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Advanced news (they haven’t published the Press Release yet) but Zoopla are due to announce a tie up with eBay and Gumtree which will see property adverts listed on Zoopla being listed on eBay and Gumtree as well. Zoopla are announcing this as an exclusive marketing partnership with two of the UK’s largest websites, and it certainly is a coup and attraction to Lettings Agents, however private landlords are already offered advertising on Gumtree as part of their advertising package with Upad. Zoopla claim that the new deal means that agents listing on Zoopla.co.uk now have the opportunity of being seen by over 73% of all UK website users monthly, a far higher figure than any other portal. The new partnerships involve brand new, dedicated ‘agent listing’ channels on both the eBay and Gumtree websites. In the case of the eBay channel, this will include all the latest ‘for sale’ and ‘to let’ listings and in the case of Gumtree only the latest ‘for sale’.
On Gumtree the Zoopla listings are anonymous, but on eBay they appear through a Zoopla “Shop” which lists the properties in the “Classifieds” section.
I am sure this is a smart move by Zoopla in trying to displace the older established Rightmove as the premier Property Portal. eBay does of course own Gumtree, and I suspect that this deal was enabled by Doug Monro, a former managing director at Gumtree, who was recruited as Zoopla’s chief operating officer exactly 2 years ago. However the change isn’t currently of great significance because Gumtree is a site people go to to find properties to rent, but not buy, and Zoopla are only feeding sales to Gumtree not lettings. The situation at eBay is even less significant, but has greater potential. Few people currently look at eBay’s classifieds section for anything, let alone property! eBay would have to halt the steady decline of their website, and make their search facility much more property friendly for the listings in eBay’s classifieds to be of significance. However were that situation to change, and eBay are still the top ecommerce website on the internet, then Zoopla would be the only company offering feeds onto the eBay website.
How does this affect you?
If you are an Estate Agent or Lettings Agent
You get a much better deal feeding your properties through Zoopla
If you are a Private Landord
It makes no difference to you, Upad still offers you the complete advertising service of all portals (including Gumtree) – but as eBay never really advertised lettings Upad hasn’t listed on eBay before. If you choose a letting agent to represent you, it won’t affect you at all because even if the letting agent feeds their property through Zoopla, they aren’t putting their rental feeds onto Gumtree.
If you are a Tenant
Searching for a flat is difficult as a tenant. The fewer places you have to look, the easier it will be. eBay has never been a place to look for flats to rent, so the availability of rental flats on eBay makes little difference. The new arrangements doesn’t cover rental listings on Gumtree, so it doesn’t really make a lot of difference to your search. You still have to search portals and Gumtree separately to know that you have covered the market.
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Great article from Pimlico Flats.
I would like to know your views on why Zoopla have decided to feed only sale properties on to these sites and not lettings. I have my own ideas however will await their response.
There are many letting agents that do advertise on Gumtree – some officially (paid listings) and some unofficially (pretending to be private). What?Estate do list all of our lettings officially on Gumtree.
Gumtree don’t have a facility to feed properties automatically onto their listings in the same way that the Property Portals (such as Zoopla itself) does, this is born from it’s roots as a Classifieds website for the private advertiser. You will be entering your adverts onto Gumtree manually, and whilst you are obviously happy to do this for your clients, my personal guess would be that Zoopla don’t make enough money from lettings listings to warrant the labour cost of entering the data manually, they make more money from Sales and are thus able to employ staff to enter the sales listings. Also lettings turnover much quicker than sales (at a guess a lettings ad. would last 3 weeks, whilst a sales ad. would last 3 months) and there is more reason to make the effort for an ad. for 3 months than for 3 weeks.
Hi Ruth,
It’s only Gumtree where we don’t feed our lettings listings. eBay is sales and lettings. The reality is that the decision is up to Gumtree really. They are already very successful at running their own lettings channel, however it is possible that one day we could power this for them.
Hope that helps.
I think this is a great tie up. Zoopla are showing through their partnerships that they are willing to think laterally and try! (e.g. zoopla auctions).
Thanks for your support Sam.