UK commercial property investment websites expanding

By Steve Hays, European Real Estate Correspondent
CANNES, France, March 12 (Reuters) – British Internet property platform Propex said it has seen sharp increase in online real estate investment business, moved into profit over the past year, and expanded its presence in the retail sector.

The Property Investment Exchange (Propex)has two products: one aimed at institutional real estate investors and their communication with sales agents (www.propex.co.uk) and the second, PrimePitch (www.primepitch.com). Targeted at private investors and agents.

Propex and PrimePitch merged in July 2002 and the combined company is owned by some of Britain’s leading fund management and property companies including Prudential, Aberdeen Asset Management, British Land, Legal & General and Scottish Widows.

“One of the major developments in the last year is that the big funds now accept the system as part of their daily work,” Propex managing director Paul Marples said in an interview at the MIPIM International property fair in Cannes.

The Propex institutional investor product had sales of around 1,500 desktops in 150 organisations, compared with a 1,000 desktops in 90 organisations at the same point in 2003.

Prudential Property Investment Managers, the largest customer with about 90 screens and also the UK’s biggest property investor with around 12 billion pounds in assets under management, has made it obligatory for agents to use Propex.

Archiving, secure messaging and other market information is integrated into the product.

“Last September we started the process of making a complete information portal. Whilst it delivers property deals to desks, all of the other public information about the properties out there now comes feeding in,” Marples said.

“It’s not screen-based trading…but it is coming as close to a Reuters screen as you can get,” he said referring to the electronic news and information company.

Propex made a profit for the last financial year to March and sees a turnover of 1.5 million pounds from subscription sales over the 2004 financial year. Online activity has doubled on the websites since November and is running ahead of revenue growth.

Marples said the company hadn’t raised new money for over a year, but expected to in the next three to six months to overhaul its online platform and integrate the Shopproperty website recently acquired. The fresh financing is likely to come from venture capital sources or supporters in the property industry, rather than a stock market floatation, he added.

There are around 350,000 major retail properties in the UK and about 10 percent are available to let at anyone time, so Shopproperty is aimed at the roughly 350 retailers with specialist property departments and the estimated 4,500 specialist agents who service them.