Online Property Portals: Changing the Real Estate Paradigm
By: Hadi Ali
Tags: Real Estate Investments, Property Portals, Property, Online Real Estate, Real Estate

Online Property portals brought a significant change in the real estate business. These portals offer an unparalleled quantity & quality of information to a prospective home buyer & lead the movement in catering to the time-poor and efficiency-focused.

There’s no debate that internet real estate platforms have progressed from listing services over time. If we go back 5–7 years, when portals were not as popular, the only reliable source of information for buyers, sellers, or renters was the classified ads in the newspaper or your local real estate agent. And there’s a good probability that as a consumer, you’ll never learn about the market’s supply.

Online Real Estate Portals And Websites

Online portals have become wiser due to technology improvements, and homebuyers have become smarter as well. Real estate portals leave no stone untouched as the house buying process shifts from offline to online. They do everything from developing novel marketing techniques to utilizing technology to provide customers with an immersive experience.

Let’s look at some data from the developed West, where Internet penetration is higher, to see how online real estate platforms in Pakistan are doing. Online real estate portals and broker websites are the most popular methods for home searching in Pakistan. Other online portals and social networking websites, such as Facebook, Pinterest, Quora, Linked In, and other social apps, are among the eight most common methods used for home searches. You can see many adds on regular basis as property for sale, house for sale etc

It’s far easier to look at different homes online than to flip through notes or look at the information on a wall. As a result, potential buyers will be more confident in making an early decision between two properties. This has aided in speeding up the process and give potential purchasers more confidence before they go to the viewing stage.

The amazing thing about portals is that they have consolidated the entire market supply. There are more than 1.5 million property for sale listings on various websites at any given time. The fact that you can see all of the available collections in the market in one go is the fundamental reason why most consumers have migrated online for buying, selling, or renting. Do we, however, purchase real estate on the internet? People will not buy property in the future, I believe, because it is such a high-risk category with such a big financial investment. You don’t expect someone to buy a house online by pressing a button. Instead, People can choose their required home and then arrange a meeting with the agent to visit the place and decide whether they want to buy or not.

Challenges for Online Portals

All real estate websites face the same challenge: how to engage with this new breed of informed prospective buyers who are strapped for time in today’s fast-paced environment. To turn this issue into an opportunity, online real estate companies have begun inventing and developing customer-centric products for each stage of the home-buying process.

Data sciences are being utilized to improve listing legitimacy and weed out the problem of bogus listings that have plagued the industry for years. Data sciences are being used by portals to create tools that help purchasers specify their exact wants and create the intangible qualities that characterize the ideal home.

The good news is that today’s real estate market is primed for end consumers. Speculative buying is no longer an option. This allows all online real estate players to meaningfully enhance engagement with genuine investors.

DISADVANTAGES:

1. It might be a fake website; nowadays, purchasing a server and selling something that does not exist is relatively simple. Several websites on the internet appear to be legitimate but serve as bait. That is why you must exercise caution.

2. They are frequently targeted by hackers who steal information. These sites are frequently targeted by hackers who enter the sites for sale using their programs and systems and collect user email addresses and personal data, which they then resell or use to create phony profiles.

3. The inability to see the property for sale in person is a hindrance — the failure to visit the building that has piqued your interest is a significant handicap. The disadvantage exists because everyone wants to see the actual scenario outside and inside the building to ensure that the images presented are accurate and clear enough to make a buying choice.

4. Communication is slower — another major drawback is communication is slower. People who sell property on these sites typically create profiles, post ads, and then check their mailboxes once or twice a week, which is insufficient, especially if the ad is for a nice building for sale at a good price. This is why people looking to buy a home are wary of using these sites.

Give these sites a shot because they are the most practical in the viral condition we are in, but we are confident that with our selection, they will provide you with something to keep an eye on.