We have a big product roundup for you this week. We'll start with a fun one in Spain, and a television advert featuring professional footballers...
Fotocasa, the Spanish real estate platform owned by Adevinta, has brought in the familiar faces of professional footballers to supplement its latest advertising campaign.
Atlético Madrid footballers Koke, Marcos Llorente and Rodrigo Riquelme appear in the latest advertisement, part of a series after the portal agreed to a partnership with the club for 2024.
In May, teammates Saúl Niguez, Cesar Azpilicueta and José María Giménez also appeared in a similar television ad for the portal.
Realestate.com.au, Australia's leading real estate portal, has launched the next generation of its property listing experience, with images at the core of the first round of enhancements.
Australians will see significant updates to the property listing experience with larger image sizes, a new image tour experience, an AI-led image data feature, and a stronger brand presence for the listing agent.
Melina Cruickshank, Chief Product and Audience Officer at REA Group, said:
"Our first NextGen listing release sees a larger dynamic hero image, a Tour the Property feature, an AI-enhanced image viewer with higher resolution photography and the addition of new ML models into our core experience.
"Our listings will undergo a big evolution over the next year. The changes launching this week are just the beginning. The realestate.com.au NextGen listing of the future has been designed to inspire much deeper discovery and connection and we’re excited to begin rolling out the next era of digital property experiences."
REA Group also announced a major investment this week after acquiring Athena Home Loans.
PropertyGuru has launched MarketWatch for agents in Singapore, allowing realtors to create watchlists, scan market movements and uncover co-broking opportunities.
According to a press release from PropertyGuru, "MarketWatch is a tool available to all PropertyGuru Agent Partners on AgentNet."
Agents can set criteria including property type, transaction type, location and budget, then receive real-time updates on new listings and price changes. Agents can also opt-in for push notifications every hour to stay on top of the best opportunities.
MarketWatch users can directly contact the listing agent for co-broking opportunities, sharing a commission for closed transactions.
Realestate.com.kh, the Digital Classifieds Group-owned Cambodian real estate portal asset, has opened a physical office in the capital city of Phnom Penh.
The new office will be open seven days a week and offer free consultations, serving as a hub and meeting spot for local agents, buyers and sellers.
Realestate.com.kh says it wants the hub to boost professionalization in the local industry through international-standard training, workshops and industry events, and will also host sales events.
Tom O’Sullivan, CEO of RealEstate.com.kh, said:
"Our mission is to be a leader in creating an efficient, trusted and sustainable real estate market.
"Working together as an industry to achieve this is more important now than ever. I see the Connect Center as an excellent venue to foster industry collaboration and provide professional education for agents, empowering them to better serve their clients and grow their careers."
AtHome.jp has launched a website and a mobile search engine for people considering buying a custom-built home—the most popular type of property purchase in Japan.
The new service allows users to search for home builders and construction companies, and browse model homes and sample designs.
Realtor.com has released a new map-based search experience using colour-coded map layers to help homebuyers visualise key market data in desired neighbourhoods.
The new map offers 11 map layers including home estimates, lot size (and sloping), home size and age, market hotness, sold price Vs list price, average days on the market, and neighbourhood boundaries.
Homebuyers can access dynamic map layers by changing their home search view from list to map
Mausam Bhatt, CPO at Realtor.com, told Inman:
"Do you remember when you bought your first smartphone and how it completely changed how you use a phone? Dynamic map layers are going to change how people search for homes online.
"They are an entirely new pathway to home discovery that allows buyers to answer their most pressing questions with a look at a map.
"[The maps] present data in an interactive way that is easy to use, easy to understand, and easy to make the most informed decisions with – so users can confidently choose the place they call home."
The U.S. rental portal operator Zumper has introduced a filter to allow its users to show listings that allow subletting on Airbnb.
According to the San Francisco-based company, many operators of multi-family rental buildings do allow their tenants to sub-let their apartments on a short-term basis via platforms such as Airbnb taking a commission for doing so.
Zumper's aim is to highlight these listings on its marketplace and show renters the potential new homes that could earn them some extra cash.
Anthemos Georgiades, CEO of Zumper, said:
"Through our partnership with Airbnb, we are excited to usher in a new age of flexible renting to Zumper’s users.
"Renters will be able to discover multifamily communities on Zumper where they can earn extra income from renting out their unit on Airbnb part-time. At the same time, property owners and management companies can empower tenants to host guests responsibly on Airbnb, while also making their community stand out from the pack when renters are considering where to live."
For its part, Airbnb is more than happy with Zumper's new tool which will no doubt lead to more inventory on its marketplace.
Jesse Stein, Head of Airbnb for Real Estate
"We are thrilled to partner with Zumper to bring more renters to Airbnb-friendly apartments.
"Traditionally, renters haven’t always had an easy time finding a home they could host on Airbnb. That’s why we launched the Airbnb-friendly marketplace and why this partnership with Zumper is so meaningful. Everyone should have the opportunity to earn extra income on their space."
American residential portal market leader Zillow has announced the introduction of climate risk data for its sale listings.
The data is provided by First Street, a leading climate risk modelling company and covers flood, wildfire, wind, heat and air quality. The data will be displayed on listing pages along with interactive maps and insurance requirements.
"Climate risks are now a critical factor in home-buying decisions," said Skylar Olsen, chief economist at Zillow. "Healthy markets are ones where buyers and sellers have access to all relevant data for their decisions. As concerns about flooding, extreme temperatures and wildfires grow — and what that might mean for future insurance costs — this tool also helps agents inform their clients in discussing climate risk, insurance and long-term affordability."
Other U.S. portals already have similar ways for their users to check climate risks on site. In 2021, brokerage and discovery site Redfin announced that it had added climate risk data to its location pages and followed up earlier this year with air quality risk data for individual listings. The same year Movoto partnered with climate risk specialist ClimateCheck to offer climate risk scores for its listings.
British AI-powered portal startup Jitty has added a search filter for "fixer-uppers" or properties that will require renovations as a response to user feedback.
Jitty says the filter will allow home searchers to both find and avoid these types of properties according to their needs.
Graham Paterson, co-founder and CEO at Jitty, said:
"With natural language search we can see exactly what people want to search for. This is massively influencing our roadmap. And as we grow the amount of estate agent listings we can link to, we're seeing people shift from just browsing to more serious buyers and vendors. These searches tend to be more pragmatic with location being an important starting point, compared to those just browsing."
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