While estates agents across the UK and Ireland take stock, amid the continuing industry slump, it seems the virtual real estate world is still thriving, with the announcement that a market leader has purchased its largest rival.

Owners of the property site Daft.ie announced yesterday that it had bought direct competitor Property.ie, although figures of the takeover have not been made public.

Property.ie, launched in 1998, is Ireland's longest running property website. Since the takeover the site's design has been given a facelift and its pages now incorporate Web 2.0 functionality.

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Listings on the site encompass 90% of Irish properties on the market.

Daft media, who will now run both sites independently, plans to increase traffic to Property.ie through "significant investment".

Daft's Chief Operating Officer, Odhran Ginnity, told Silicon Republic: "Having already cemented the No 1 position in the marketplace with Daft.ie, we aim to use this new title to compete more aggressively with the No 2 and 3 players in the market."

All properties now be listed on both sites, for the cost of one subscription, which Daft believes will "result in more leads at no extra cost."

The latest audited report from ABC, for April 2008, shows traffic of 75 million page impressions and 974,595 unique users per month on Daft.ie.

(PR/JM)