Marketing of land, apartments and commercial spaces has traditionally been conducted through the print media, outdoor advertising and property shows. But property portals are fast emerging as popular alternatives for reality developers in India, especially for reaching out to NRI buyers.Even domestic customers are increasingly accessing online portals for information.
This is true especially for the high-salaried IT and ITeS sector employees.Further, the boom witnessed in the country’s real estate market over the past couple of years has transformed most regional developers into national players.
For instance, DLF, Unitech and Parsvnath of Delhi, Hiranandani of Mumbai, Sobha, Prestige and Puravankara of Bangalore now have projects across India. To popularise their brands in new markets and attract buyers, they are using traditional as well modern, sophisticated mediums, including the web, to reach the target customer.
With an estimated 40,000 property classifieds appearing in newspapers across the country and nearly 20 times that number being placed on property portals, the industry felt the need for a proper eval uation mechanism to assess these listings.
Makaan.com has made a beginning and initiated an evaluation system — makaan rating — where users can evaluate properties based on the usefulness of the listings.
Similarly, with hundreds of property portals dotting the web, customers have an obvious question. How to differentiate between the good and the bad, the effective and the ineffective? After all, home buying is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for most. As in most industies, users will determine which portals last.
Today, customers are in a quandary. On the one hand, buying a home is probably the most expensive purchase for most in their lifetime. Unlike in the past, the choice is wider and buyers would like to do their own research, besides taking friends and relatives into confidence before zeroing in on a property. In such a scenario, a property portal helps customers look at various offerings from developers and do a comparative study before arriving at a decision.
Though hundreds of such portals are there on the web, only a few offer complete endto-end solutions.Interestingly, there seems to be a close connection between matrimony and realty in the online space, as also jobs.
Some of the leading portals, which have established themselves in either matrimony or jobs verticals, have got into online realty space too.Sitting on a large customer database could be the primary reason and this helps them to score over others.
Indiaproperty.com, promoted by leading matrimonial site, bharatmatrimony.com and 99acres.com, backed by naukri.com top in terms of recall value. Yet another portal, makaan.com, launched recently by the People’s Group that owns leading matrimonial portal, Shaadi.com, has fast emerged as a popular site through its aggressive promotional strategy during the IPL cricket extravaganza.
“property developers are increasingly realising the benefits of being on the internet, which is turning out to be a very powerful medium to reach out to Indians across the world, especially the NRIs,” says Murugavel Janakiraman, managing director, indiaproperty.com.
While these portals earn revenues through both classifieds and displays from commercial and residential properties, new players are eyeing niche segments to make a mark. Chennai-based real estate consultants, RECS Group has promoted RoofBird.com as an exclusive portal focusing only on the residential segment.
It provides offline support service to customer for site tour, negotiation and an expert’s help in taking a decision.“Indian customers have started expecting and demanding better customer service, thanks to globalisation and exposure to developed markets.
Foreign investments and a boom in the real estate sector have forced local property developers to become better organised and adopt a professional approach, which is now reflecting in their marketing channels,” says Premkumar Ponniah, Director, Roofbird.com .
According to him,property Portals are 24X7-marketing platforms.Further, the success rates of marketing campaigns on such Portals are measurable, which may not always be the case with the print media.
“By being simple, such portals are an open book that gives complete freedom to customers in taking decisions,” Ponniah says.As a result of the ongoing recession in the US and a general slowdown globally, the percentage of NRIs buying homes in India is on the rise and these portals act as an effective medium to woo this segment of rich buyers.
From around three per cent, the NRI share has now gone up to 10 per cent of the total high-end projects launched and sold in the country.Three years ago, when the realty market was going great guns, a builder had to simply place an ad in the print media and the project was sold out in no time, says Janakiraman.
“However, now, that the going is tough, the developer is looking at more mediums to offload his inventory in an effective way. Naturally, it is the internet that is drawing the attention,” he says.
Going a step forward,property potals are now conducting property shows abroad.Indidproperty.com organised property shows in the West Asian region and reported enthusiastic response.Indiaproperty.com has reported sales of Rs 200 crore in just two days in Dubai. ??
Courtesy: The Financial Chronicle dated 17/07/2008
