VivaReal Corporate Blog

A letter to real estate companies in Latin America about the changing online market

Posted on 01. Jun, 2009 by Brian in Marketing Tips, News

Dear Inmobiliaria,

You have an incredible opportunity to get ahead of your competitors and adapt to the changing way people look for real estate. Comparing Latin America to more developed markets like the US, Australia or Germany, you can take away a lot of ideas and make the most of your marketing budget. I have had the opportunity to speak at a few different real estate events and with real estate companies and I see that there is a growing sense of urgency to leverage technology to reach new clients and reduce costs. Companies are eager to learn, but the reality is that there are not a lot of reliable resources tailored to these markets.

There are a lot of unknowns when it comes to promoting your business in this changing world of consumers starting their search online.

FACT: MORE AND MORE CONSUMERS ARE GOING ONLINE TO LOOK FOR REAL ESTATE.

This is a growing trend and it will continue to grow as more people in Latin America are connected to the internet. It is an obvious evolution of the market as consumers are hungry for more information (property description, big photos, etc).

I recently taught a three day seminar at La Lonja de Propiedad Raiz in Bogota, Colombia. There were over 35 real estate companies represented, most of them very successful. Upon receiving the list of attendees I looked at their websites to see what they had online. Many of them had professional looking sites, but I couldn’t help but notice that they were all designed by the same company and just about all of them did not carry a unique URL. Most of them had their own domain, but it was forwarded to a subdomain of the company that designed the site. I was shocked! How can some of the largest, most recognizable companies not know how important it is to have this?! There is a clear lack of education in the market and one of our goals at VivaReal is to help inform the marketplace to improve the effectiveness of brokers, our clients.

Just the other day I spoke with the owner of a successful company, Soto Sinisterra y Asociados LTDA. They are part of a group called La Union Inmobiliaria, where 9 of the largest real estate companies work together to share inventory and commissions, a very progressive concept in a market not accustomed to collaboration with other brokers. We talked about how important it is that there is access to information about how to leverage these tools.

Real estate companies need guidance about what tools to use, how to use them and what to be aware of when using new technology.

In the same way real estate companies are not sharing their property listings, technology providers/vendors are not really educating their clients about the do’s and don’t of marketing and technology. This needs to change!

Tags: Latin America, real estate, Websites