Indians love property / real-estate as much as they love gold andpeople. Business tycoons and earlier landlords in India are rich and famousmainly because of trade AND real-estate. Bollywood, Tollywood and Kollywoodstars and producers became more rich due to investment in real-estate beforeeconomic boom. All these real-estate deals were closed with help from brokersor agents. But how does a middle-class person look for suitable property in aknown or unknown location?In olden days, friends, family and relatives were the main agents totrigger buying of real-estate property. They used to provide leads, influencethe buying decisions and also connect to the seller directly many a times. Overa period of time, brokers or agents have taken active role and these middlemenwere helping widen the search operations in a given area. The quest was mainlyfor a piece of land rather than a ready-made house. More food-grains can beproduced, super luxury cars can be manufactured according to needs and jobs canbe increased - but the land on earth remains constant ! (except in cases wherewater bodies are covered and utilized for real-estate)
With scarcity in land in prime locations, high-rise apartments havecome into existence. Also, people started liking community culture - bettersafety, amenities like swimming pool, club-house, play area, neighbors forsocial interactions and friends for kids. With better economy, more jobs,increase in disposable income, the ability to purchase a house or a flat hasgrown by leaps and bounds. With assistance from banks and other financialinstitutions, purchasing a house at early stage of a career on loans has becomecommonplace. Obviously, this led to better growth of real-estate market.
Cut to modern times, people are travelling far-and-wide and theirinvestments are diversified even within real-estate. If I live in Chennai and Iam interested to buy a property in Coimbatore, how do I do that? I want to keepa constant watch on property availability in an area within my living city, sothat I can buy a second property when there is a good bargain. How can Iaccomplish that? I moved to a new city and looking for a house for rent. Wheredo I go and search?
There are many a websites available for online property search inIndia either replacing or supporting the existing business model aroundreal-estate. The first decade in the millennium has seen these sites mushroomwith similar business models.
| 1 | http://99acres.com |
| 2 | http://indiaproperty.com |
| 3 | http://indiaproperties.com |
| 4 | http://magicbricks.com |
| 5 | http://makaan.com |
| 6 | http://estatelister.com |
| 7 | http://homeshikari.com |
| 8 | http://iproperty.com |
| 9 | http://propmart.com |
| 10 | http://craigslist.com |
In most cases, the listing of a property and browsing / searching isfree. User can search for residential projects, commercial properties and landfor various purposes. There are ample parameters to search for these properties- like minimum price, maximum price, locality, area and posting by owner,builder or dealer. User can also look at photographs and videos of theproperties, which can help with buying-decision. Once the buyer identifies the property, he can get in touch with the seller and negotiate the deal offline.
Indiaproperty (which belongsto the same group as bharatmatrimony)was seen going aggressive in this segment with TV advertisements; I wonder ifthey are able to pull more user traffic to their sites with such heavyinvestments.
Magicbricks has adopted mobilestrategy with introduction of their iPhone and Android applications. Thefeature that caught my attention with these applications is the ability to goin the field and check the properties available in that area on a map. That iswhat I call as being helpful. Of course I should have GPRS capability at least,to get the location information. I am not sure why they are not publicizingthis important and useful feature in their advertisements. By the end of thisdecade, this feature would become the basis for property search.
Homeshikari, from TTK brand,has entered this domain recently but with a difference. There are noadvertisements on their site and the details are quite helpful. They providephotos and videos of the properties as well as the floor plans with allpossible details. As they say, no one searches for a property just based oncity and direction; the search starts with the school for children, office forthe working professionals at home and nearby hospitals; they have pretty neatintegration with maps to provide similar search capability. Interesting theyadvertise in local FM Radio !
I heard about Non-Resident Indians (NRI) relying on craigslist to sell or buy properties in India.
Lots of these property sites rely on displaying advertisements,featured or sponsored projects and some property related services.
Even if the properties have come closer with technology, I do notthink the broker / agent based approach would do-away in India any time soon.The reasons, I think, include:
- Lack of trust on the property listings on the site
- The sellers prefer to go through a broker as there are logistics issues involved; for example, if he stays in a different location and needs to show the house to visitors
- Not all properties are listed as the owners might not be Internet users
I would wait for the day when each and every property would betagged with an ID for easy identification. Once all the properties are tagged,the government could take a snapshot on one fine day and say that theproperties are going to be tracked from that day onwards. All these real-estateproperty sites should then be tagged with those identities for easyverification. Is it possible to achieve this level of transparency with respectto real-estate in India ever?
While speaking of transparency and good governance, I need tomention about my recent finding. I came to know only recently that there issomething called 'MLC Graduates Constituency' in India. Any graduate can register with thenearest local government administration. Once registered, the graduate canparticipate in voting for a Member of Legislative Council (MLC) contesting inthat region. If you are a graduate, you can also register (I did) and make adifference by electing the right candidate !
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