If 2008 was the year of the new challengers on the Swedish property classified market, 2009 could be the year of the elephants.

Swedish number one property site Hemnet.se has decided to give the site a new look. Launch for this Hemnet Web 2.0 is planned for June 1. Better now than never – the old site has been around for ten years and users have been calling for modernization and more usability for quite a while.

Hemnet, owned by the three agents’ associations, together with newspapers DN and Göteborgsposten, has a powerful position. The site counts more than one million unique visitors per week and has been the natural place for the Swedes to search for a property.

The new CEO Carl-Henrik Borg, who came to Hemnet in January this year, has been assigned the challenge to rejuvenate Hemnet. Borg previously worked with search engine optimization and he has realized that the site needs changes. Last year the property sites Booli, Bospindeln and Boligan entered the market with modern design and new functionalities. Compared to earlier chairman Lars Kilander, Borg doesn’t seem to have problems with this. Instead he told Swedish newspaper DN that these players can inspire Hemnet’s technicians with their innovations.

The ambition is to make Hemnet a modern site with blogs, social communication services etc. Just as on the old site, private classifieds will not be allowed. The question about including rental apartments like Alma Media’s competitor Bovision, seems to be open.

At the same time, Bovision has decided not to be left behind. By the end of March, the site started to index all ads from agents and private landlords as well as ads for rental properties. The site has thus become the largest property site in Sweden in terms of units listed. It is still far behind Hemnet when it comes to unique visitors, but aims at creating more traffic and more interest among the users thanks to the increased number of ads.