This week's product roundup features several of the biggest names in global real estate and a handful of up-and-comers. We'll start in the UK and Europe...
Zoopla has announced two new features—one of them powered by AI—to provide a better search experience for buyers and sellers on its UK marketplace.
'Homes for You' uses AI and a user’s browsing activity on Zoopla's website to power listing recommendations for individual users.
It uses recent activity on site such as property saves and views to surface the properties a Zoopla user is likely interested in. Meanwhile, ‘smart tags’ are additional property attributes including balcony, en-suite, period property and garden. These are extracted using Natural Language Processing (NLP) and image detection.
Moreover, Homes for You is complemented by a new personalised homepage which is updated every time a user signs into Zoopla, highlighting homes to users which match their preferences as soon as they reach the site.
Zoopla says that since launch, logged-in Zoopla users who send a lead direct from the homepage has increased by an impressive 13%.
Rich Hayes, Chief Operating Officer at Zoopla, said:
"The macroeconomic environment means there’s still uncertainty in the market for buyers and sellers.
"We [Zoopla] have a crucial role to play when it comes to boosting buyer confidence. These new product developments are all about supporting Zoopla users in making the next decision on their property journey, be it finding a suitable property for them, submitting a lead, or having an initial conversation with an agent."
The UK challenger portal OpenBrix has partnered with the Tenancy Deposit Scheme (TDS) to offer real-time support services for tenants.
Using Openbrix's proprietary Tlyfe technology, TDS will also partner with the soon-to-launch digital home-moving platform, Home, to offer tenants a free online chat service and an all-in-one digital interface for Home users.
The three-way partnership will provide a tenancy advice platform, enabling tenants to complete ID checks and sign important documents digitally.
Adam Pigott, CEO at OpenBrix, said:
"This partnership isn’t just about digitalisation, it’s about liberation. Together with Home and TDS, we’re changing the rules on traditional renting, putting power back into the hands of tenants—where it belongs."
The agent-owned French portal Bien'ici has enhanced its Performance Package to its suite of tools.
The new-look Agency Performance Package now shows the agent's logo on search results and listing pages. Furthermore, agents can now boost up to eight ads at a time.
Bien'ici has also added a new option called Emailing Plus whereby agents can send emails to people registered for alerts for particular properties.
Evoriel Group recently took a take in Bien'ici. Bien'ici also closed an exclusive partnership with new homes specialist Ikimo9 in November 2023.
Kyero, the portal specialising in 'sunny second homes', has launched its PrimeAI product, a listings package that maximises a listing's visibility on search results and targeted email campaigns.
The solution uses machine learning based on the user behaviours of previous visitors to Kyero's website, then automatically displays and boosts agents' best-performing properties while balancing the overall portfolio's exposure.
Dubizzle, the market-leading classifieds website in the UAE, has added off-plan property purchases to its horizontal platform—but only for real estate agents.
Agents can now see whether a property is being resold and the original selling price, while homebuyers will not.
Meanwhile, Bayut, the real estate marketplace business owned by Dubizzle Group, has launched an AI-powered real estate valuation tool.
The TruEstimate tool also provides insights into the property's history, data-backed property valuations and rental yields.
According to Bayut's website:
TruEstimate™ is an AI algorithm that utilises the latest market insights to provide an accurate estimated property valuation for the specified property. Additionally, estimations for rent and sale, detailed price trends, potential rental yield and information on similar properties sold, rented and advertised are shared in a comprehensive TruEstimate™ report.
Various parameters are taken into account to ensure that the accurate price of the property is displayed to prospective buyers, sellers, tenants and landlords. Some of the factors that are taken into consideration include Property Layout, Location, Building, Property Type, Area, View, Upgradation Status, Number of Bedrooms and Market Trends.
View Media Group (VMG), a leader in proptech marketing solutions, has partnered with Century 21 Australasia, the world's largest residential real estate organisation.
The strategic partnership will see VMG's marketing platform, Acquire, integrate into Century 21's "eSales" CRM to provide the full suite of functionality to Century 21 agents and offices within their own environment.
Acquire is a white-labelled solution that integrates into agents' digital ecosystems to automate vendor campaigns, agent branding campaigns, property management, and recruitment campaigns.
Trent Casson, Managing Director of Residential at View Media Group, said:
"VMG is thrilled to have partnered with Century 21 Australasia to bring our market leading Acquire platform to life within their proprietary CRM, eSales. The programme known as C21 Edge brings a level of digital marketing sophistication never before offered as a push button solution within a client's own CRM."
Urban.com.au, the Australian portal specialising in developments and off-plan real estate, has partnered with the fintech Effi Technologies to provide mortgage support.
Effi operates in the CRM space for mortgage brokers and will facilitate finding the right mortgage broker for Urban's customers.
Users will be able to book an appointment directly from Urban's website, as well as giving them access to Open Banking insights.
In a post announcing the partnership on Linkedin, CEO Mike Bird commented:
"What we really liked [about Effi] is the matching AI that auto chooses from thousands of different loan specialists to find the perfect broker for our customer.
"It assesses their buyer type (first home buyer, downsizer, investor) as well as product type (off-the-plan, recently completed, apartments, townhouses etc) and location.
"We also loved the innovation on the Open Banking side of things which is going to give our users more options with data feeding directly into our users dashboard."
And finally, Latin America...
The Colombian real estate portal Fincaraíz has announced a series of product updates. In a video on social media the 360 Latam-operated real estate vertical referred to the improvements as its "new portal".
The updates implemented include...
Adevinta sold Fincaraíz to Malaysian headquartered Frontier Digital Ventures (owner of 360 Latam) in 2020. The portal's main competition in the Colombian market is Metrocuadrado which local conglomerate Grupo Aval owns.
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