As a part of our #Outlook14 series, we asked heads of six online properties listing companies – 99Acres, Commonfloor, Housing.com, IndiaProperty, MagicBricks and Makaan.com about their focus areas for 2014, and the challenges that the online properties listing ecosystem needs to address. MediaNama: Which according to you were the top developments and roadblocks with respect to the properties listing segment in 2013? Why? Vineet Kumar Singh, 99Acres - Real estate listing segment grew significantly in 2013 driven primarily by market expansion, increased consumer demand and increasing marketing needs of developers in current economic scenario. - Increasingly we are seeing more and more owners using real estate classified sites to advertise their properties and the industry witnessed an increase of around 70% YOY in owner advertising Sumit Jain, Commonfloor - The property market saw fewer sale and purchase transactions in the second half of the year. This development however did not impact prices significantly. - While investment driven and second home driven listings saw higher page views. Our industry survey however tells us that the transaction time in case of such properties has gone down - As a property portal we have found that time spent by a user on property research has gone up by 60% Advitiya Sharma, Housing.com - The major issue plaguing real estate for decades now has been lack of authentic information. The biggest development in 2013 of the industry has been the unique data collection approach of providing users with 100% verified and authentic listings. - More…
