I thought that proptech, applying technology to the real estate sector, is revolutionizing the entire digital ecosystem around the real estate sector.
Startups are created with new ideas or business models, but technology and the market force those who were already there to modify their business models or improve technological applications. In fact, the large portals have been adding services to their portfolio. They already offer much more than being an adds place where citizens can find and/or offer real estate. For years they have had increasingly powerful mortgage departments. Some even have agreements with the new Fintech mortgages. They have increasingly more powerful real estate valuation services based on Big Data and Machine learning. They already sell all kinds of products related to real estate, such as photo sessions, data, or insurance.
Their core business is no longer only the ads publication. There is much more. They have data, huge customer databases, and a tremendous capacity to communicate with many people. We recently learned that Casavo, a great Italian instant buyer, has bought Realisti.co, there will be an increasing mix of proptech companies.
I wonder if the next step will be to follow American portals trends, for example, Zillow, one of the most powerful portals from the USA, who hires agents to be more present in the intermediation. Or if the portals will become great Ibuyers or fundamental pieces of these new purchasing instruments that have appeared and that still have to be improved. Portals know the sector perfectly. They can apply technology to the natural processes and have millions of consumer contacts in their hands, so why shouldn’t they? They have all the ingredients to be great actors in brokerage.
Will there be a time to compensate them for competing with their big clients (real estate agents)? The American market is not exactly the same as ours. Still, there are already big players like Compass or Zillow there, so I’m sure that soon we will have a player of these characteristics in Spain. It would be the logical step of its transformation.
Who will be the first in Spain? Has anyone already done tests? It won’t take us many years for us to find out.
Gustavo Lopez
COO at API