INTERVIEW
Digital Property Group Primetime for
Sheila Manchester celebrates the tenth birthday of Primelocation and the third birthday of parent company Digital Property Group.
B
ack in the nascent days of property portals, when there were a dozen or so already established, a group of estate agents decided that the UK market needed another portal to serve the market. They formed a consortium of more
than 200 agents and created a new, agent-owned portal which, during its formation, was known as Fastcrop. In the burgeoning portal market of the new millennium, agents
having a financial share in a portal was a very attractive proposition. In January 2001, with seed capital of £11 million, a great deal of noise and high level support from many of the UK’s leading property firms, including Savills and Hamptons, CEO Ian Springett and CFO Charles Rees, launched the new portal, which bore the elegant name of Primelocation.
Ten years on, what shape is Primelocation in? Primelocation was an instant success; classy, popular, efficient, the agents who owned it, liked it, but in December 2005 it was sold to A & N Media’s Associated Newspapers, part of The Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT) for a princely £48million; not a bad ROI in five years and a nice payback for the 200 investor agencies. Associated Newspapers had, the previous year, paid £13.8 million for Findaproperty (launched in 1997 by Andrew Pendery) as part of its digital strategy. Having been strong in the UK classified property advertising in printed media, Associated Newspapers knew that digital media would become more important, so when Primelocation became available, they saw the potential for two very different brands, accessed by very different consumers, to make excellent bedfellows. Associated Newspapers ran them as two separate brands and
although there has always been speculation that one brand would eventually go, this didn’t happen; in fact they welcomed another portal into the fold in 2009, with the purchase of Globrix, which
DIGITAL PROPERTY GROUP: NEW BUSINESS SERVICES
MARKET VIEW Developed after meeting hundreds of sales and lettings agents who were frustrated at the lack of immediacy in getting local market data, Market View is the only tool of its kind to hand agents detailed insight into their area, every day, not every week. Initially launched in London,
Market View has proven to be a massive hit with estate agents of all sizes – over 40 agents per month are signing up to the
service, saving time for their businesses and generating fee income as a result.
INSIGHT The popular reporting and analysis toolkit has just been through an upgrade; DPG has improved the design and UI, but more importantly added extra functionality. Several managers and owners
were frustrated by enquiries not being fi elded, especially in such a competitive market, so DPG
created a tracking tool which shows how many calls and emails were answered or missed.
MOBILE DPG offer a service that provides estate agents with their own, personalised mobile website and iPhone app, meaning that their properties can be viewed on any smartphone. Agents report that up to 30 per cent of traffi c to their websites now comes from mobile devices,
meaning that this service forms an essential part of their marketing portfolio and ensures that vendors’ needs are satisfi ed. Homehunting is going
mobile. 23 per cent of UK’s mobile users now use their handsets to access the internet (Ofcom) DPG has already had positive
take-up in a short space of time, with 76 agents signed up since Jan 2011 including Chesterton Humberts.
Mark Milner, CEO, DPG
had been launched in 2008 by Ian Parry, Dan Lee and News International. Again, this portal was different, with a free to list business model, a strong contrast to both Primelocation and Findaproperty’s paid for system. Mark Milner, CEO, says the three brands came together under
their parent (formed in 2008) The Digital Property Group (TDPG) which rebranded as Digital Property Group (DPG) in May.
38 AUGUST 2011 PROPERTYdrum
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