14 million surge on to property portals – but why?

More people than ever are going online to search for property – despite transactions dragging along the floor.

According to comScore, an independent analyst, an extra 2.2 million property searchers went online last month, compared with the figure for May of last year.

Altogether, there were 13.9 million visitors looking for UK property.

The real estate category growth saw each of the top three portals growing their unique visitors, with the fastest growing being Digital Property Group, which produces Primelocation and FindaProperty, where monthly unique visitors rose by 42% on April. Figures from comScore give Digital 4.8 million visitors, and Zoopla 3.4 million visitors, up 25.7% on April’s traffic.

However, neither came close to Rightmove, which had 6.6 million unique visitors in May, a 16.4% increase on April.

Sheraz Dar, Digital’s marketing director, said: “All the main portals have committed to marketing in spring, so these figures provide a transparent comparison of campaign performance.

“DPG’s marketing investment is delivering dividends, outstripping its nearest competitors, and most importantly, achieving positive results for its member agents.”