I have been following zillow for almost 7-8 months and finally got enough analysis done to do a post. As a regular reader lot of you know i try to cover business ideas abroad with their implication and model’s reusability in india. Zillow is another business model which is very useful for those new property websites comming up every day. we already have magicbricks.com, 99acres.com creating a name for them and suddenly news for jaydaad.com comes in . Its interesting all of these portals are banking on cash flow from advertisements.
No one is innovating further by providing tools which could be useful for customers to use them as prefered method of advertisement. As first of all most of the people advertising on these portals are property dealers or Builders. Though this is getting the dough but not helping real buyer and seller connect.
Zillow was something was considering doing by self for india. But in india different set of problems exist and different set of metrics need to be done.
Problems
- Lack of digitized land and revenue record
- Cities are not planned. So what you see on map would not exist in real life
- GIS MAPs for cities are still not very accutate
- Too much encorachment hence actual vs on paper different story.
- All transactions are not transparent and people often avoid paying property transaction tax on actual transaction value
If anyone is interested in doing a zillow would surely like to help in the venture as have good solid research for model’s working in indian enviornment.
Hello…this is a nice reading…
I have serious interests in the Real estate portal domain and have been trying to conceptualize a similar to Zillow.com effort as far as instant property valuation is concerned. But as you said such an effort in the Indian Real estate space seems to be a herculean task.
I would greatly appreciate your insights and findings if you can share them.
I am reachable at bagha.ray@gmail.com.
regards
Bagha
Hi Siddharth Puri,
Very good idea. We are working out a replicate of Zillow and Trulia in Vietnam, and face similar problems in Vietnm. But I think if you move first with online map, avm tools, you would get advantage. I see some problems with Gmap, limit of daily queries, no support, thinking of Openlayers. IF you find something interested let’s discuss.
Jason
HI,
I am interested to do something like this. can you pleaes give me call on my cell 9998005521 or email me on pms_m@yahoo.com
Pratik
Hey pratik.
Could you let me know if you are still interested in the India. I know its herculean task, but should be doable, I am a business student at Insead and am looking to start my own venture, you could reach me at rajan.panchapakesan@insead.edu