Going beyond charging for listing publishing
I like to believe that portals are not just about making money. Helping customers to make the right decision, providing transparency about the market, and avoiding shady practices should be the goal as well.
But obviously, it’s a business. So in this article, I’d like to review some of the options to monetize them, trying to diversify the income sources. Leaving aside publishing packages and the usual featured, super-featured, and ultra-featured listings 😉
1. New project marketing
Feasible in markets where developers are regularly launching new projects, or those in a situation of over-supply, where is especially difficult for them to sell their existing stock. The idea is to offer developers an agency-like marketing service. Targeting also real estate agencies who get the exclusivity to market a new project.
Makes sense since portals have direct access to an in-market audience and also have the specialized marketing knowledge to make the best of it. Including the ability to search for new alike audiences locally and abroad through digital channels.
2. Go for the transaction
Remove the middleman and go straight for the transaction process between buyers and sellers. Bold and tricky move, since we would be clashing with the real estate agencies, currently the most important clients for a portal. But I wouldn’t be surprised if we start seeing this in the upcoming years, together with the rise of commission-free services.
3. Auction system for top positions
The idea is to get the biggest benefit possible from the top visibility positions in our portal, offering them in an auction instead of a fixed price. Could make sense in cluttered portals within very mature markets. When we have many real estate agencies fighting with each other and willing to pay big for certain locations.
4. Sales agents branding
Take advantage of the fierce competition between sales agents and offer them a way to be featured on the portal. Agents could be interested in improving their personal brand, something that is gaining importance every day. Plus getting some extra leads.
Doing it on every location level and allowing brokers to easily pay for it online with their mobile phones since that’s their main business tool.
5. Business intelligence service
Similar to what happens with marketing, portals usually have the data and people with the skills to make the best of it. While data-backed decision-making is not so common among traditional real estate agencies.
So the idea would be to offer them actionable reports: Them vs competitors vs the market, where should they focus their product acquisition based on demand, which of their properties might be overpriced, which areas have the best rental yield, investment reports to present to clients, and so on.
6. Property showcase services
Targeting real estate agencies or individual agents, offering services like professional photography, videography, 360° panoramic tours, luminosity reports, and such. Probably through a commission-based partnership.
It’s something that could help to improve the quality of the listings on our portal, so definitely worth encouraging 😉
7. Post-sale services for customers
The most common option is to have a bank as a mortgage partner. But there are many other services involved around the process of selling/renting a home: Insurance, moving, painting, furniture, storage, internet providers, repairs, decoration, or security.
Always trying to integrate it in a natural way within the customer journey. We could create an automated flow to advertise the services at the right moment, with follow-up emails based on customer interactions.
8. Targeted display ads
The traditional way to monetize any site is feasible if the portal already has a decent amount of traffic and page impressions to sell. Targeting real estate agencies for branding, developers for new launches, related services providers, or anyone willing to pay the right CPM. But ideally not random ads but well targeted.
Ideally in website, email communications, and mobile app. Technically easy to implement, just need to have an ad server like Google DFP (now part of Google Ad Manager) or OpenX.
9. Become an iBuyer
Opendoor is the best example of the feasibility of this business model, although lately, they’ve been struggling with it. The idea is quite simple: Buy property and flip it, while being easy to market it as a portal. The market situation needs to be very in favor, otherwise, it can surely create liquidity problems.
10. Become a mortgage player
Another option that could be feasible is for established property portals with tons of cash at their disposal. Why not take the bank role and lend money to buy property? Again, portals already have the contact information of tons of potential mortgage clients so that certainly puts them in a good position.
Conclusions
I’m not an expert in monetization and some of these ideas might be not worth implementing. But I believe is common sense to try to find alternative income sources for every business, trying to target every role in our industry and surrounding ones.
Not all the options can be applied everywhere, depending on the maturity of the market and how educated are the real estate professionals and customers. So we need to take care of which products to introduce and how to do it, also trying not to upset our existing clients.