Monapart at the first Tru-debate: Real estate portals, allies or enemies?
A space for opinions, advice and laughter.
José Luis Echeverría, founding partner of Monapartparticipated in the first tru-debate organised by the new real estate portal TruhooWe were able to share our vision on one of the issues that affect real estate agencies and agents directly, and their daily operations in particular: real estate portals. A space for opinions, advice and laughter accompanied by Jordi Benito from 080 Real Estate, Gregorio Estévez Pascual from donpiso, Jorge Campreciós from JC Architect y Francesc Quintana from Vivendex.
Real estate portals: allies of the agencies or the enemy?
José Luis Echeverría states that "I can't imagine what real estate marketing and production would be like for us without the portals".Quintana, aware of its weight and importance in the market as a key point of reference for the end client, who goes to the large portals to sell and buy a property, believes that "the portals, on the one hand, look at us as the clients, but, in the end, they do not see us as the clients. Quintana, for his part, believes that "the portals, on the one hand, look at us as clients, but, in the end, we are not the only ones, we are the ones who pay their fees and who make them grow with the majority of products.".
Jordi Benito acknowledges that "today they are our main source of buyer leads, and therefore we have to work with them. They are a necessary evil because we never know if we are paying the right price for this service.
"The perverse part of the real estate portals is that they are leading all the agencies into an arms race, investing more and more resources to be higher and higher and generating more and more dependency" (José Luis Echeverría).
Francesc Quintana thinks that the problem "is when we enter into auction among all of us which lead has the best positioning, not the best quality.". Jordi Campreciós considers that portals are "just another work tool, and that doesn't mean you should stop boosting your visibility and your website. Over-reliance on portals is not the right thing to do.".
Gregorio Estévez believes that agencies "have fed them and have not taken us into consideration. We are at a time when companies are looking to reach the customer more directly through digitalisation channels, and this is going to allow us, in some way, to reach them more directly, free ourselves from the yoke of the portals".
What can real estate portals do to improve service?
According to Estévez, there is not really a win-win situation between the portals and the agencies that use them. "We give them so much information that they should give it back to us and have many of their tools, which work with our information, report it to us so that we can get closer to the client more easily. Big Data is in their hands, but if we ask them to make it available to us, they charge us for it.".
To close the debate, Francesc Quintana thinks that the orientation of the portal's service should be focused on the end customer and his real needs. "The one who manages to reach them (his product) in the best and easiest way is the one that should take a prominent position compared to the two or three big ones in the sector.
