Google Planning UK Property Site

Online Stock Trading - Google to Launch UK Property Site

Real estate or property in the UK is very much seen as an investment and property prices are a national obsession, much more so in fact thatn the stockmarket and investing in stocks and shares, which is quite a minority activity. You must bear in mind that UK houses are the smallest in Europe (the largest are in Denmark) and yet we have amongst the highest property prices. Average wages are around £20,000 a year yet an average house costs around £350,000 in London so the property market is a right mess, yet people love it and property prices are starting to rise again allegedly. Plus of course banks don't like giving mortgages anymore as they prefer to keep all that money we have given them to pay themselves bonuses. Still what's all this got to do with Google and their impending foray into the UK property market ? Nothing.

According to reports in the UK press, Google is to launch an online property site in early 2010. At the moment in the UK 90% of properties for sale are listed with property portal Rightmove.co.uk, this has been bad news for newspapers of course as they saw their property ads shrink by around 60% last year. It now appears that Rightmove might have to suffer the same fate is the newspapers.

Rightmove currently charges estate agents on average £325 ($500) a month to list properties, the Google service will apparently be free, to start with at least.

Estate agents said they will welcome the site (hardly surprising really if they can advertise their properties for free).

For consumers,it sounds like a great idea, but maybe we should all spare a thought for Rightmove - hmmmm. Maybe estate agents will reduce their fees ! Maybe bankers will refuse to accept their unearned bonuses and hand all the money over to the worst off of their customers/tax payers owners that they like to lecture about good financing ? Or maybe they will buy a few houses with their millions and give them away to the homeless !(It's late and I'm delirious.)

Google's site will allow you to type in the area and a map will appear with balloons above listed properties.

Gogole already has an Australian property site so it must know what it's doing, but so far the Australian property market hasn't suffered overly.

Google has said : “We will not comment.”
What would be nice would be a mortgage site that offers 0% mortgages a bit like 0% credit cards that you can shift every 9 months !
Google has just published its earnings for 2009 - they were stronger than expected - Google earnings

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