A Note on Real Estate in E-commerce Era

Online search and compare for real estate is not new in India. Some property portals are there in the market for more than a decade now and majority of these portals have managed to be an information provider for dealers, brokers, investors and buyers.Now-a-days most of potential customers search online for property information before purchasing. 92% of buyers use the internet in some way in their home search process and 50% of buyers use a mobile website or application in their home search. More and more properties are being listed on the online websites.

Experts say it’s more about the consumer sentiment, belief and greater transparency which is culminating into the radical growth in the segment. Users are no longer merely interested in just searching for houses, they are responding seriously.

E-commerce Buzz & Real Estate:

When the chairman of SoftBank, Masayoshi Son, invested $100 Million in a few years old portal- Housing.com, it gave an alarming signal that India is eying for something big in online space and moving for a change in the entire realty market diaspora. The second in the league were, Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp, picking up a 25 per cent stake in another portal- PropTiger.com, also underscored the appeal.

Tata Housing tied-up with e-com giants like Flipcart.com to sell its property online and received moderate response. This gave an insight that this channel has a huge potential to grow in coming years and many players following this route.

Players like Signature Global took one step further and created their own payment gateway system for customers’ ease to avail online application form. This experiment worked well for them and they received more than 1,000 applications in less than 90 days

Benefit for Seller

• A platform to find genuine buyers
• A platform to market your property for selling
• Widen your market and get more buyers
• A platform where you can get guidance on property trends and selling tips.

Benefit for Buyer

• Get genuine projects/properties to select from.
• Get complete property related service from your home.
• Get comprehensive analysis report of the property selected for review.
• Save your precious time. 

Challenges:

• Volume of Transaction: Most of the real estate players said that they can become partially available on E-com sites but full transaction availability is yet a far sighted dream.
• Transparency: Online sales normally works on greater transparency. Real estate market has always played on thin line where the complete transparency is always a matter of concern.
• Old Channel: Partners, dealers and other associates look online marketing as threat to their traditional business.

Reference: 

http://techstory.in/real-estate-ecommerce-918711222/

http://www.slideshare.net/anirudhchari/note-on-the-e-commerce-market-in-india

http://realestate.deutscheawm.com/content/_media/Research_RREEF_Real_Estate_Bricks_and_Clicks_July2012.pdf