Industry Interview: Pajani Singah from Properties For London.
What made you decide to launch a property portal for London?
As a tech investor I always try to see how to add value and how is the service going to complement existing offers.
Propertiesforlondon has been around for 10 years but was originally mostly a news website. It was a natural evolution to start offering agents the facility to list. So we have been working with the developers to build something internally for the past year.
With the many recent new portals launched including OnTheMarket and Houser, do you think there is a big gap in the market to fill for dedicated property portals?
I actually think that as we are only London Focused and only allow independent agents to list , we can add value to the agents online marketing spend , brand image, reputation when they are seeking to maximise their advertising spend. £50 spent online is better than in print and have a bigger audience reach! That’s the value we are trying to bring.
I also want to point out that many other portals try and compete with these two portals without much success as they haven’t got the technology and marketing budget. Compare to what PFL charge agents to other portals it is relatively cheap .Our SEO team also concentrate on building the brand and the agents outside of the UK in Markets like South East Asia Some of these portals, does not come to mind straight away when looking for a place to rent or buy. We are part of the ‘forlondon.co.uk’ brand of websites and the whole ecosystem allows us link to all the sites we own.
Are you exempt from OnTheMarket’s ‘one other property portal rule’?
No, I haven’t come across this, would like to get involved as we would be happy to partner to add value to the agents.
Will you launch out across London is things prove successful?
The portal is only London focused, we are working to sign new agents in all areas but want to be an organic growth not through aggressive marketing calls.
How important is social media to your marketing plans?
Very! As the audience nowadays is tech Savvy
What are your thoughts towards our concept, Estate Agent Networking?
Great Concept , I think it is important for players of the industry to network and try and protect the reputation of the industry by cooperating and kicking out bad practice.
PropertiesForLondon
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