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The definite real estate market seclusion and the operative shortage of the information access, forces the realtors to find the new ways of communication today. And, if these ways in the world level are found- it is about Internet- then in Latvia this process right now is only in the beginning stage.
Consulted by Vitalij VASECKIJ, the president of company Baltic Consultants (www.realestateinform.com)
The money or analytics?
More developed Internet resources in the real estate sphere are considered the American ones, and be it ever so inconceivable, also the Russian resources. And the last ones by the amount of visitors even exceed the Americans.
The Russia real estate market already several years lives by the west principle: if you do not participate in the Internet, so you are losing an important part of the clients. Besides the Russians are gone along: they are fulfilled the formal data bases (listings) with the great analytical resources (firstly, it is about the capital cities- Moscow and St.Petersburg). In Russia sites the realtor-beginner will find everything that is necessary for his job: how to establish the own site, how to make discussions with the clients, what kind of mistakes are permissible, where the prices increases and where decreases.
Position of the concluded ones
It is counted up, that the request of the "real estate" in English sites takes 28/29th place, but the request of the "недвижимость" in Russian sites- 30/32th place. What happens in Latvia? Analyzing the all-existing catalogs, tops, resource lists in lv-nets can establish a fact that the real estate sites are outside of the first 50 names. It is great, if any has managed to get in the first hundred.
In Latvia real estate market existing Internet resources can be divided in four categories conditionally:
- the products of the real estate companies;
- the universal products, which gives the common notion of the situation in market;
- the professional associations (in Latvia there are 2 - associations LANIDA and NIMA);
- the products, which offers the official data (bureaucratically resources).
The company pages
From the more than 500 real estate companies registered in the market, there are only approximately 300 companies really acting, but only 70 of them are participating in the Internet. As the rule, the purpose of the site is the company itself and not the object direction. For the majority "the home page" is only the printed brochure depiction in the computer form. Namely, the Internet does not supplement, but duplicate the printed advertisement of the real estate companies. For that reason there appears the widespread opinion in regards the advertisement, placed in the net that does not bring the profit and unjustified the invested assets.
Firstly, the Internet sites popularity depends on the amount of visitors. If the information is not being renewed for months (as well as for years), there are no chances that the potential client will visit this page once more. For the majority of the real estate pages that are placed in the Latvia Internet net, the average visitation is 5-10 persons per day. The leaders, which are in the first fifth (for instance latio.lv and ober-haus.lv), can boast with 30-50 visitors. The given fact more sooner can be explained by the sites low information and not by the Latvia users disinterest.
The universal resources
There is only some universal information resources in the lv-net, approximately 5. Among them are only 2 specialized directly in the real estate - realestateinform.com and jums.lv. And the first of mentioned has chosen the way as a result is the valuable site with the universal data base establishing, that unites the all seller (the companies and individual persons) offers, including analytics, reviews and comments.
An official information
The necessary information can be obtained from the bureaucratically resources (The States Land Register, Privatization agency and the other databases). The above mentioned database data are constant and are more of interest to professionals. And that kind of portal creators are not the real estate market participants, thus their assignment is not their own product direction. By this category can be added also the recently established The Real Estate Transaction Register. Though it is a little bit aside, the product in itself is very interesting, but again there is fixed the constant picture - transactions, which are officially registered in the bureaucratically authorities. [back]
Irina SJARKI
"Bizness&Baltija"
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