Hi my name’s Chris. I’m based in London and work with Kate in the UK Creative Services Team.
With recent headlines being dominated by stories lamenting the current state of the UK economy and speculating on what this might mean for years to come, now seems like an appropriate opportunity to consider some of the implications that the so-called ‘credit crunch’ has been having on the UK property market – and the possible ways advertisers can take advantage of the situation.
Credit where it’s due
Perhaps a good place to start will be to look at some of the developments that have been taking place in recent months. It’s clear that there is a palpable degree of uncertainly, perhaps even turmoil, being experienced by many of the world’s leading financial institutions that has had a very real knock-on effect for some members of the adCenter community.
It was around about this time last year that the term ‘credit crunch’ made its way across the pond and since then some of the facts and figures that have been published all paint a fairly grim picture. Just this last week, a spokesperson from HSBC hinted that the next few months would be “highly challenging” for the industry, an opinion that was also expressed by the Bank of England. In fact, the “Old Lady of Threadneedle Street” went a step further and suggested that the impacts would be even more far-reaching than first thought, with businesses small and large already feeling the strain. Further still, statistics published by Halifax and Nationwide – two of the country’s leading mortgage lenders – point out that mortgage applications as well as approvals have consistently been falling month on month.
To buy, or not to buy?
So what has all this meant for the property market and how could there possibly be anything positive to come out of this?! By and large the same number of people are still interested in buying or renting properties, but are deterred by the current wider financial climate. Various financial institutions suggest that the demand for housing purchases still exists, but the now obvious difficulties in securing the finance for buying one has seen a trend in potential buyers engaging in a prolonged and more comprehensive property search to get the best possible deal on any prospective purchase.
Which is actually pretty good news because the majority of the extra time spent searching is generally taking place online!
Looking into the future... 
As the graph below shows, there has actually been an increase on property related searches across the adCenter network over the last year, with the peaks and troughs all occurring at the expected points in time. Of particular note is the traditional summer peak, which sees a considerable level of traffic and clicks for property searches. Ensuring that keywords and ads are up to date and that bids are set as early as possible will help to stay competitive at this time. This has been largely driven by a greater degree of interest in the rental market since August 2007, although keywords for property purchases and sales have only decreased marginally and still attract high levels of impressions and clicks. A large proportion of these additional impressions have come as a result of terms towards the tail being searched for more frequently. Therefore it is still good practice to place emphasis in both of these areas, paying particular attention to longer keyword strings that incorporate place names and property types. In the last year there has been a marked increase in the number of impressions being driven by such terms, so including these in a campaign will help to drive traffic in a cost effective way.
A little trick for those who are solely involved in property sales/purchases could be to ease worries about prices by focusing on service and creating a great customer experience in order to mitigate any financial worries potential buyers or sellers might be anticipating. It may be more difficult to offer advice on whether now is a good time to buy a property, but it is noteworthy that doing so is evidently still seen as a wise way of investing and as such more attention is being paid to the idea of purchasing a foreign property, with countries like Turkey, Spain and UAE proving very popular indeed. Once again, this has been partly responsible for driving growth since the worries over the UK market began to arise.
This trend has been part of the reason why click-through rates have remained stable during the ‘slump’ in the UK, with people still exhibiting an interest in property purchases and/or investments by clicking on appealing ads for foreign property. The increased use of negative keywords to filter out irrelevant searches, especially where popular location names are used, alongside dynamic text insertion are also tactics that have been used to help maintain a healthy CTR and keep the vertical competitive. All in all, despite the external factors and understandable apprehension that now exists, there is still an audience that wishes to research, view and rent an
d buy properties, with the initial port of call often originating via some form of online medium.
This is made even more evident when looking at the swathe of ever popular web-based property-related services that are becoming available. Well worth a mention is the property search engine Globrix which scours a list of UK estate agent websites and allows potential buyers or tenants to find properties that meet their exact requirements. Applications of a similar nature have also been seen appearing across social networks, helping to offer an alternative to the traditional ways of buying and renting property. In essence, it could be a valid argument to suggest that for property companies, a strong digital presence may indeed be an effective way of managing costs and maintaining a strong level of ROI versus the more traditional high street based companies.
So although it appears that the property market might continue to take a bit of a bashing for a little while yet, but if confidence in the economy can be restored then normality might not be as far away as some may fear.
Thanks for reading, hope to see you again soon!
Chris.