Highlights §
- t is the first portal dedicated enCrely to land for energy projects. There are several companies in Europe looking for land to install renewal energy acCviCes. Companies spend €6B on looking for these lands. It is not easy to get a cheap assessment of the land. There is a big market entry. There is no transparency.
Their soluCon blends Geospace analysis, AI and a marketplace feature. Therefore, they can provide a good indicaCon about the viability of any lot of land for a potenCal renewable energy project. The company received funding from the ESA. The planorm is in an app but can be integrated with property portal (View Highlight)
- Pipeimob, a TRM (TransacCon RelaConship Management) planorm, provide banking and contract management services for Real Estate brokers as CRMs do not usually provide them. Two of the partners founding Pepeimob have a family brokerage and they wanted to use a sodware soluCon to monitor the commercial acCvity, but the soluCons available in the market did not work well. They meet and decide to build the soluCon the need, that is Pepeimob. (View Highlight)
- 70% of Spanish land is unoccupied. Orygen wants to find a use for the land. It finds a sustainable and producCve soluCon for unused lands, always focused on carbon absorpCon. Developers, agricultural companies… can work with them. It is tedious to understand the regulaCons and knowing the details of the lands. With their technology, they limit the land and examinate, understanding the technical and legal factor. They define the acCvity for the land, what drives to an increase in the land value. (View Highlight)
- Run by two AI experts and born in 2021, they are currently working with idealista. Using AI to create the opCmal use of images, they state that there is no strong competence in their field as the tech-related entry barriers are high. (View Highlight)
- With AutoAd they rate the different photos and automaCcally organize the order of the photos to make a lisCng more appealing. AutoAd has been tested by leading Spanish portals, services, and agencies.
Autolist is similar logic than AutoAd, but aimed for portals use. It also provides an algorithm to posiCon the most appealing properCes in the best places, providing a bePer user experience and service to users. With Autolist, quality of the photos is also improved. (View Highlight)
- Sweden has a stable, efficient, and favorable property market. Their rental market is dysfuncConal, not working properly, so people normally buy for living and no for investment. In Sweden you are not allowed to buy an apartment to rent immediately, then the rental market is really complex and there is almost no business there, so that is why they not work in this area. There are less presence of investors and speculaCon. They have a seller-paid model where agents are partners and reseller the service to property owners. It is very unique in the industry, only Hemnet in Sweden and REA in Australia are the big portals with this business mode (View Highlight)
- They created a win-win proposiCon for sellers. Francesca is sure that sellers are more willing to pay than agents, as they are the ones gevng the complete financial result when the property is sold. In Sweden the Cme to sell a property is reduced, with 30-40 days.
The next move is introducing segmented pricing. They want to capture the opCmal willingness to pay in each transacCon to maximize revenue. They want to match the seller and the price of the property on this moment. (View Highlight)
- With this, they were able to broaden the pricing range of their products and now Hemnet is more able to extract value from pricing. (View Highlight)
- hey use the concept of ARPL “Average Revenue per LisCng” (like ARPU). In their analysis, they found that REA is able to capture 0,35-0,4% value of the lisCng, while Hemnet only 0,1%. (View Highlight)
- Ait recognize that inside AVIV Group there are not enough capabiliCes to build everything themselves. Therefore, they decided to open their planorm to third party providers through APIs to integrate their services and complement the complete offer of their pornolio. Later, the value created and moneCzed is shared through revenue sharing schemes. (View Highlight)
- oStar started in the US with the non-residenCal real estate business; they have the leader portal of buying a selling farms, land, and small business in the US. They firstly decided to move further inside commercial real estate and, in a second phase, entering on the tradiConal real estate, like residenCal. CoStar tried to acquire the 2nd biggest RE portal in the US, but as the price requested was too high, they opted for acquiring, two years ago, the 5th and boosCng its growth. Now Homes.com has become the second portal, ahead of realtor.com and Redfin, and their will try to become the first in the future, although Zillow is sCll far from them. Andy claims to have a 129% YoY growth in Homes.com and that the investment in SEM is so big that Google is lending SEO engineers to improve their website. (View Highlight)
- CoStar companies in Europe are smaller than in the US, however they want to grow exponenCally. Their objecCve is digitalizing real estate, in the US and Europe. They are looking for market opportuniCes in Europe. They want to become leader in residenCal in the US before finishing their biggest investments in Europe. (View Highlight)
- Andy says that a consolidaCon process will start in Europe. As there are common players working in different markets as Google, Facebook or even MaPerport, something similar will happen with portals. He believes that there are undervalued and overvalued companies in Europe, with a big change going on in the next 5 years. (View Highlight)
- They are the leading commercial portal in the UK. They are interested on all the markets. A dramaCc consolidaCon in Europe will take place, as it is hard to compete. In the US they had several regional players, that today are consolidated on 4. Technology is quite similar across markets, if business model can be adjusted to each country, they can succeed. There are more similariCes than differences according to him. In addiCon, there are currently strong crossboarder traffic and scale synergies. (View Highlight)
- Zoopla can be something interesCng for M&A, as Andy admits, he prefers them to Rightmove as they are more innovaCve while Rightmove has been focused mainly on moneCzaCon, having high margins, but being overvalued as their mulCplies should not be as high. Andy says that in Europe PE funds are doubling or tripling the value by selling it between them every four years, (View Highlight)
- Andy explains that in the B2C market create trust across consumers is key. They normally perceive the leader as trustworthy and safe, that is why brand is so strong in these cases. CoStar look portals as two parts, the two-sided business, and the data business, that has its own value. They are looking for number 1, 2, 3 or 4 in the market. They need to scale up and want to acquire portals as they are good on moneCzing data capabiliCes and improve SEO results. (View Highlight)
- CoStar management team integrates leaders from the acquired companies, from 50 people in management team, around 10 comes from acquired companies.
Office building are becoming homes, there are strong connecCons between both markets and a company can be successful in both if can understand it well and act rapidly. (View Highlight)
- Jaroslaw, who was the CEO of Morizon, states that they were compeCng with another portal for the second posiCon in Poland and they decided to merge with the other challenger, Gratka, to create a strong number two in Poland, under the umbrella of Axel Springer, with ability to moneCze. They shided customers from both portals to a single package (like Pack Max), combining prices by 1,8 so there were a strong increase in prices while customers had a significant discount. They introduced this combined pack with a GBB pricing scheme. (View Highlight)
- Developers are a side part of the business, Morizon-Gratka is the number three in the country in this market, so they cannot moneCze as well, (only 2% of their revenue comes from ND). Therefore, the investment on technology and resources is not as strong. He believes that the tradiConal model, not focused on the lead, is not as good for developers. When talking about moving closer to transacCon, Jaroslaw emphasizes the different in the model and in the Cming. With leads you get the revenue immediately, with the transacCon you need to wait Cll the end of the process, what is challenging and a game changer for portal business mind. (View Highlight)
- hey also entered on mortgage and insurance products. In gross revenues the percentage is bigger. If the broker gets the lead himself, he can get a 20% of the commission and if he also provides the lead can reach the 50% (View Highlight)
- PropTexx is a venture backed-start up in San Francisco, Singapore and Toronto that started offering manual photo ediCng services exclusively to real estate professionals. Today, they provide back-end digital soluCons to opCmize the content with Computer Vision and they switched their operaCons on AI to be more scalable, firstly with Deep Learning and now with immersive and customizable viewing using GeneraCve AI (View Highlight)
- Josh compares virtual staging with generaCve AI. Virtual staging is a manual process with a cost of $16 per image, with some hours of work. Cost with AI is lower than a cent and Cming is immediate. With AI it is east to change wall colors, materials of a kitchen or a bathroom, furniture, decoraCon (View Highlight)
- Houseful is the parent company of the portal Zoopla and other companies such as the CRMs Alto or Jupix. Zoopla is the second property portal in the UK, being a relevant desCnaCon for both, home finders and homeowners. Homeowners need to understand the value of their property. Houseful is about building the connecCons. They help people to find their next home and connect with the proper agent to get it. (View Highlight)
- Some people know exactly where to live and loke for a property in this specific place. Other people have a city where they want to live and perhaps some requirements like closeness to good schools, while there are people thinking only about the region, with a range 100km flexibility, a trend increased now due to remote working. (View Highlight)
- When talking about what is important to find a new area to live the first thing is to be close to green areas. They have 3x conversion on travel Cme vs normal home page. (View Highlight)
- Ben lives in Peckham, 1h drive away from office. The example here is showing what is 10km or 1h drive away from London Bridge staCon, so they are providing more opportuniCes and helping clients to find new suitable areas for their homes. Therefore, Ben recommends to embed travel Cme in every search and personalize every journey with it creaCng a unique Single Consumer Profile unifying his data and generaCng insights. (View Highlight)
- Zoopla, together with TravelTIme, is also providing users with informaCon about neighborhoods, about its traffic, points of interest, services, demographic informaCon… Chris starts talking about the progression of locaCon search, as it can improve the conversion of users visiCng a portal, as they can reach more opportuniCes fulfilling their life needs. (View Highlight)
- BreP states that a common broker or agent is using up to 9 different technology providers, a huge number compared with their size and business volume. He believes that there is sCll room to digiClize brokers and agents’ work, as they perform several manual acCviCes with the potenCal of being automaCzed. In conclusion, they believe there is sCll unlock value to provide to the agents. (View Highlight)
- Lukas starts with a monopoly analogy, staCng that if you can only see a quarter of the board, you have liPle possibiliCes to win. You are not able idenCfy opportuniCes beyond your short sight. Most of business players are only seen a part of the board, while a small part is using data properly to maximize visibility of the board.
ProperBird soluCons can help portals to overcome this obstacle. For example, Immowelt idenCfies its exclusive lisCngs, that are the ones giving more value, and highlights them in the planorm, taking advantage of its own content. Another success story is Otodom, a Polish planorm. Otodom discovered thanks to ProperBird tool that agents were compeCng for the same property, generaCng revenue opportuniCes of upselling to agents. They work also with Immobiliare and Immovelt. (View Highlight)
- Lukas admits that they crawl in real Cme the real estate planorms. He admits that today everybody scraps everybody. He has no fear of anC-scraper blocks, as they learn how to bypass them easily and in liPle Cme. (View Highlight)
- Another soluCon they have is a kind of Dedup that deduplicates and cleans data on property and agents across different portals and RE websites. Lukas offered it to as, although our Dedup and data products already match more or less the funcConaliCes of his product pornolio. (View Highlight)
- , Branislava talks about inspiring and moCvaCng your team. When starCng from the boPom, clients are always going to value more the leader or main challengers than you, so your salespeople need to be prepared to counteract and build up the brand. They should convey that your challenger portal is providing innovaCon and real value to the market, and that they are leaders in that way. When you are a challenger portal you cannot be defensive, while leaders can wait and defense. You need to be more aggressive and aPack unexpectedly. (View Highlight)
- Inspira realized that Belgrade was the leader’s basCon and cannot be taken easily, so they decided to take the rest of Serbian areas to grow income, become more financially stable, form a mature team, and test the product to improve it. They did so and become leaders, entering later in Belgrade from a stronger posiCon. (View Highlight)
- One of the problems for a challenger when they shake the market is that this new situaCon invites new firms to join the market and to become compeCtors or force incumbents to react, innovate and be mor reacCve. (View Highlight)
New highlights added October 23, 2023 at 1:04 PM §
- Edmund says it is just difficult for users and agents to keep up with the informaCon in your own market, as the number of communicaCons shared by idealista of Fotocasa is overwhelming enough. There is an inflaCon of informaCon in the market. (View Highlight)
- He first wants to talk about what a marketplace is and what a portal is. 2023 has been the year of AI announcements. According to Edmund, portals should be more focused on fixing and taking advantage of metadata before entering deeper in AI and natural language search (View Highlight)
- There are diverse strategies depending on portals. For instance, Rightmove is focused on moneCzing as much as possible their current model, relying just on their core competencies. Zillow and Realtor are going closer to the transacCon with commission on buyer and seller leads, while Scout24 prefers a subscripCon model tailored to each client. Some portals, like InfoCasas are even parCcipaCng directly on transacCons. (View Highlight)
- onas was previously the CEO of Zimmo.be a real estate portal in Belgium. They present a soluCon that is like a virtual visit video adapted to social media, prepared for mobile visualizaCon. It is fast to be consumer quickly while showing the most important parts of the house. It provides a transparent and easy to consume experience. 89% of their clients use these videos for social media. (View Highlight)
- They are about borderless mortgages. They found that cross-border mortgages are broken. They had experience in cross-border payments as the two co-founders worked on Wise. The problem of cross-border mortgages is that we are talking about unfamiliar markets.
They have a planorm with buyers and banks where customer receive quick replies. They have an AI enables underwriCng planorm. They want to enable real estate agencies to enter (View Highlight)
- He is an ex-Uber. One of the main painpoints for real estate agents is market fragmentaCon. They want to simplify the user experience on real estate portals. They want to consolidate buyers and seller needs, integraCng chat GPT, in one unique app, with an appearance of a social app.
For professionals they consolidate the portal lisCngs management, with access to virtual tour sodware. They are launching white-label soluCons too. (View Highlight)
- Their client acquisiCon funnel is short, with clients choosing the plan, registering, start the publicaCon and later buying addiConal products through the app.
Their objecCves is the creaCon of a new category of Property Portals, as they produce the content their lisCng will have a good quality and will be appealing to users. (View Highlight)
- The market situaCon of the portals in each country has not seen significaCve change in the last 10-15 years. Revenue models remain similar, the way of searching of users has not varied notably and market leaders are oden the same as Rightmove in the UK, Scout24 in Germany and idealista in Spain. We have had a Cme of relaCve stability. (View Highlight)
- ConfronCng the leader has been difficult during these years, so challengers have oden looked to differenCate or offering different products. Zoopla is a great example when a portal focused on different business as challenging the leader is difficult. (View Highlight)
- nobody guarantees the same stability in the next decade. The next prime consumers of our product are a new generaCon with different needs, moCvaCons, and expectaCons. Millennials and Gen Z will be the main buyers shortly. As they digital naCves, consumers soon will demand and use have more opCons to find lisCngs beyond portals, like social media, agencies sites, MLS… (View Highlight)
- There are four ways for portals to grow. - Business as usual: focused on moneCzing bePer by adding more visibility products, acquiring new traffic, and increasing prices.
- Ver2cal integra2on: moving closer to the transacCon with transacCons and mortgages, or closer to the agents needs acquiring or building CRMs.
- Consolidate: purchase compeCtors to get a greater market share reducing redundancies and increasing prices. (View Highlight)
- Deliver Greater to Users: improve the service provided to your users, as they like the portal more and it fulfil bePer their needs. According to Simor, this is the winner choice, so portals should bet on this. (View Highlight)
- Simon, recommends portals to move from “search” to “tell” following an evoluCon path. Search involves a more Cme and energy-consuming exercise of users. (View Highlight)
- The more you go from led to right, the most relevant and trustworthy you become and the bePer and more qualified will be the leads you receive. A same search done by 100 people is a unique search, but 100 hundred different needs and desires. (View Highlight)
- Onehome is using an image led search. Today, AI can be used to create generic descripCons following a prompt. However, in the near future AI will also being able to generate good descripCons with high quality data just looking on the photos and describing.
Discover opens opportuniCes to show users something they may not be aware of, but it is something that can fulfil potenCally their needs. That is why Travel Time provides the opportunity to seekers to look for an addiConal place that can fulfil their needs (close to services, schools, work…). (View Highlight)
- PropertyMate is a property portal owned by agents, it is industry owner and industry driven. Their model provided them equity not only related with the financial investment, also with the content commitments made by agents. (View Highlight)
- Steve says that searching by neighborhood or postcode will no longer be common; this is a pre- Covid mindset. In Australia, most people have moved within a range of 9km from their previous home, in the last 12 months, because people want to be familiar with their physical environments. We are an “habit animal”. (View Highlight)
- They propose a Cnder style portal, where with a swipe to led or right people can choose and save the opCons they like. Steve admits this is an alternaCve way, without staCng that this will replace completely old-fashioned search. They also provided a voice assistant to make the search experience even more hassle-free. In addiCon, they provide social media boosts for elite lisCngs. (View Highlight)
- PropertyMate accept off-market lisCngs, allowing owners to upload their houses before trying to sale them, giving the opportunity to agencies to get mandates before the property is already in the market (View Highlight)
- Davor stated that the best use of the technology to boost innovaCon is just applying technology in-house. According to him, there are more opportuniCes improving your operaCons with technology than just offering the soluCon to your clients, at least in the short term. Velebit offer property searching and matching, allowing users to search using a more natural language and querying internally later to provide more accurate results. (View Highlight)
- AI provides the opportunity to generate SEO opCmized text and even pictures. ChatGPT is a LLM (Large Language Model). LLMs can predict next word, but the broader the context is, the best predicCon they will be able to provide. Davor explains that neural networks are simple, with around 2.000 lines of code. At the end of the day, LLMs are knowledge filters. They can generate new things, that seem real although the never exist (e.g. he shows an image of a woman driving a cab in Madrid in 1935, a situaCon that was, of course, not real at this Cme). (View Highlight)
- Using and training AI and LLM models is like teaching a kid, simple but Cme-consuming. It changes the interface, you do not need to program using a language, there would be less room for sodware development, as English will be the language to user, the user interfa (View Highlight)
- DemocraCzaCon of AI and use of generaCve AI will be the trends, according to Davor, in 2024. A lot of specialized models in niche segments of knowledge will be developed and start.
Velebit provides technology to idenCfy similar images and text, so as to know when a specific lisCng is duplicated. It is something like Dedup powered by AI and is trying to offer portals this service, including us. (View Highlight)
- Using a freemium model, where users can enter free and look for the lisCng but cannot obtain the contact details of the landlords without paying first. They pay 1€ for the first week and later they can move to a subscripCon model.
Instead of working directly with agencies and agents, Reva’s brands take the lisCngs from sources like agent website. However, Jan explains that they have no legal issues or complains, as they are providing a new extra channel to agents free of cost and delivering leads. (View Highlight)
- he most interesCng thing, according to Jan is to have a portal completely free for landlords that helps them to provide high quality leads, smoothing their journey. Reva’s prospects are to increase their presence on exisCng markets, especially with rentola that is already prevent in over 20 countries all around the world. (View Highlight)
- Galia and her team built three products recently, an AI digital assistant for agents, a portal and a mortgage planorm with different luck and outcomes. She wants a to share her complete story of failures and successes. With the first product, they had the first round of funding two weeks ago with financial resources enough to grow during the next 12 months. They have a product with 100K users. Their main rivals are legacy portals coming from newspapers digital classifieds planorms. (View Highlight)
- They moved from the iniCal portal app to their website, because although app was good to aPract traffic and users, website is where normally the customer journey ends. They had a deduplicated supply to improve user experience, also they provided pricing insights with history of the prices, an automated valuaCon tool… They also starCng services to test them. They were building this product to make it successful. Galia idenCfies the three problems that RE starts ups are facing, someCmes forced by investors: (View Highlight)
- People cannot spend hours on classified marketplaces. The engagement can start previously to the use of a portal, in other channels like Instagram, Youtube or TikTok. The customer journey for the purchase of a property is so long and the first mile is when creators content can be more relevant and create the engagement. (View Highlight)
- The second part of their guide is to be the best partner for the best agents. It is crucial to build confidence. Younger generaCons trust more recommendaCons than others. The media is the best channel for recommendaCons and creators. The believe they cannot be just a window where everybody can place their lisCng, they want to have a conversional relaConship with the home seekers (View Highlight)
- Realtor themselves are the one paying. They preferred to do it, doing original producCons than partner with famous youtubers that already have their own style of doing things. They believe it is more meaningful. Simos adds that when we are talking about trust in a brand, to get a bePer engagement with users as posiCon as a leader brand, you need to play for it and try new things. They target the top 10% agents for this kind of shows. (View Highlight)