Particulier à Particulier (PAP), the leading brand in FSBO in France has reported a rise in prices of 0.43 percent for flats and 0.48 percent for houses being sold directly by owners over the month of August. PAP also noted that sales in August (traditionally a quiet month in France) were down 3 percent on July but were up 9 percent compared to August last year suggesting a market in healthy recovery.

Target Media Partners just announced the relaunch of its Recycler.com, and the site’s expansion U.S.-wide. Recycler.com is the online companion to a 37-year-old print free classified publication. The new national site offers advanced search features, keyword highlights, seller profiles and live user support.

“Our local free-ad model was so successful, we felt it was time to take it national, and to give buyers and sellers across the nation a better alternative to what is currently being offered in the online classified marketplace,” said Pam Johnston, Recycler.com’s COO, in the announcement. “We’ve retained Recycler.com’s local content and feel, while providing users greater flexibility with expanded search options and state-of-the-art technology.” Read the rest of this entry »

Zillow, which just nine months ago added rental listings to its real estate search site has now added another 90,000 managed-rental listings to its database through a collaboration with Apartments.com, a Classified Ventures site.

The new listings include unit details, photos, floor plans and contact information for the property managers. Read the rest of this entry »

Canadian home buyers can now start their search from the Yahoo home page, thanks to a collaboration with Zoocasa and Yahoo.  The Canadian real estate search site just announced a new application that enables 17 million Yahoo Canada visitors to look for their new home via Zoocasa search on Yahoo.ca. It’s as easy as signing into Yahoo and downloading the app.

“Our vision is for Yahoo.ca to be the best guide for Canadians for both their online and offline worlds,” said Laurie Maw, director, Business Development for Yahoo Canada, in the announcement. “The Zoocasa application is an important addition to Yahoo Canada’s current line-up of online apps that includes everything from Flickr and Facebook, to links to our Sports and Finance channels.” Read the rest of this entry »

Spir Communication, owner of leading French classifieds sites including Caradisiac, TopAnnonces.fr and Logic-Immo.com has announced a new venture: an online insurance brokerage looking to sell insurance to the visitors of its listings sites.

The venture is to be run in partnership with existing insurance brokers and the new company, due to launch next year, will be headed up by Arnaud Giraudon, currently president of the board of insurance company Suravenir.

U.K. regional newspaper group Johnston Press has returned to profit making £26.1 million in the first half of the year, compared to a £94.2 million loss for the same period in 2009.

Advertising revenues are set to continue to fall but at such an improved rate that you can almost hear the relief in the voice of CEO John Fry.  “As we move into the second half of the year,” observed Fry, “we have seen the improving trend in advertising revenues continue with total advertising in the first six weeks on a like-for-like basis only down 3.7 percent.”

This compares to a low point of 32.7 percent declines over the half year in the middle of last year’s recession.

The real bright spot of the announcements, however, is not the general trend in advertising but rather the performance of property classifieds. Despite falling job and car adverts the company’s figures show that property classifieds in the regional papers rose by an average 12.6 percent for the first half of this year.

Jordan-based property portal AqarLink has launched AqarLink Pro, a platform where professional sellers and brokers can cooperate with each other and share real estate listings.

Based in Jordan, AqarLink serves all of the Arab world.

Similar to a multiple-listing service, sellers can list their properties with a participating agent, who shares the listings with other agents in the service, who split pre-arranged commissions. Only licensed, practicing agents may join.

Launched in 2008, AqarLink.com is a free-to-post model and is supported by ads.