Fish4homes offers estate agents 20 per cent share

It’s nice to know that someone still believes in dot-com paper. Fish4homes is offering up to 20 per cent of its share capital to estate agents which place their properties on its house-hunting website.

The site – one of several Fish4 directories owned by a consortium of national and regional newspapers – hopes this financial incentive will build its database more quickly than those of its rivals in what is already a crowded market.

Fish4homes claims 180,000 visits each month (it doesn’t say if these are “unique” visits, which would be more impressive) and offers details on 110,000 homes. This second figure is equivalent to a quarter of all UK residential properties for sale. Fish4homes positions itself as a completely independent operator, without any ties to mortgage providers or other financial organisations. The share offer also applies to the estate agents already using Fish4homes. It will be open to any agents who sign up before the end of May.

“We are committed to working in partnership with estate agents,” says Fish4 chief executive Jonathan Turpin. “This share offering will give them a substantial share in the value of the business being created.”

The Fish4 we sites also include Fish4cars and Fish4jobs. They were set up by Northcliffe Newspapers Group, Newsquest Media Group, Trinity Mirror, Guardian Media Group Regional Newspapers, Regional Independent Media and Bristol United Press.

Fish4.co.uk also acts as a portal to a network of 104 regional sites featuring news, sport and local information.

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