Immobilier en Suisse romande, un « net »-marché

Taking into consideration several agencies, the percent of sales made thanks to the internet is variable, however there are companies like Just Immo (www.justimmo.ch) that is focused on the internet transactions, and 100% of their turnover is a result of the clients and the properties sold exclusively on line. A choice for some, a necessity for others. There are several ways to deal with an Internet strategy that became a necessity for the agencies.

Switzerland is quite advanced in this field. Portals like www.homegate.ch and www.immostreet.ch are sharing the market in Switzerland.

This kind of situation advantages first of all the clients. As a matter of fact, surfing on these two sites, the client has the possibility to achieve a global view of approximately 75% of the real estate market.

Certain countries have a sale management almost nationalized. The United States for example, take advantage of this kind of market. An agency signs a brokerage contract and enters the property which is for sale in a centralized data base. Let's suppose that another agency has the ideal client for that specific property and if the agency is accredited, it may present the property to the client, taking thus half of the brokerage tax. The other half will be given to the agency that signed the sale terms. I think this concept is very interesting, especially for the buyer, as all he has to do is to visit one of his local agencies in order to discover all the properties available for sale, from the whole area. On the other side, the seller is guaranteed the fact that his property will be available for all the clients of the other agencies.

The Swiss network adopted a similar strategy. Having thus more than 50 agencies as partners, lead by the same principle of sharing goods, this group offers a large portfolio to his clients.

Even if it's not yet regulated, posting the ads on www.immostreet.ch, also brings a centralization of the real estate market for the buying customer.

Unfortunately, there are cases when one may encounter the same property being displayed two times on one of these sites, and sometimes having different prices. However, we may take them into consideration and with some improvement; we may solve that problem, and raise the quality of the offer.

There are also some sites not very well known, but that are promised a bright future:

www.immomig.ch tries to make a courageous bet, offering a SPIDER to his users. A spider is some kind of search engine that is a tool designed to search for all the pertinent ads and sale offers from the real estate market on several sites. Once it's entirely functional, and the different compatibility problems are solved, this portal could regroup all the offers on a singular site. This is to be continued...

A regional ranking regarding the agency sites is proposed on www.alexa.com. You can thus see for yourselves how visited is the site of your agency and even compare it to the local competition.

Due to the diversity of the on line services, the owners themselves became more implied in the sale of their properties, thus avoiding paying commissions to the agencies. The blogs and the sites of small ads, like www.anibis.ch, www.annonces.com, announces a raise of direct sales every day. This approach is good for the persons that have computer skills.
On several situations, the result is a negative and unprofessional image.
What are the issues and reasons for this kind of image?

An owner takes some photos of his house, writes a few lines to describe his property, and posts it on different sites on the internet. After that, he waits. Unless he has the property with the ideal situation and the best price, his effort is almost useless.
In this case, the internet may become more an obstacle than an advantage and it may counterattack, by slowing down the sale itself.

Seeing he has zero results, the owner turns to a professional. This one will begin all over again, but having the necessary knowledge to do a quality work. Most of the cases, the price gets changed, as, an evaluation of a property can't rely only on a “feeling” but on the real estate market situation.

The description of the property will be also redone, of a very precise manner, to better inform the potential buyer; the images and the evaluation of the goods is of great importance. These are means of communication and they have to be used according to precise rules in order to obtain the desired impact!

The promotion of goods on the internet is a full time job. This requires technical knowledge, computer skills, fluidity, referencing, aesthetic and graphic knowledge, the display inside the page of the promoting materials, image adjustment, emphasizing the qualities of the object, descriptive structures.

In conclusion, the promotion of properties on the internet can't be made randomly, it's a new job with an important role in the real estate business.

Nowadays the broker or the brokerage agency must be very effective in promoting on the internet, in using the small ads on line, in publishing them on different portals, in the quality of the pictures. This change in the real estate market, offers the small but competent agencies the chance to make a name for themselves and to distinguish themselves among others.

Steve Hardy
Just Immo Sàrl
www.justimmo.ch
Manager
Le 23. novembre 2007