesn’t matter how much money you have to spend or waste or new ideas. You may have a new idea but is the consumer sufficiently interested!
As in any industry, a market will only ever support a maximum outlet. Too many players ends up with only the fittest surviving and that is down to one thing … the consumers needs. All we hear is “IT” this and that is the best for estate agents. They forget that it is not the estate agents that dictate success, it is the end user.
The ability to dive the public to these portals is reliant on estate agents stock and agents promotion of how to find that stock.
Agents have no need for multiple outlets, two or three web portals are sustainable, any more is duplicity and throwing money down the drain and the effort is a non-viable wastage of resources.
The public only want one web portal, they realise that isn’t going to happen so will chase one or two more portals. But expecting them to chase another and another portal when all the properties are already on the first two or three that offers exactly all they need, is a waste of their time and they will vote by showing no interest.
The people who dictate the success of any web portal is the suppliers of the stock, i.e. estate agents and consumer who buys from it (not window shopping). Unless you can get all the estate agents to move in sufficient numbers from one of the current top three RM, Z and OTM….. all a waste of time. The public have no need for more duplicity.
For the love of god, this portal thing is getting as boring as Online Agents 6/7 years ago, as boring as the doomed self employed model which seems to be fashionable.
Look Rightmove does a job as it has the majority of stock and everybody knows where it is (public).
Its very simple, agents need to form a non profit group. Buy a portal, possibly OTM and make it free for everybody to list (or a nominal amount for the running of it).
Otherwise we the agents are the product which is never a good thing.
But isn’t that what propertymutual did?
Listings would need to be paid for to be able to operate it. Having the hassle of owning a portal would be to much for many agents and I for one prefer to focus on what I am good at and can imagine it being a total nightmare when decisions needed to be made with so many big egos across the industry.
I don’t mind paying for a service as long as some of the profits are ploughed back into it for improvements and updates, I just don’t appreciate being bled dry for very little back.
£400 per month for 5 years, floating in 3 years.
Property mutual was an investment vehicle for Ian Sprignett. Nothing more.
The counter on the home page is misleading as sure people are not signing up every second. I joined a while back and other than property there was nothing, I logged in again recently and still the same and many areas broken and no other users in there. Not my cup of tea at all sorry.
I think as an industry we need to be clear between what the consumer wants against what industry commentators say the consumer wants. At no point did the consumer say they would like to pay upfront, nor did they request more websites to look at, I am unaware of any consumer saying I like this portal, but I wish I could buy a pot plant at the same time.
Portal Loans is a new company thats just raised £48 billion, funded by complete tools. We allow you to pay 10 leading portals so you can sleep at night. All loans considered, for example if a portal is labelled or operating as ‘Ground breaking, challenger, disruptor, contender or any other BS words used’. New round of funding coming soon. Please note though only tools can invest.
There’s another portal launching after this one too! Yippee…
Somebody please make this stop….challenger portal my…….
One thing is certain in all of this. From all the challengers/disruptors/gamechangers there will likely be only one or none winners. And enormous amounts of money will be spaffed in the process.
there is very little certain now The duopoly was broken in March and because of that both Rightmove and Zoopla have to contend with stuff that for 8 years hasn’t needed to worry them.
ZPG have run a comfortable #2 to Rightmove and have failed to innovate the portal, the SAAS side of things must be a nightmare; the product to replace 5 or 6 legacy systems is a legacy system before it’s fully rolled out.
Rightmove haven’t innovated and face threats on at least two fronts.
There is some very clever innovation built tested and working in various challenger products that solve problems Rightmove and Zoopla have. Because of that the time and money spent won’t have been spaffed but invested in innovation that is forcing change on the incumbents.
Just a thought and Ben Davis CEO of PropertyHeads is not a client, but I do know quite a lot about what he has achieved and is on his route map, maybe actually engage with him, ask to see what he is doing differently and then make a call. For sure I make many judgemental comments over the years, but I do take the time to analyze in depth the topic at hand. What is certain is that property and how the consumer wants to do it is changing, perhaps a more social network concept might just catch on in the property sector … anyone heard of Mark Zuckerberg? Personal worth over 80BN USD.
You’re a wind up, surely?
Chasing a ‘consultancy’ I suspect.
Yes
Curious; is “Move over, Boomin: There’s only room for one challenger portal” a quote or something that wasn’t said but was implied or designed to attract derision?
The body text seems to be a perfectly reasonable project update but the quite significant achievement of acquiring Mouseprice from Landmark has been muted by how the story has been delivered.
If Ben Davis actually said those words it’s naive. If he didn’t its unfair.
Thank you Robert. I’ve certainly never commented on Boomin. And actually the suggestion that there’s only room for one challenger portal flies in the face of my message that PropertyHeads and other challenger portals have been and will continue to collaborate. By collaborating we can offer real choice to agents and consumers. This hasn’t been possible in the past as the traditional pay-to-list model leads to a natural monopoly, but with the emergence of Freemium portal business models, and with agents support, the portal market will open right up.
I suspected that to be the case. Please accept my respect and admiration for acquiring Mouseprice. That’s the real story here and quite an achievment. Well done!
Another day, another outstanding Portal to beat all others.
It will be interesting to see if ANY of them are still around in 12 month’s time.
The firm completed another fundraising round in August and aim to compete with the major portals. As if we’ve never heard this before?
The poor, unfortunate crowdfunders who repeatedly fall for these investment stories.
Hi AlwaysAnAgent. I just wanted to clarify, PropertyHeads steered away from crowdfunding for precisely the reason you allude to. We have only raised capital once. From a small group of professional property and financial investors that know our business extremely well. Our initial capital raise will see the firm through to profitability.
I really do wish you well. I’m also pleased to hear that you haven’t taken unsophisticated investors for a ride by means of crowdfunding. This aside, do you really believe your investment will lead to anything more than a complete loss, or further funding rounds in the near future? It’s disingenuous to claim that you will ever be a challenger to the existing portals. You can’t honestly believe that, surely?