In 1999 (yep) I set up some websites thinking I could generate leads from everyone in the world. I had an estate agency and was a mortgage broker. By 2006, during the thriving mortgage market, we were generating and selling thousands of leads daily to mortgage brokers across the UK.
Simultaneously, our property site, a pre-Rightmove directory of Estate Agents, captured property requirements and connected users with agents. We got loads of traffic from people who wanted to register their buying requirements with agents (there was no Rightmove then) and we were ranked in the top 10 of all property websites by Hitwise.
We also got heaps of traffic from users who wanted to look at the recently released Land Registry data of ‘sold’ house prices. I think, back then we had to pay for it, it’s free now and most sites carry it. We called this, the ‘nosey neighbour effect’. The users’ thirst for looking at what their neighbours paid for the property was insatiable.
Not the time for speculating
Loads of users signed up for the newsletter and a germ of an idea was born in my head. More on that later. Our Mortgage lead business was lucrative as those in the property market for new homes were potential mortgage clients. We sold all the leads we generated to mortgage brokers across the UK.
In 2006-2007, amidst our foothold in the mortgage market, I set up a sideline business called Angels Media and we launched our first website. Introducer Today, a digital news publisher to educate and inform the very market we were targeting–mortgage brokers and IFA’s. I didn’t really know at the time, but I guess nowadays you would call that ‘content marketing’. It just seemed logical to me.
Then, the global financial crisis hit, severely impacting all companies worldwide, especially those in mortgages! So I thought ‘Sh*t! What the hell are we gonna do now?!’
In the back of my mind, I had always pondered the challenge of creating the holy grail for estate agents – vendor leads. However, now was NOT the time for speculating, now was the time to try to get some revenue coming in as we had hardly any inbound mortgage leads coming in any more to sell and I had a future ex-wife to support! So I thought, well Introducer Today has gone ok so let’s copy this blueprint and let’s do one for Estate Agents in the UK.
Launching Estate Agent Today on July 1, 2008, amid the financial downturn, we faced paper-based competitors that couldn’t adapt, ultimately going out of business. This positioned us as the primary news source for UK estate agents. I will always claim that this was by design, but it wasn’t, it was just luck – I claim it anyway!
We also expanded the titles into non-property markets like ‘Recruiter Today’, ‘Green Today’ (yep, we did), and even ‘Gay Today’, but they didn’t work so we eventually refocused on property/home moving.
Insatiable appetite
Just like the overwhelming thirst for knowledge during the COVID times, our readership skyrocketed, and Estate Agent Today became the go-to platform for news and updates in the market. Who knew?
Subsequently, we introduced Letting Agent Today and Landlord Today etc, gradually expanding services for estate agents including social media management, blog writing, public relations, etc.
Now that we had some revenue coming in, my mind started to think about how we could create vendor leads for estate agents. I hadn’t really stopped thinking about it (one of the benefits of ADHD, I guess!).
So, in 2011, I started to think again about the insatiable appetite of UK homeowners and their fascination with their house price (it’s a national pastime, isn’t it?) and how we could harness that into a business.
So, what happened next was……
I’ll tell you next time.
Until then,
N
If you’ve got a story you’d like me to Natter about, please get in touch at press@angelsmedia.co.uk
House prices in Wales have seen their biggest decline since the 2009 financial crash, according to new figures.
The Principality Building Society said the average house price at the end of 2023 was £234,000 – down by 6% from a record high the year before.
Merthyr Tydfil saw the biggest drop with prices down by more than 20%.
Gwynedd, Anglesey, Cardiff and Caerphilly were the only areas where prices increased.
This is the fourth consecutive quarter that prices have fallen in Wales.
The figures have been released from Principality Building Society’s Wales House Price Index for October to December 2023, which demonstrates the rise and fall in house prices in each of the 22 local authorities in Wales.
House prices in Wales are now down 6% – or £15,000 – when compared to the same period the previous year when the peak price of £249,076 was recorded.
Despite this being the largest year-on-year decline of Wales’ average house price since the aftermath of the global financial crisis in 2009, house prices remain 25% higher than five years ago.
While two local authorities – Cardiff and Caerphilly – reported record high prices at £308,648 and £207,904 at the end of 2023, the figures revealed a “subdued market” with year-on-year price falls recorded in 18 of the 22 local authorities.
Six local authorities – Monmouthshire, Carmarthenshire, Blaenau Gwent, Torfaen, Denbighshire and Merthyr Tydfil – all experienced double digit price falls when compared to the same period the previous year, with Merthyr Tydfil reporting the largest fall of 21.2%.
Shaun Middleton, head of distribution at Principality Building Society, said: “The housing market in Wales has been through a difficult period.
“Given the continued squeeze on the cost of living alongside the higher cost of mortgages, as households came off much lower fixed rates, it is little wonder that some have forecast continuing price falls in 2024, followed by a recovery in 2025.”
He added there were “some positive signs”, such as lower inflation and an expectation that the Bank of England rate has now peaked at 5.25% and will fall during 2024.
“Indeed, financial markets are pricing in several rate cuts, bringing the Bank of England rate down to 4% later in the year,” he said.
“Mortgage markets have already moved, with lenders cutting rates quite significantly as competition intensifies, and we might expect that to continue.”