With the aim of winning back the competitive online property classifieds market in their region, three independent UK regional press groups have joined forces to create a new portal.
Iliffe News and Media, Midland News Association and the Baylis Media Group are attempting to launch a credible local online alternative to the market leaders.
Iliffe News & Media publishes three evening newspapers, seven paid-for weekly newspapers, 22 free newspapers plus 6 Sunday free newspapers, 1 quarterly & 4 monthly glossy magazines and 24 related websites together with a number of specialist niche titles. The Midland News Association Ltd. is the UK’s largest independent newspaper publisher.
In most cases local and regional press have been relegated to being print marketing partners for local estate agents, with national players like rightmove.co.uk, findaproperty.com and propertyfinder.com dominating online property listings.
The three newspaper groups have commissioned Collabera, which is the technology provider behind US based giant move.com, to create a portal that includes a powerful back office reporting and management facility for estate agents. The portal will have white label capability to enable other regional press groups to adopt it, and is slated for launch in early 2010.
David Fordham, chief executive of Iliffe News and Media and current Newspaper Society President, was quoted on MK News, part of Iliffe News and Media, as saying:
“This is an exciting development that we genuinely believe will provide our estate agents with a truly competitive local alternative to the likes of Rightmove. We still have good and strong relationships with our estate agents through our print offerings but like so many within the regional press we lack real credibility when it comes to providing pure play property solutions for them online.
“In combining in the way we have with two like minded regional press partners we have a chance of putting together the kind of capital and intellectual investment we will need to establish that capability.”
“These are difficult times for regional press and I am coming more and more to the view that our future prosperity will rely in finding more ways of coming together as an industry to find solutions for the future.”
[image: flickr/thatscottishengineer]