Let us start with some good news.
It seems that the Spanish real estate sites have not been affected by this economic down turn, in a recent study conducted by British giant comSCORE. Here is the report.
The reports states clearly that there has been a spike in the amount of hits received by the most popular sites like Trovit, Fotocasa, Idealista and others. So it maybe that we are seeing an economic downturn but that has not decreased the necessity for a household or an apartment. Certainly not here in Spain. I guess we should see similar results in most developed countries.
Most of these websites are search and vertical portals, so they follow a pretty straight forward business model as in other offerings by their USA counterparts. As we are seeing a whole lot changes, now for the bad news.
It seems that Zillow is shrinking since it´s last month it began to layoff a quarter of its staff and now it seems it will change again in its business model, behaving more like a traditional real estate site, so it has cut most of the licenses for brokerage, except in Texas and in Washington. It has partnered with Weichart Realtors.
I saw on AgentGenius that Redfin has also done a couple of changes internally and becoming a “real” real estate broker. Good news for consumers and bad news for the brokerage market, but that is a fact of economics, your partners sometimes (most of the time) become your competitors eventually. They have gathered a lot of information from consumers and they are applying it to their business model, that sounds logical…… there are a couple of cry babies out there, but such is life, so get on with it and start competing. You say you do not have the skills or VC back up, tough luck….
But there are opportunities out there. Start looking for them, see what your local customers are asking for. That is a good place to begin anyway, the Internet is such a big market that it is normal that big company’s like Redfin, Zillow and others are competing for it. Do not panic, there are plenty of local niche markets they will not be getting in to, so go and find them.
I will be posting soon about my findings. We will wait no longer.
Stay tuned.
Best regards.