Daft.ie

Daft Blog

  • Daft.ie Launches Property Tax Calculator

    This week we launched our own Property Tax Calculator. The Daft.ie calculator is a simple tool that calculates property value based on location, number of bedrooms and bathrooms, and whether the property has a garden or not.

    It allows you to input more information than the official Revenue.ie calculator. We believe this makes it a good alternative for estimating the value of your home.

    Read More »

  • 2013 Daft.ie Consumer Sentiment Survey launched

    Today we release the results of the 2013 Daft.ie Consumer Sentiment Survey.  The survey is the 2nd compiled and gives us valuable insight into the market's perceptions and intentions and how these have trended over the past year.

    Some of the key findings from this year's survey include;

    • An 8% increase of people intend to buy this year

    Intention to buy

    • A majority of respondents (59%) now believe that national prices reflect good value

    Value Perception

    • The price that respondents expect to pay for their property is now on average €229K, down 6% from last year.  This also represents a drop in the ratio of price expectation to household income, from 3.8 last year to 3.4 this year.

    Intention Property Price

    The survey also takes a detailed look at the main factors for people deferring purchasing a property, which types of properties are most sought and where people believe property prices will move in the next 12 months and 5 years.

    The full report can be accessed here 2013_Daft_Consumer_Sentiment_Survey.pdf

  • Daft.ie on TV!

    We’re really excited to be able to share with you a preview of our very first Daft.ie TV commercial!

    The ad goes to air Wednesday and will be screened across RTÉ, TV3, Setanta and the Sky Media channels.

    The ad focuses on the different stages of life where people rely on Daft.ie to help them make their next move.   It’s these moments of transition and change that are such significant life experiences, and it’s in these exact moments that we at Daft.ie are proudest to be able to help our users on their journeys.

    'Stages of life'

    Still from Daft.ie's "Stages of Life" campaign

    The ad was made with the team from Tiny Ark and we had great fun filming across multiple locations over a weekend.  We’ve put together a ‘behind the scenes’ video to give you an insight into how it came together.

    One of the things we’re most excited about with the ad is that it features one of our very own colleagues Canci Song who is the singer/songwriter of the ad's soundtrack.  She has been working with Daft.ie for over a year and her song "I Live Here" was the perfect accompaniment to the story.  Listen to the full song here.  It's also available for purchase in the iTunes store.

    We hope you enjoy the commercial and we look forward to hearing your thoughts!

  • Daft.ie's record new audience figures

    We are thrilled to announce the results of the latest report from online measurement company ABC, which shows that the Daft.ie audience has grown to an incredible 1.9 million monthly unique browsers.

    This not only makes us the biggest property website in Ireland by far, but also one of the most popular Irish sites.

    ABC are independent auditors who measure the audiences of Ireland's largest sites. Their report was taken from September 2011 data and a further breakdown of the report can be found here.

    Along with the 1.9 million monthly unique browsers who visit the site, the report shows that Daft.ie also publishes a staggering 137 million page impressions per month.

    The result is a great achievement for the team here at Daft.ie who work tirelessly to produce an easy to use site that is full of premium, up to date content.

  • Daft.ie release inaugural "Consumer Attitudes Survey"

    Today we released the results of our inaugural "Consumer Attitudes Survey" of over 2,000 people.
    It is the first survey we have run which measures consumer's perceptions of the property market and their purchasing intentions.

    Some of the key findings include;

    • Availability of mortgage credit is considered the most important factor affecting house prices this year.

      What are the three most important factors..
    • 38% of respondents intend to purchase a property in 2012

      Do you wish to buy a property in the future?
    • 64% of people do not think current prices reflect good value in their region

      Do current prices reflect good value for buyers?

    The launch of the inaugural Daft.ie Consumers Attitude Survey gives us a deep insight into our consumers' perceptions of the state of the property market both nationally and locally, and it also gives us an indication of people's intention to participate within the property market. We believe these on-going surveys will act as an important indicator for measuring consumer sentiment.

    The results of the survey are available from
    http://www.daft.ie/research/2012_Consumer_Attitudes_Survey.pdf

  • New Jobs section on Daft.ie, powered by Adverts.ie!

    Daft.ie has teamed up with Adverts.ie to give its users access to more than 1,500 jobs, directly posted by employers.

    More than 400 companies have listed their jobs on Adverts.ie so far, including Paddy PowerApple, and Vodafone.

    Adverts search

    This cooperation between Daft and Adverts brings great news to all employers already posting on the site as their jobs will be now be viewed by more than 4.5 million unique browsers every month.We are offering free trials to all employers for a limited time only.

    Please contact Nicola@adverts.ie to register an account today!

    For those of you who are looking for a job, best of luck with your job search!

  • Daft has its busiest day to date

    Happy New Year, I hope everyone had a good Christmas!

    Every January at Daft we always see a big spike in traffic to our site and yesterday was no exception.

    According to Google Analytics, yesterday (3rd January 2012) we experienced our busiest day on Daft to date. We delivered more than 7 million page impression to over 180,000 visitors. Looking at our server logs, at peak we were handling over 620 requests a second.

    What’s even more interesting is that over 1.6 million of these pages (1,639,117 to be precise) were delivered to visitors using a mobile device - the Daft iPhone App delivered 904,448 impressions alone!

    Just to put that in comparison, back in 2005 we issued a press release about our busiest day to date. Back then delivering 500,000 page impressions to 16,000 visitors was considered a busy day!

    Another random interesting traffic stat for the day: Daft now has more iPad users than IE6 users!

    Ciarán
    @ciaranmaher

    Oh and we're hiring..

  • A fresh look at property - redesigning Daft

    Following the redesign of our property details page earlier this year, we are now very happy to reveal a new look for our homepage, search forms and search results pages!

    As with our recent redesign of our property details page, one of our main aims here was to achieve a more modern look and feel, while continuing to highlight our most important and popular features.

    Homepage

    Our homepage now has a neater, fresher look. We've made a few subtle changes, which we feel gives the page a cleaner look, allowing you to more easily focus on the useful information on the page.

    Daft Homepage

    Read More »

  • We have redesigned our property details page!

    We have launched our new redesigned property details page across the site.

    A lot has changed! Aesthetically, it looks fresher with a cleaner layout. Our Developers have been working feverishly over the last few months to achieve a different, functional, contemporary look.

    Here is a snapshot of improvements.

    The first thing you notice is that the property photographs take centre stage on the page. The first image is larger with the introduction of thumbnails beneath. You can take a look inside the property and see if it's the one for you. So, remember photographs are of utmost importance!

    We have made the ‘Contact Advertiser’ details more visible to the right of the photographs. There is also a text box to email the Advertiser.

    Also made more visible are functions 'Save Ad', 'Share with Friends', 'Print this Page' and 'Report this Ad'

    For the many tweeters among us- we have made it more visible on the top right hand side to tweet and share the ad on Facebook

    The introduction of tabs has made it easier to evaluate the property in one fowl swoop. In the property overview tab, you can get the key details of the property at a quick glance and see where it's located. If you want to go in to more detail on the property, clicking "Show more information" will show you all of the description which the advertiser has shared, which could be anything from details of the local area right down to the measurements of the en-suite bathroom! Maneuvering across, there is Map, Street View and Other Properties in the Area. Always a handy feature if the property in question is not suitable.

    We hope this makes life easier for you and you find our new design easier on the eye!

    As always, we welcome all feedback!

  • We're Hiring.. think: PHP, Node.js, MongoDB, Linux, EC2, jQuery, Nginx, MySQL, Solr, Git

    Title grabbed your attention? Then come work code with us..

    We are always on the look out for good talent to join the Distilled Media development team to work on the next generation of Boards, The Journal, BoardsDeals, Daft and Adverts products and services.

    We have a number of job opportunities open from graduate to senior level positions.

    Ask yourself the following questions?

    - Do you want to code for the busiest websites in Ireland?
    - Ask the person beside you if they've used boards.ie, thejournal.iedaft.ie, adverts.ie or boardsdeals.ie?
    - Would you like to work with the latest set of technologies in Ireland's fastest growing technology company?
    - Are you a believer in big ideas and looking to work at a company that can really make a difference?
    - Does it excite you that your code is used by 100,000's of people within seconds of being deployed?
    - Want to work in a modern office in the centre of Dublin using the best of tools?
    - Do you find yourself playing with web APIs and building web apps in your spare time?
    - Do you like developing to screen sizes of 480x320, want to build iOS apps or Android apps?

    We have a very high standard on our engineering team and are looking for smart, passionate developers. The role is an extremely rewarding one for the right candidate!

    Read More »