Zoomf Blog - UK Property Blog.

Most of the press surrounding the ‘newspapers demise’ has focused on it’s ever declining classifieds business. If I were running digital operations within a newspaper group I’d be having a close look at the Craigslist success story. Let’s look at what we know…

• Craigslist is mostly a US phenomenon. In other words, the UK market is still open.
• Craigslist is the biggest classifieds player in the world. The stats are there to prove it.
• Craigslist is an ugly website. Once again proving that it’s not what your website looks like, it’s what it does and the traffic it generates that is important. Simple, simple, simple interface.
• Gumtree. No disrespect to the Gumtree guys, but we all know that they didn’t start that website because London-based Kiwi’s and South Africans had a hard time finding stuff. They did a copy/paste of Craigslist. Gumtree only has proper audience in Greater London from what I hear, so again, opportunity.
• Other ways to success. Our partners Oodle have a great model and are an easy path to online classifieds. It’s worth considering.
• Combo package. With 95 million users and growing, the UK newspaper groups could do well from figuring out a way to combine their great editorial capabilities with a proper classifieds strategy. The traffic is there to support it, now it’s time to execute a vision.

With the property market looking at alternatives to ‘listing’ and ‘classifieds’ beyond newspapers, it’s time for those media companies to start bringing platforms to a space in dire need of better and more efficient ways to drive leads. Buckmaster has clues to where that path may lie.

There’s a new place to search for property online, at least in the US anyway. Oodle are now proudly powering a new classifieds section on MySpace. The new and improved listings section is aimed to be more social than your average classifieds experience, with users being able to post listings for free that then link back to their MySpace profiles. Users can take advantage of MySpace blogs and bulletins to then promote their listings to their friends or allow other users to search for their listings naturally.

As well as the listings that MySpace users post themselves, users will have access to all the ads posted across the Oodle network, which currently gets around half a million new listings a day. At the moment, less than 1% of MySpace users actually look at the classifieds section, but with the right promotion this could be an interesting rival to the likes of Gumtree and Craigslist.

Gumtree is a great way to list properties that you want let/sold, but have you ever checked out the wanted lists within Gumtree?

These wanted ads are essentially a ‘reverse’ search engine. Rather than wasting all your time searching hundreds of listings across the web, let the web come to you…. well, not exactly, but that’s the idea behind posting what you ‘want.’

Anyway, last week I subscribed for all the wanted ads for property in the London area. Then presto-magic-o, at 8am every morning I get a list of what people ‘want.’ Seems like a cheap and efficient way to get a leads list from the internet and Gumtree will even break it down by city.

Cost to me? About 20 seconds which is how long it takes me to type my email twice inside Gumtree.

Everyone I know is a fan of Gumtree for some reason or another, whether it’s to look at jobs, second hand motors or just the increasingly bizarre personal ads. A big part of Gumtree’s success also comes from its thriving property section and Gumtree have recently published a report examining today’s rental market. The findings were very interesting.

According to the study, half of us (51%) believe the national obsession with getting on the property ladder is old fashioned and needs to change. Over two thirds of 25-44 year-old renters (71%) are not planning to take a mortgage at all and will invest their money in other ways, and three-quarters of Brits (76%) wouldn’t buy property now even if they had the cash burning a hole in their pocket. Four in five renters (81%) can’t currently afford to buy, but they are content and want to continue renting for the foreseeable future.

The study also examined a year’s worth of historical data for London and five other large UK cities and found a shift towards a more ‘European attitude’ to renting, which is good news for landlords. In cities such as London, Edinburgh and Bristol the study found rental revenue increase by up to 7.8%. These findings reflect the opinion of over a third (35%) of landlords questioned who are optimistic about the rental market and believe their property will make them more money before the end of the year.

Renters looking for affordable properties should head to Manchester and Birmingham where urban development has contributed to a drop of up to 3.5%, as supply of outstrips demand. Gumtree’s Rental Index further reveals letting markets in Leeds, Bristol and Edinburgh to be slightly more neutral, with rents rising modestly or remaining static, yet to feel significant effects from the current property fall-out.

Property expert Michael Holmes had this to say…

“Until now renting has always been a bit of a dirty word in the UK. The importance of owning a house is deeply engrained in the British psyche and it’s our equivalent of the American dream. But in the new economic climate we’re seeing a real shift in attitudes towards a more continental approach to property, with renting becoming increasingly popular.”

Is it time to get rid of the stigma of being a renter?