
Idealista will launch in France imminently and wants agent buy-in with a 12-month free offer.
The Spanish market leader, also a leader in Portugal and a head-to-head challenger in Italy, appointed former Leboncoin executive Aurélien Flament as managing director for France this summer, indicating a serious interest in the French market.
Immomatin has published an interview with Flament outlining the company's plans to tackle the French market, with "significant" marketing plans already in place. At the same time, it will develop a competitive pricing strategy that the Spanish portal believes will be cheaper than those of incumbents including Seloger and Leboncoin.
"Idealista has a long-term project in France," Flament told Immomatin, adding that it will "deploy significant communication campaigns in the coming weeks and months."
"Our offer, for all real estate agents in France, will begin with a year of free distribution. We have everything to prove, everything to build, leads to bring them. And at the end of this free year, the commercial terms we will offer the market will be significantly lower than what our competitors can currently offer.
"We are in discussions with CRMs, networks of agents and real estate agencies, as well as with notaries, to quickly offer them the opportunity to become partners of Idealista.
"Strategically, we intend to expand into the real estate market as Free did more than twenty years ago in the telecoms market: with a 'best-in-class' tool and a very competitive pricing approach compared to the conditions of the two currently leading portals.
"The platform it is deploying is technically superior to that of the two other leading real estate portals in France, with a large number of features available to real estate agents." [Translated from French]