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24-10-2009, 01:22 PM
“The total market for real estate in India is estimated at $14 billion and is growing at the rate of 30%. By 2015, it is expected to touch $90 billion.“
The Real Estate market is being considered as the best one for investments.Individual investors can invest in real estate through real estate mutual funds, investment trusts or simply buy some hot property themselves!
Plus there are people who genuinely look at buying houses. Young professionals who are getting married and want to live an independent life away from parents. Students needing info about PG’s and flats. Regular people wanting info about PG’s and flats.
Well the online property classifieds market definitely has huge potential. So let’s take a look at what the top sites are up to:
MAGIC BRICKS
From the Times stable – comes MagicBricks.com. They launched back in May 2006, well after IndiaProperty and 99acres, but have been able to use their massive ad allowance to grab a considerable piece of this pie.
I’m sure most of you would be able to re-call the – Sir, ghar dhoondh raha hoon ad. Plus then there’s the advantage of belonging to the Times Group. Daily full page ads in Economic Times and TOI were almost regular sometime back.
Let’s take a look at their site:
In fact they did a revamp very recently.
Supposedly with a special focus now on navigation, user-friendliness and ROI for its users, clients and advertisers.
So what is the first thing we see?
2 distinct search boxes. One for buyer and one for sellers.
An agent and builder search beneath that.
165 Listings for an agent search done for the city Mumbai.
They have city specials for:
Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Pune, Jaipur, Chandigarh
Beneath that the site is a cluttered mess.
They’ve looked at concentrating on ROI only for Advertisers. Featured agents and projects and more banners and then some more.
Additional Features:
They have a blog.
Pretty good stuff – with relevant articles.
Though it can be used in a much better way and would be more apt if it was hosted @ blog.magicbricks.com
Other features: Legal advice / taxation advice available on the site.
They offer virtual tours of certain property – which they charge the advertisers a bomb for!
What can be done?
Integration with their newspaper classifieds. Not only will this promote usage of the online platform – but also increase the database of MagicBricks to great heights. Unlike the way Times operated – where there inter-department rivalry. Had a bad experience with them, when Times Ascent tried to out-do TimesJobs.com.
As with the case of SimplyMarry and TimesJobs – if Times merges their offline and online content and get them to compliment each other, they can totally dominate the internet scene.
INDIA PROPERTY
IndiaProperty from the BharatMatrimony stable was started around October 2006, a few months after ClickJobs.
CEO Murugavel Janakiram , “Online property market is growing exponentially in India and it is expected that internet would take up about 10-15 per cent of the total real estate advertisement expenditure soon. In the US, 90 per cent of property buyers use internet as their primary medium of search.”
Let’s have a look at their site:
Well a snap-shot of the site sure is pleasing to the eye.
Gets cluttered and messy after this – where again they want to ensure ROI for their advertisers.
But here’s a great opportunity for an Aggregator Like the new boomi.in, Something like Bixee.com (http://www.bixee.com/) for Jobs.Aggregate free listings of all Real-Estate sites and provide them to your visitors at one platform.Better still – lets users aggregate content and us as UGC in boomi.in forums.
Back to IndiaProperty:
The rest of the site has a pretty similar look to all the others. Featured listings, featured projects, featured builders etc.
Additional features ?
A dedicated tab on the top for PG’s and Roommates.Dedicated pages for Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad.
IndiaProperty was chosen by as the Best Property Portal in India.
They run a blog – PropertyBytes.com (http://www.propertybytes.com/)
Regularly updated. In fact Ravi Damodran @ PropertyBytes ensures at least 5 posts per day. Regular updates of Real Estate news and happenings.
Other features:
A Real Estate agents search.
RSS subscription for property updates – No one else provides this.
Loan and Finance options has already been integrated with LoanWala.com (http://www.watblog.com/?content=detail&id=872).
99acres from the Naukri.com group (InfoEdge) were the first movers in the Online Property space. They’ve not been able to retain much of their advantage in the local scene but 99acres is still the most popular in the NRI market.
Their dominance in the international scene was the catalyst for MagicBricks’ hyped NRI section launch.
Let’s have a look at the site:
You need to be using a wide-screen monitor at a high resolution – else 99acres.com is going to appear extremely cluttered to you.
The search box is nice and prominent. But that’s when the clutter begins. Ads left, right and center.
There are nearly 150 Text-links on the homepage.
If these links were displayed in a contextual basis – i.e. after the user completes his initial search or chooses the city and specifications he’s interested in….then display all relevant links to him. It would definitely ensure greater no. of relevant clicks.
Indian Express had a nice article recently:
Having recently moved to Delhi, Gurinder Man Singh, a software engineer, is at present busy looking for an apartment to rent. Hoping to steer clear of property dealers and agents, he checks out a plethora of online real estate sites. But it’s back to square one.
“I found some options (online) but people who picked up the calls were all property dealers,” Singh explains. “They all wanted me to see other places.”
Basically the whole funda of providing a stress-free and simple solution to the local broker is just not happening. Sites are being used to make money off Builders.
99acres.com have dedicated pages for Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Pune.
Other Features?
They have a ‘Contact us – if you are unable to find properties’ option. Needs positional highlighting. Showing Ads on the left hand column is providing a nice ROI to ones clients, but the focus should also remain on the users.
A prominent Advertise Your Property Now on the RHS – captures the complete essence of the business model.
Now let’s look at Jaaydaad.com
Who are they? And why have we included them in this shoot-out?
Jaaydaad.com claims to be the ‘Largest Real Estate Network’.
Jaaydaad – is not the best names to have in the Internet world. There 5-10 different ways of spelling Jaaydaad (Zaaydaad, Zaydaad, Zaidaad etc etc.)
Rediff (http://www.rediff.com/money/2006/dec/18jaydaad.htm) carried an article on them last December:
Online property consultant, Jaaydaad.com, is taking up an offline network expansion as it plans to strike deals worth Rs 1,000 crore (Rs 10 billion) by March next year.
The company, with projects worth around Rs 3,000 crore (Rs 30 billion), is taking the franchising route to open 600 property shops across the country.
Then there was news about Vishaka Communication bagging the Jaaydaad.com account, estimated to be around the 5 crore mark.
Well I’m not really sure how successful Jaaydaad.com have been – not many people I talked to have even heard of them.Wonder how many of the 600 property shops have been setup.
A look at their website:
Not concentrating on the Search aspect much. Full of ‘featured projects’. But the site doesn’t hurt the eye. Enough white space, nice structuring.
Other features:
Legal Document assistance, Area Unit Convertor, Stamp Duty Calculator.
What can be done?
A tremendous lot! Especially with the lofty goals they’ve set for themselves.
So basically we've compared them on a lot of parameters – now we leave it to you to decide which ones the best. According to me, the best is yet to come.Though I’d still prefer a newspaper as of now.
Some quotes off the Indian Express article:
“Even today, print advertisements publicise both individuals (buyers/sellers) and agents. It has more to do with one’s preference.”
- Deepali Singh (Business Head – 99acres.com)
So are you just trying to be another medium of ads? Or are you actually looking at providing some real service to the users?
“Our USP is providing information and transparency to the buyer, who would otherwise have to rely on personal connections, or a single broker/builder. We aim to provide a common platform for all users, including dealers and brokers”
- R. Sundar (President, Times Busines Solution – MagicBricks.com)
Currently it’s providing a platform just for dealers and brokers. I did not see a single ‘Requirement’ listing on your main homepage and if you are primarily looking at providing a mere classifieds portal – then a more user friendly image needs to exist, not simply portrayed.
No one seems to be in the scene for the longer run.
Some other sites :
RealEstateOnline.in (http://www.realestateonline.in/), IndiaRealEstateDirectory.com (http://www.indiarealestatedirectory.com/) and OnGaia.com (http://www.ongaia.com/) .Online classifieds site – Kijiji (http://www.kijiji.in/) is also popular for property listings.
This article has been excerpted from watblog. Thanks to them!
The Real Estate market is being considered as the best one for investments.Individual investors can invest in real estate through real estate mutual funds, investment trusts or simply buy some hot property themselves!
Plus there are people who genuinely look at buying houses. Young professionals who are getting married and want to live an independent life away from parents. Students needing info about PG’s and flats. Regular people wanting info about PG’s and flats.
Well the online property classifieds market definitely has huge potential. So let’s take a look at what the top sites are up to:
MAGIC BRICKS
From the Times stable – comes MagicBricks.com. They launched back in May 2006, well after IndiaProperty and 99acres, but have been able to use their massive ad allowance to grab a considerable piece of this pie.
I’m sure most of you would be able to re-call the – Sir, ghar dhoondh raha hoon ad. Plus then there’s the advantage of belonging to the Times Group. Daily full page ads in Economic Times and TOI were almost regular sometime back.
Let’s take a look at their site:
In fact they did a revamp very recently.
Supposedly with a special focus now on navigation, user-friendliness and ROI for its users, clients and advertisers.
So what is the first thing we see?
2 distinct search boxes. One for buyer and one for sellers.
An agent and builder search beneath that.
165 Listings for an agent search done for the city Mumbai.
They have city specials for:
Delhi, Chennai, Bangalore, Mumbai, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Pune, Jaipur, Chandigarh
Beneath that the site is a cluttered mess.
They’ve looked at concentrating on ROI only for Advertisers. Featured agents and projects and more banners and then some more.
Additional Features:
They have a blog.
Pretty good stuff – with relevant articles.
Though it can be used in a much better way and would be more apt if it was hosted @ blog.magicbricks.com
Other features: Legal advice / taxation advice available on the site.
They offer virtual tours of certain property – which they charge the advertisers a bomb for!
What can be done?
Integration with their newspaper classifieds. Not only will this promote usage of the online platform – but also increase the database of MagicBricks to great heights. Unlike the way Times operated – where there inter-department rivalry. Had a bad experience with them, when Times Ascent tried to out-do TimesJobs.com.
As with the case of SimplyMarry and TimesJobs – if Times merges their offline and online content and get them to compliment each other, they can totally dominate the internet scene.
INDIA PROPERTY
IndiaProperty from the BharatMatrimony stable was started around October 2006, a few months after ClickJobs.
CEO Murugavel Janakiram , “Online property market is growing exponentially in India and it is expected that internet would take up about 10-15 per cent of the total real estate advertisement expenditure soon. In the US, 90 per cent of property buyers use internet as their primary medium of search.”
Let’s have a look at their site:
Well a snap-shot of the site sure is pleasing to the eye.
Gets cluttered and messy after this – where again they want to ensure ROI for their advertisers.
But here’s a great opportunity for an Aggregator Like the new boomi.in, Something like Bixee.com (http://www.bixee.com/) for Jobs.Aggregate free listings of all Real-Estate sites and provide them to your visitors at one platform.Better still – lets users aggregate content and us as UGC in boomi.in forums.
Back to IndiaProperty:
The rest of the site has a pretty similar look to all the others. Featured listings, featured projects, featured builders etc.
Additional features ?
A dedicated tab on the top for PG’s and Roommates.Dedicated pages for Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad.
IndiaProperty was chosen by as the Best Property Portal in India.
They run a blog – PropertyBytes.com (http://www.propertybytes.com/)
Regularly updated. In fact Ravi Damodran @ PropertyBytes ensures at least 5 posts per day. Regular updates of Real Estate news and happenings.
Other features:
A Real Estate agents search.
RSS subscription for property updates – No one else provides this.
Loan and Finance options has already been integrated with LoanWala.com (http://www.watblog.com/?content=detail&id=872).
99acres from the Naukri.com group (InfoEdge) were the first movers in the Online Property space. They’ve not been able to retain much of their advantage in the local scene but 99acres is still the most popular in the NRI market.
Their dominance in the international scene was the catalyst for MagicBricks’ hyped NRI section launch.
Let’s have a look at the site:
You need to be using a wide-screen monitor at a high resolution – else 99acres.com is going to appear extremely cluttered to you.
The search box is nice and prominent. But that’s when the clutter begins. Ads left, right and center.
There are nearly 150 Text-links on the homepage.
If these links were displayed in a contextual basis – i.e. after the user completes his initial search or chooses the city and specifications he’s interested in….then display all relevant links to him. It would definitely ensure greater no. of relevant clicks.
Indian Express had a nice article recently:
Having recently moved to Delhi, Gurinder Man Singh, a software engineer, is at present busy looking for an apartment to rent. Hoping to steer clear of property dealers and agents, he checks out a plethora of online real estate sites. But it’s back to square one.
“I found some options (online) but people who picked up the calls were all property dealers,” Singh explains. “They all wanted me to see other places.”
Basically the whole funda of providing a stress-free and simple solution to the local broker is just not happening. Sites are being used to make money off Builders.
99acres.com have dedicated pages for Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bangalore, Kolkata, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Pune.
Other Features?
They have a ‘Contact us – if you are unable to find properties’ option. Needs positional highlighting. Showing Ads on the left hand column is providing a nice ROI to ones clients, but the focus should also remain on the users.
A prominent Advertise Your Property Now on the RHS – captures the complete essence of the business model.
Now let’s look at Jaaydaad.com
Who are they? And why have we included them in this shoot-out?
Jaaydaad.com claims to be the ‘Largest Real Estate Network’.
Jaaydaad – is not the best names to have in the Internet world. There 5-10 different ways of spelling Jaaydaad (Zaaydaad, Zaydaad, Zaidaad etc etc.)
Rediff (http://www.rediff.com/money/2006/dec/18jaydaad.htm) carried an article on them last December:
Online property consultant, Jaaydaad.com, is taking up an offline network expansion as it plans to strike deals worth Rs 1,000 crore (Rs 10 billion) by March next year.
The company, with projects worth around Rs 3,000 crore (Rs 30 billion), is taking the franchising route to open 600 property shops across the country.
Then there was news about Vishaka Communication bagging the Jaaydaad.com account, estimated to be around the 5 crore mark.
Well I’m not really sure how successful Jaaydaad.com have been – not many people I talked to have even heard of them.Wonder how many of the 600 property shops have been setup.
A look at their website:
Not concentrating on the Search aspect much. Full of ‘featured projects’. But the site doesn’t hurt the eye. Enough white space, nice structuring.
Other features:
Legal Document assistance, Area Unit Convertor, Stamp Duty Calculator.
What can be done?
A tremendous lot! Especially with the lofty goals they’ve set for themselves.
So basically we've compared them on a lot of parameters – now we leave it to you to decide which ones the best. According to me, the best is yet to come.Though I’d still prefer a newspaper as of now.
Some quotes off the Indian Express article:
“Even today, print advertisements publicise both individuals (buyers/sellers) and agents. It has more to do with one’s preference.”
- Deepali Singh (Business Head – 99acres.com)
So are you just trying to be another medium of ads? Or are you actually looking at providing some real service to the users?
“Our USP is providing information and transparency to the buyer, who would otherwise have to rely on personal connections, or a single broker/builder. We aim to provide a common platform for all users, including dealers and brokers”
- R. Sundar (President, Times Busines Solution – MagicBricks.com)
Currently it’s providing a platform just for dealers and brokers. I did not see a single ‘Requirement’ listing on your main homepage and if you are primarily looking at providing a mere classifieds portal – then a more user friendly image needs to exist, not simply portrayed.
No one seems to be in the scene for the longer run.
Some other sites :
RealEstateOnline.in (http://www.realestateonline.in/), IndiaRealEstateDirectory.com (http://www.indiarealestatedirectory.com/) and OnGaia.com (http://www.ongaia.com/) .Online classifieds site – Kijiji (http://www.kijiji.in/) is also popular for property listings.
This article has been excerpted from watblog. Thanks to them!