1. Company Overview. A Place in the Sun started as a British TV show in the year 2000 on Channel 4, focusing on helping UK citizens find properties abroad (and mostly in Spain at that time). The brand has since grown significantly, and now offers a range of services including a real estate portal, magazine, live exhibitions, and online guides for buying overseas real estate.

2. Subsidiaries and Spinoffs. A Place in the Sun has expanded beyond its TV origins with several subsidiaries, including a sister website, a magazine, and live events (such as “A Place in the Sun Live” exhibitions in cities like London, Birmingham, and Manchester), where buyers and sellers can interact directly​.

Spinoffs: A Place in The Sun: Winter Sun, A Place in The Sun: Summer Sun, A Place in The Sun: Home or Away, A place in France, A Place in Greece, A Place in Spain, A Million Pound Place in The Sun, A Place in The Sun: Home or USA.

3. Reach and Audience. The website receives around 500 thousand visitors monthly (about 40% of Kyero and thinkSpain), and the events they host throughout the UK draw thousands of visitors.

The brand draws a primarily UK audience but has a broad international focus, including popular locations for British expatriates such as Spain, France, Portugal, Italy, and Florida. In addition to the TV show, their offerings include a property portal featuring around 100,000 properties, as well as in-depth country guides and articles on property buying, relocation, and real estate trends​.

The average buyer’s budget is around €150.000 to €250.000 and for this reason the leads generated tend to be below market value in Spain. The majority of geographic interest tends to be in the more southern provinces of Spain, and inland, where real estate is more affordable.

Can A Place in The Sun generate enough buyer leads for a real estate agency in Spain? The British share of the foreign buyers market in Spain continues to drop each year (around 22% in 2016 to 8% in 2024). This is an important figure to note, as the majority of their website visitors are from the UK. While other property portals in Spain like Kyero and thinkSpain with a historically UK audience have made great efforts to capture a greater European audience, A Place in The Sun have not. Their website is only in 2 languages, English and French. In addition, the website’s traffic of 500 thousand visitors monthly is divided between Cyprus, France, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, Greece, USA, Bulgaria, The Caribbean, and another 20 other countries. This means that only a percentage of the website traffic actually goes to all the various regions, towns, and cities of Spain. It is our belief that such a small amount of traffic will not be enough to generate any significant amount of leads for an estate agency in Spain. It seems as if A Place in The Sun have applied most of their attention to their Television programmes rather than their property portal.

4. Competitors. A Place in The Sun’s main competitors are thinkSpain, SpainHouses, Kyero, and various International real estate search engines including Rightmove, Properstar, LuxuryEstate, and Greenacres.

5. Advertising and Marketing. Overseas property exhibitions and services are advertised through both TV and radio, and they often give information about future events during episodes of their TV show. In addition, they use various digital publications (in the property buyers niche) to market their website, events, and services​.

In terms of live events, A Place in the Sun hosts three major property exhibitions annually in London, Birmingham, and Manchester. They also manage boutique events like the Property Showcase in Dublin and Ascot​.
These exhibitions are known to attract thousands of potential buyers looking to purchase homes in countries like Spain, France, Portugal, Italy, Cyprus, and Florida​ USA.

They also utilize Google Ad Placements, email marketing, and social media to promote their events and listings​.

Here at ImmoEdge we have been working with the major real estate property portals in Spain for more than 15 years. We understand how to get the maximum return from each portal, and how to reduce your expenses. We know which paid strategies work, and we know how to improve your lead generation. Get in touch here, or have a look at our real estate digital marketing services in Spain here.

Wide Reach and Exposure. Some real estate agencies appreciate the platform’s significant visibility among British buyers, particularly those seeking holiday homes or retirement properties in Spain.
The combination of different advertising options, including premium listings, email campaigns, and banner ads, helps agencies connect with a larger audience​.

Serious Buyer Leads. Many agents participating in A Place in the Sun’s live events report receiving leads that are serious about purchasing properties, not just casual browsers.

High Competition and Costly Premium Services. It’s most likely that you will need to pay more for premium listings to stand out due to the high saturation of agencies and low search volume. Premium services are seen as somewhat effective (depending on the area) but costly, which can be challenging for smaller agencies, and raise questions about whether the ROI is worth it.

Poor Lead Conversion. While the platform provides good exposure for some regions of Spain (particularly the southern and south-eastern coastal areas), the conversion rate from leads to actual sales can vary, depending on the region and property type. In addition, many agents are unsatisfied with the number of leads generated by the platform, not seeing it as a viable option to maintain a constant sales funnel.

Limited European Exposure. Agencies have mentioned that, compared with real estate search engines like Idealista, Kyero, thinkSpain, and Greenacres, a place in the sun is solely focused on the British market and need to do a lot more to attract mainland European buyer leads.