E-Commerce India - We can search for Property (Real-estate) Online

Indians love property / real-estate as much as they love gold and people. Business tycoons and earlier landlords in India are rich and famous mainly because of trade AND real-estate. Bollywood, Tollywood and Kollywood stars and producers became more rich due to investment in real-estate before economic boom. All these real-estate deals were closed with help from brokers or agents. But how does a middle-class person look for suitable property in a known or unknown location?

In olden days, friends, family and relatives were the main agents to trigger buying of real-estate property. They used to provide leads, influence the buying decisions and also connect to the seller directly many a times. Over a period of time, brokers or agents have taken active role and these middlemen were helping widen the search operations in a given area. The quest was mainly for a piece of land rather than a ready-made house. More food-grains can be produced, super luxury cars can be manufactured according to needs and jobs can be increased - but the land on earth remains constant ! (except in cases where water bodies are covered and utilized for real-estate)

With scarcity in land in prime locations, high-rise apartments have come into existence. Also, people started liking community culture - better safety, amenities like swimming pool, club-house, play area, neighbors for social interactions and friends for kids. With better economy, more jobs, increase in disposable income, the ability to purchase a house or a flat has grown by leaps and bounds. With assistance from banks and other financial institutions, purchasing a house at early stage of a career on loans has become commonplace. Obviously, this led to better growth of real-estate market.

Cut to modern times, people are travelling far-and-wide and their investments are diversified even within real-estate. If I live in Chennai and I am interested to buy a property in Coimbatore, how do I do that? I want to keep a constant watch on property availability in an area within my living city, so that I can buy a second property when there is a good bargain. How can I accomplish that? I moved to a new city and looking for a house for rent. Where do I go and search?

There are many a websites available for online property search in India either replacing or supporting the existing business model around real-estate. The first decade in the millennium has seen these sites mushroom with 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 is free. User can search for residential projects, commercial properties and land for 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 the properties, 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 belongs to the same group as bharatmatrimony) was seen going aggressive in this segment with TV advertisements; I wonder if they are able to pull more user traffic to their sites with such heavy investments.

Magicbricks has adopted mobile strategy with introduction of their iPhone and Android applications. The feature that caught my attention with these applications is the ability to go in the field and check the properties available in that area on a map. That is what 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 publicizing this important and useful feature in their advertisements. By the end of this decade, this feature would become the basis for property search.

Homeshikari, from TTK brand, has entered this domain recently but with a difference. There are no advertisements on their site and the details are quite helpful. They provide photos and videos of the properties as well as the floor plans with all possible details. As they say, no one searches for a property just based on city and direction; the search starts with the school for children, office for the working professionals at home and nearby hospitals; they have pretty neat integration with maps to provide similar search capability. Interesting they advertise 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 not think the broker / agent based approach would do-away in India any time soon. The reasons, I think, include:

1. Lack of trust on the property listings on the site

2. 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
3. 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 be tagged 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 the properties are going to be tracked from that day onwards. All these real-estate property sites should then be tagged with those identities for easy verification. Is it possible to achieve this level of transparency with respect to real-estate in India ever?

While speaking of transparency and good governance, I need to mention about my recent finding. I came to know only recently that there is something called 'MLC Graduates Constituency' in India. Any graduate can register with the nearest local government administration. Once registered, the graduate can participate in voting for a Member of Legislative Council (MLC) contesting in that region. If you are a graduate, you can also register (I did) and make a difference by electing the right candidate !