Leading UK and international property search portal TheMoveChannel.com has acquired top lead generation agency Lead Galaxy.

TheMoveChannel.com will take over the overseas property website portfolio operated by Lead Galaxy, in a deal which stands to create the world’s largest and most popular international property website.

With more than 45 different ‘venture’ sites dedicated to property sales in countries all over the world, the deal will see TheMoveChannel.com take an even greater share of web traffic, particularly in locations such as Cape Verde, the Caribbean, Egypt, Florida, Italy, Malaysia, Montenegro, Turkey and the UAE.

Whilst all of the property sites will now come under TheMoveChannel.com brand, the combined power of both TheMoveChannel.com and Lead Galaxy will ensure that visitors can browse the broadest spectrum of properties for sale, while allowing advertisers to maximise the number and quality of leads generated for their listed properties.

Dan Johnson, of TheMoveChannel.com said, “This deal will undoubtedly consolidate our position as the leading overseas property portal.

“With a bigger advertiser base and a far wider choice for investors, TheMoveChannel.com will be at the forefront of overseas property search and of course, the more users and more enquiries we attract, the more sales there will be for advertisers,” he said.

Gerard Doyle, Director of Lead Galaxy, said, “I am very much looking forward to joining the board of directors at TheMoveChannel.com.

“This amalgamation between two extremely strong networks will allow existing Lead Galaxy advertisers to reach an even wider audience and attract more interest than ever in their properties.

“The consolidated brand and new technology platform can only help to improve visitor loyalty and maximise value for our advertisers,” he added.

Going forward, the joint forces of these two industry heavyweights will provide a powerful platform for launching into new and untapped markets, with a wide range of planned projects that includes multilingual portals, web services and personal finance.

The consolidated sites will be live today, Thursday February 5th, at www.themovechannel.com

The property portal boom of the early noughties was never so much feared but certainly kept an eye-on by high street estate agents all over. The dot com boom had finally spread to this sector also, and thus it came as no surprise when some of the larger players in the market joined forces to incept RightMove. It cornered the web market for UK property overnight, a position it cemented furthermore over the oncoming years.

Certainly as the decorations had been put back in the attic this time last year, RightMove began January 2008 where it had left off, top of the tree with not a bauble in sight. Whilst they did not have complete domination they most certainly did have such a sizeable market share that funding for listing their properties there was already allocated before the word ‘budget meeting’ could be raised in your average high street agency. For UK property, the online marketplace was very fragmented. Whilst it was realistically accepted that Rightmove sat atop the pile, agents still believed they needed to be on board with at least 2 other portals to further cement their online presence in the wake of competition.

This time last year paying per enquiry generated was virtually unheard of. Whilst there could be arguments as to which other web portals could claim to be 2nd or 5th etc (which I won’t go into), it’s fair to say that they all carried the same business model as RightMove  – signing up for a period of time, usually twelve months – and paying a flat monthly fee for the privilege. I was saying this time last year that the UK portals could learn a lot from the overseas sector where commission share and especially pay-per-lead were more prevalent amongst the key players. Having witnessed three years of competing companies using virtually the same tactics, the time was right for one of them to take a bold decision and announce a performance based business model. None did.

At the time I still think I was right and from an agents perspective I’m sure they would love to turn round the clock & choose such options, had they been available of course. This is hypothetically speaking though and we all know how the industry went as the year went on, don’t we? The portals were fine as they had their agents contracted to a period of time, but now the agents were in many cases paying subscription fees for reduced results.

Approximately half way through the year some of the “second tier” companies aimed to consolidate their positions by joining forces. This began with the acquisition of HotProperty in the spring by PropertyFinder and was followed shortly by the formation of the Digital Property Group in July who united the marketing arms of FindAProperty and PrimeLocation amongst a few others.

Following the traditional “August lull” there has usually been an upturn in interest as soon as September hits although this year saw the opposite as we headed towards recession. We saw a number of agents unfortunately cease to trade for a variety of reasons, but un-negotiable marketing costs will have certainly been contributing factors whilst not inadvertently the sole blame.

With this in mind there is a realistic danger that when subscriptions lapse there will be an alarming low rate of renewal retention. I’m quite sure that the portals themselves have recognised this and have contingencies in place should it be the case, but if not it could spell a tough year for them. The fact of the matter though is that the industry is only in decline, it is not dead, and those agents still winning instructions and seeking buyers need an online presence in order to attract both vendors and customers alike. With this in mind I reiterate my statement of this time last year. The time has come for performance related business models. If just one of them tried this, I think they would, quite frankly, clean up.

Today I’m going to take a look at what type of property will be a good play in 2009, with 2 main contenders: existing,completed properties or the recent investor’s darling, the off-plan..

Firstly, as a pre-text, it does depend on strategy.  If you are looking for a holiday home to use in the next few months, you will probably not be considering off-plan…so for the purposes of this piece we will assume it is for investment in 2009.

A comparison – existing, income generating properties are in many ways a lower risk play than off-plan and generally perform better in a downturn.  What is important with existing properties is that you have real-time evidence to base your decisions on: current comparable property prices, rents levels, availability of tenants, mortgage rates and terms, currency (if buying abroad), political situation, etc.  As your property is active as of now, compared to off-plan which is active in the future, you have the benefit of what judging information on what is happening now to manage your risk more appropriately..

With off-plan, it is a more speculative, higher risk type of purchase.  Off-plan is a solid enough investment in a booming market, where increases in equity are sought over rental yield.  You are however taking a leap of faith with off-plan and need to ask that many more questions.  Depending on location, such as an emerging market, there may be nothing built with no idea of valuation other than the developer’s price as a guide.  In the time between “purchasing” and “completing”, a whole set of factors will change, either in your favour or against you.   These factors include, property values, rental yields, mortgage rates and terms, final construction quality, infrastructure changes and exchange rates.  So off-plan is a higher risk play; some projects will be of great success but many others won’t.

With regard to the off-plan boom in the current climate, there is a caveat, and this applies to off-plan units that are soon to complete, or have just completed.  A number of locations round the world have suffered from over-supply of units from developers.  In several countries I have been to, many developers are renting recently completed, previously unsold, off-plan units out to generate some income.  These units are available for a snip of the advertised price when they were off-plan so, depending on your strategy and where you would like to buy, there are no doubt some excellent recently completed, or soon to be completed, “off-plan” deals.

Therefore in today’s market, for investment it is generally a better bet to go for completed existing properties, or soon to complete, “previously off-plan” properties, where the evidence to make your investment decision is real-time rather than 2 years away.

I am A Buy To Let Investor.

I know, I am sorry, I have contributed to the current crisis, made sure that many young people can no longer afford to live anywhere and also made money from banks and run down areas.

For this I can only apologise.

But, I may only have two houses in my small portfolio of UK property, but in today’s current investment orientated world, I would be labelled a Buy to Let Investor. This term should traditionally imply someone with 20 houses all over the UK and possibly the world, with a combined worth of many millions.

Isn’t that what an investor is?

Well, these days no. Whether you put some money into a small portfolio of houses or you take chances on the stocks and shares, you will be classed as an investor.

According to Wikipedia, an investor is:

“An investor is any party that makes an investment.

The term has taken on a specific meaning in finance to describe the particular types of people and companies that regularly purchase equity or debt securities for financial gain in exchange for funding an expanding company. Less frequently, the term is applied to parties who purchase real estate, currency, commodity derivatives, personal property, or other assets.”

The question has to be, where do you stop becoming someone who has saved a little bit of money in an ISA, which is an investment of sorts, to becoming an investor? I do not think I am an investor, more someone who has a couple of houses in the North, looking to make a long term capital gain on their worth, which in one sense is an investment, but on the other is just a more secure bet of putting surplus money into something that even with the doom and gloom in the media, will make some money, especially if you are taking a 5 or 10 year plan.

Investor is a word that gets applied to anybody these days, and if you were to ask most people labelled by this term, I would guess many, if not the majority, would probably not consider themselves to be an investor. The years of having to work in London, wear a suit and carry a funky leather briefcase and laptop to be classed as an investor are long gone, and now all you need is a laptop, cup of coffee and a UK Bank Account.

So what types of Investors are there?

Well, according to Wikipedia:

* Individual investors (including trusts on behalf of individuals, and umbrella companies formed for two or more to pool investment funds)
* Collectors of art, antiques, and other things of value
* Angel investors, either individually or in groups
* Venture capital funds, which serve as investment collectives on behalf of individuals, companies, pension plans, insurance reserves, or other funds.
* Investment banks
* Businesses that make investments, either directly or via a captive fund
* Investment trusts, including real estate investment trusts
* Mutual funds, hedge funds, and other funds, ownership of which may or may not be publicly traded (these funds typically pool money raised from their owner-subscribers to invest in securities)
* Sovereign wealth funds

The question I would raise is even if you own your own house, you are an investor. You are investing in the house being worth more than you paid for it and if you are on a repayment mortgage, you are looking to slowly chip away at your repayments to eventually own something that has to be considered an investment.

The walls and barriers have come down. Buy a couple of houses, you are an investor, buy some of the Discover And Invest Stamps, you are an investor, put some money into the Discover And Invest ambulance trading, you are an investor.

These days, we are all investors, for different reasons, purposes and methods yes, but deep down, everyone is an investor.

OK so the property markets are down, we all know that. However the reversal in supply/demand will never reach the point where nothing will be bought or sold at all. There are still people out there looking to buy property and accordingly sell, and there are also people looking at new development opportunities without really knowing what precautions they should take. This was brought further to my attention during the Christmas break and a conversation with a friend of my uncles due to retire this year. He himself is looking to purchase both in France and the UK and his choice of options here in blighty included off-plan new builds. His request for advice did not go ignored!

Over the last year or so I have heard some horror stories emanating from UK off-plans and have even met a few to have fallen victim to this. However on the flip side I can also bear testimony to a success story of someone who purchased on behalf of his university bound daughter. There are certainly no blueprints for dealing with developers but it’s fair to say that the more due diligence you can do the better. Many potential purchasers of property often feel they don’t know the right questions to ask to make that informed decision.  A useful analogy is taking your car in for an MOT.   Most of us don’t have the knowledge and therefore always feel anxious about stated problems and solutions.  It is always advantageous to be informed!

There are some respected businesses out there that have impressive track records & strong testimonials; but how do you differentiate them from those less scrupulous who will willingly over value and mislead? Well the following forms the basis of a first stage due diligence that I would look to do on anything under consideration. There is of course so much more that would need to be done should one wish to progress to potential purchase, but this for me serves as a way to gain confidence with a developer, or of course the complete opposite.

First and foremost I would find out about exactly who they are. Running checks on the directors individually as well as the company itself, not just on Google but also investment forums such as Singing Pig & Blagger for example, are vital. Also query every single claim in their pitch & promotional literature. If they are slow in responding at this early stage, I would consider discontinuing with them.

Furthermore with the company itself, I’d ask how long they have been in business for and how many completed projects they have under their belt, particularly recently. I’d also dig a bit more about the company’s financials in terms of turnover and current liquidity as if these are healthy then they will have no problem with providing it. If this is side-stepped or refused then I would quite frankly consider utilising the nearest exit point with no plans to return!

It’s also worth looking into the area itself and conducting some basic research on what other projects are also planned for the area, whether or not any projects are under construction and also if any have been recently completed; and if so, draw comparables between size & prices. Property web portals are a good starting point for this as they will have a selection of new builds for each given region which will go a long way to providing an idea of the state of play.

As previously mentioned there are so many more factors to delve into such as additional costs, local infrastructure, house price comparables etc, but that comes next. The above is the advice I gave and it was gratefully received. Of course this is the opinion of one person so I would welcome any comments from those reading this. What would you do or more importantly, what do you do? What have you done? How successful have you been?