What housing recession? Looks like Daily Mail (LSE: DMGT) publisher DMGT is gearing up for a renewed boom in online property listings…
Just a week after buying the half of property search site Globrix that News International didn’t want, its Associated Northcliffe Digital has apparently bought another two property sites – Dothomes and Extate (Update: AND has bought only the domain names and not the businesses themselves).
They were operated by BytePlay, but EstateAgentToday says they “apparently failed to make the impact expected”. Already, the two sites have gone offline and are redirecting to, Findaproperty.com, one of the existing sites in AND’s Digital Property Group – making it seem like the acquisitions are more about buying the listings and not the services.
Despite the recession, house prices have been in growth for the last eight months, the Land Registry says. Even as the recession bit last year, Rightmove claimed its busiest ever month.
DMGT’s property and recruitment classifieds were “particularly” hit by the downturn last year. They were down 46 percent in its Northcliffe Media regional newspaper publisher.
Update: AND’s Digital Property Group CEO Mark Milner (in emailed announcement): “The primary reason behind the acquisition of these domains is to strengthen our already strong consumer reach and drive more home searchers to one of our core brands. In the past month, with the incorporation of Globrix.com, dothomes.co.uk and extate.co.uk into The Digital Property Group, we