FindaProperty.com, prior to a 2012 merger with

Zoopla ZPG Ltd. is a British real estate company based in London, England, owned by Silver Lake Partners. Its brands include the property website Zoopla, price comparison service Uswitch, finance comparison website Money.co.uk, personal finance content ...

, was a commercial sales and lettings listings website for the UK consumer residential housing market. It had offices in

London London is the capital and largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a majo ...

and

Brighton Brighton () is a seaside resort and one of the two main areas of the City of Brighton and Hove in the county of East Sussex, England. It is located south of London. Archaeological evidence of settlement in the area dates back to the Bronze A ...

and listed approximately a million properties uploaded by

estate agents An estate agent is a person or business that arranges the selling, renting, or management of properties and other buildings. An agent that specialises in renting is often called a letting or management agent. Estate agents are mainly engaged i ...

for a monthly fee. In April 2012 the

Office of Fair Trading The Office of Fair Trading (OFT) was a non-ministerial government department of the United Kingdom, established by the Fair Trading Act 1973, which enforced both consumer protection and competition law, acting as the United Kingdom's economic ...

(OFT) agreed a merger between findaproperty.com and Zoopla. Since the merger the findaproperty.com brand was deprecated and the findaproperty.com domain now points to the Zoopla website.

The portal was started in 1997 by businessman and entrepreneur Andrew Pendery who had experience of the US

property Property is a system of rights that gives people legal control of valuable things, and also refers to the valuable things themselves. Depending on the nature of the property, an owner of property may have the right to consume, alter, share, r ...

market and saw a gap in the UK one for an online listings portal. He began the site in his London bedroom and with the help of salesman Ferenc Schustek, achieved initial growth. He then moved the business to Brighton at offices in West Street and later, Dyke Road. The site's first listings were in London and

Surrey Surrey () is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in South East England, bordering Greater London to the south west. Surrey has a large rural area, and several significant urban areas which form part of the Greater London Built-up Area. ...

, the UK's busiest property markets and 'hot-spots' for high house prices.

History

While the business was in Brighton Pendery, with editor Mike O'Flynn and

information technology Information technology (IT) is the use of computers to create, process, store, retrieve, and exchange all kinds of data . and information. IT forms part of information and communications technology (ICT). An information technology system (I ...

specialist Simon D'Urso, expanded the business significantly, enough to attract venture capital money. In early 2004 businessmen Neil Anderson along with Simon D'Urso bought Pendery out for £2.8 million, financed by Barclays Ventures, who put David Garrett - who later went on to work for Figleaves.com - into the business to oversee its investment. In November 2004 the site was sold to

Associated Newspapers DMG Media (stylised in lowercase) is an intermediate holding company for Associated Newspapers, Northcliffe Media, Harmsworth Printing, Harmsworth Media and other subsidiaries of Daily Mail and General Trust. It is based at Northcliffe House in ...

, the publisher of The Daily Mail, The Mail on Sunday and Metro for £8 million. In 2008 parent group the

Daily Mail and General Trust Daily Mail and General Trust (DMGT) is a British multinational media company, the owner of the ''Daily Mail'' and several other titles. The 4th Viscount Rothermere is the chairman and controlling shareholder of the company. The head office is ...

(DMGT) set up The Digital Property Group (through DMGT subsidiary A&N Media) to which it added Primelocation.com in 2006 for £48 million and

Globrix Globrix was a UK real estate search engine that was launched in January 2008. It was launched as a joint venture with News International, publishers of ''The Sunday Times'', '' The Sun'', ''The Times'', ''The News of the World'' and ''Thelondonpape ...

in 2009 for £7 million. FindaProperty.com increased the number of properties it lists significantly since being sold to DMGT from some 75,000 in early 2004 to nearly 800,000 in November 2010. Functionality additions to the site outside its property search engine for sales, rental, auction and investment properties included being the launch partner for Google Street View UK (March 2009) and the first property website in the UK to integrate Street View into property details and area information pages. An iPhone App with augmented reality was created with the launch of a TV advertising campaign starring actor Ross Green, who plays a variety of characters rapping about property. In late 2011 a proposed merger between FindaProperty.com's parent company the Digital Property Group and rival Zoopla.com was announced, subject to approval from the relevant business competition authorities in the UK. This merger was later agreed by the OFT.

References

{{Reflist, refs= Estate Agent Today
/ref> The Independent

/ref> The Guardian
DMGT acquires 50% stake in Globrix
/ref> Thisisscunthorpe

/ref> NewMediaAge
Findaproperty launches augmented reality iPhone app

External links

FindaProperty HomepageFindaProperty
on

Twitter Twitter is an online social media and social networking service owned and operated by American company Twitter, Inc., on which users post and interact with 280-character-long messages known as "tweets". Registered users can post, like, and ...

Property companies based in London Real estate companies established in 1997 British real estate websites

History

See also

References

External links