Property search in Singapore is like a mirage. Yes, sites like PropertyGuru and iProperty are popular among Singaporean property seekers and real estate agents, but they’re more like online classifieds than true-blue search engines like Google. And there lies the fundamental problem.
“This [market] is where you advertise to win. You pay to get yourself to the top of the game. This is how you get more links and more views and more calls,” says Darius Cheung, CEO and founder of 99.co, a Singapore startup that’s offering a different – and some may say purer – take on property search.
“Search results are sacred to us. You can never buy search results. That’s something we promise consumers. That’s something we promise the industry we’re working with.”
Property agents at 99.co’s official launch event told me about their frustrations with PropertyGuru. They say that the dominant property site has been charging them more and more to list. Today, a “lite” plan costs S$320 (US$246) for six months, while an “elite” plan can fetch up to S$2,240 (US$1,726) a year.
This business model apparently causes problems. For real estate agents, it widens the gulf between the haves and have-nots. Top agents keep paying to ensure that they stay on top of the search results. Meanwhile, new agents who’ve just entered the industry are left scraping the bottom of the barrel in an upward climb. It creates an arms race where agents outdo one another, causing business costs to rise. These costs are then passed down to consumers. And who gets to benefit from all this? PropertyGuru.
Cheung claims that this pay-to-list model harms the property seeker’s experience. Search results become compromised, and often show properties that aren’t even relevant.
While not a scientific comparison, I did a search that shows the night and day differences between both sites. The search term was “Sun Plaza”, a shopping mall and condominium in northern Singapore. First up, PropertyGuru:
The most relevant result shows up fifth. The first one is a condo that’s one to two train stations away. The third and fourth result were pretty spot on. Damningly, the second item is a condo that’s in another side of Singapore.
Now, on to 99.co. The homepage has an Google-Airbnb-esque feel to it, and users immediately know what to do. No guidance is needed. Keying in part of the search term brings up a list of options, and the right one was on top.
After I hit ‘search’, I was led to a map-based results page showing all the available properties around Sun Plaza. “This is without a doubt the future. If you look at any property portal anywhere else in the world that is a developed country, this is what it looks like. For some reason Singapore isn’t there, and I don’t know why,” Cheung says of its search interface.
On the left pane are cards showing the prices of the various properties, their characteristics, and photos. One minor grouse is that I’m not sure how the items are sorted. Is it by availability? By value-for-money? Or some unseen quality?
More clarity on that would be nice, but on the whole I must say that I like the uncluttered and stripped-down look of 99.co versus the complexity of PropertyGuru.
To talk about the startup’s website is to only go skin-deep though. So much more is happening behind the curtains. Powering the search results is ListRank, an algorithm that factors in 30 data points like the completeness of the listing, user behavior, and location.
Real estate agents also get an app where they can list not just on 99.co, but also cross-post to other property sites. Agents can use the mobile app for free now, but the startup plans to charge a flat fee in the future. A native app for consumers is in the works.
The race is on, again
While online property search may seem like a done deal with PropertyGuru cornering the Singapore market, 99.co raises the possibility that the race can still be blown wide open.
Agents I spoke to seem eager to hop onto the platform (they don’t have much to lose anyway), though the test for 99.co will be in bringing in leads that will make agents happily pay to use the app. As a consumer though, I can immediately see the appeal.
Investors have jumped on board too. It has attracted US$560,000 in funding from Fenox VC, 500 Startups, East Ventures (disclosure: East Ventures is an investor in Tech in Asia), and Golden Gate Ventures.
99.co, which also operates roommate-search site Homie.co, isn’t the only player nipping at the heels of the market leaders. Singapore’s largest newspaper publisher SPH has earmarked property search as a growth area. It acquired a 60 percent stake in StreetSine Technology Group, a company providing real-time property price data and trend analysis, for US$30 million. StreetSine’s technology could eventually be integrated into STProperty – SPH’s own property site.
In Indonesia, we’re seeing at least six sites vying for pole position, and these include Lamudi, a Rocket Internet venture, and UrbanIndo, which just concluding a fundraising round involving Gree Ventures and IMJ Fenox.
In Thailand, Hipflat has raised seed funding to bring map-based search and unbiased listings to the country, and it’s eyeing the rest of Southeast Asia starting with Malaysia. Like 99.co, it’s bringing a different paradigm to the industry.
PropertyGuru is watching closely. On the same day of 99.co’s launch, it introduced SmartSelect, a new search system that personalizes results according to user preferences. This technology works within the confines of its revenue model.
But if 99.co takes off, the incumbent could be left with a dilemma. It could risk cannibalizing its existing income by acquiring the startup, or by copying its model. Or it could choose to remain in its current state and risk becoming obsolete.
Depending on how this plays out, we could be witnessing the end of the classifieds era in property search.
See more: With find-a-roomie site Homie, an A-team of developers has found a home
This post People in Singapore are getting a bad deal in property search. This startup wants to fix that appeared first on Tech in Asia.
People in Singapore are getting a bad deal in property search. This startup wants to fix that
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