80+% of flats rented in London are taken from an Internet advertisement – that’s what Pimlico Flats declared yesterday, and today we are going to split that down and tell you the internet strategies working for us. Our figures are approximate but we make no apology for that because our conclusions are clear and unequivocal. Over the last year we have been advertising widely and through every channel, and yesterday’s blog detailed our experiences with the channels that rented less than 20% of our flats. In the Internet channel we have advertised through pretty much most of the websites carrying rental adverts (list at end of Blog), and I drew up a list of those that have been successful in producing substantial enquiries. At this point I must emphasis strongly how inaccurate and unscientific this list is, many of the enquiries from website listings come in by telephone, and mail enquiries don’t always show the advertisement that prompted the enquiry, nevertheless I feel happy to report the pattern of response to our advertising as:
- Zoopla.co.uk
- Gumtree
- HomeHunter.co.uk
- MousePrice.com
- Livesimply
That list omits 2 sources which between them have provided well over half our enquiries – our website Pimlico-flats.co.uk & Upad – these 2 sites have been omitted because neither advertises directly in a substantial way, our own website acts as our own private portal that all our advertising is directed to, Upad is an agent for private landlords rather than an advertiser.
From our tests and experience of the flat rental advertising market, there really isn’t any particular website that drives the greatest amount of traffic. If I was asked to name the best one, it would be Zoopla – but that would be a forced nomination as it would only comprise around 10% of our total enquiries. It may not be what you want to hear, but our simple conclusion is that there is no single outstanding advertising location on the internet – put simply you have to advertise everywhere. If we only advertised on Zoopla (our best performing single website) we would probably get less than 20% of our total enquiries, and frankly that is nowhere near enough. For the small private landlord for whom only Gumtree and Livesimply would be available the total available enquiries would be less than 20% of our enquiries, with the prospect of a long void before the flat is let. However last year a new agent called Upad appeared on the internet scene, offering private landlords the complete lettings agent service for low fixed prices, and this is the service that has comprised most of our recent enquiries.
In addition to their other services Upad offer to advertise a property on 120 different websites for a fee of £99. Is that a good deal given that some of those websites are actually free? Well I think so, and I use them and as the biggest landlord in the UK that must mean something (you’d have to meet me to understand that joke). Residential Land (the largest London Landlord by numbers of tenants, & who owe Royal Bank of Scotland £1000,000,000 – but lets face it who doesn’t?) also use Upad, and I think that there is a message here. Upad will advertise your flat on every website that offers flats for rent, and it will cost £59 – that’s just a day of a property standing empty for many London properties! Upad will advertise a Landlord’s property on all the paying websites that I have mentioned in this blog, and quite a few that I haven’t heard of, and most particularly all the websites that a private landlord doesn’t have access to. You might ask why I pay Upad to list my property on free websites such as Gumtree, Google Base, Craigs List, yada yada yada ……. OK – try this:- here is one of my Upad adverts - http://www.upad.co.uk/property.php?id=1558128 now do a Search on a specific term from that advert – 126 links to the most visited URLs on the internet. Now imagine how long it would take me to register accounts with each of those websites and upload property details and photographs! That combined with the access to the property portals not available to landlords is why I use Upad, and recommend them to other private landlords.
1994 – 1999 – Loot was the only advertising medium that I needed
2002 – 2007 – Gumtree was the only advertising medium that I needed
2009 – Upad is the only advertising medium that I need.
If you are a tenant you need to read my blogs on how to get the best flats at the lowest prices.
Here is the list of websites that we have advertised on in the last year:
craigslist
dotHomes.co.uk
Enormo.com
Fish4homes
Freeindex
Globrix.com
GoogleBase
Gumtree
HomeHunter.co.uk
HouseLadder.co.uk
LetaLife.com
Livesimply
MousePrice.com
NetHousePrices.com
Netrent.co.uk
Pimlico-flats.co.uk
Property-Superstore.com
Surf4aProperty.com
ThinkProperty.com
Trovit.com
UK-Property-Search.co.uk
Upad.co.uk
Zoopla.co.uk
Great article… Looks like people are using Upad exactly as you say though; its actual listings are pretty poor and photo-less… They seem to use it just do distribute the info to many sites, with links back to theirs…
Admitedly this is for selling, not renting, but FT searched each of the leading portals for three- bedroom houses in the L25 postcode:
Rightmove, had 167 properties.
Globrix, came second, 132 properties.
Zoopla 89 properties
Findaproperty 76
Propertyfinder 72 houses.
http://bit.ly/Rryd6
[...] London Flat Rental – the most effective way to advertise [...]
Nick, it’s interesting that Rightmove didn’t feature at all in your property portals?
Hi Sam,
Well if you look back to the previous Blog they are identified as the premier Portal, but remember Lord Leverhulme’s famous words “Half my advertising is wasted, but I don’t know which half”. So take my observations with the crudity that they are born from, I’m in the business of renting flats, not market research of advertising channels. I’m sure that paper advertising is dead and that the internet is the way to go. I’m also sure that no single internet site dominates. But having said that, nothing beats referrals, and we both know of a large landlord who lets purely by referral, with the occasional advert in the local paper!
To address your specific question, it may well be that the problem is that Rightmove enquiries don’t identify themselves as such. I don’t take many telephone enquiries, but when I do I always ask where they saw the advert. 99% of the time they say “Your Website” and the majority of the time on further probing they mean my Portal Manager Site, or the Site that they saw the advert.