How international Real Estate portals are dominating the market

The way in which real estate agents promote properties online has undoubtedly changed in the last decade. This has largely come about because of how the internet is used by homebuyers in recent years, especially real estate portals.

According to Statista, in 2021 “the internet was highly used for home searches in the United States. About 99 percent of home buyers between the ages of 23 and 56 used the internet to find homes in their home buying process.”

Other significant stats by the National Association of Realtors (NAR) in their September 2021 Real Estate in the Digital Age Report allude to the following behaviours:

  • While the expertise of REALTORS® remains vital to the home buying and selling process, the internet serves as a tool for all generations of home buyers; 97 percent of all homebuyers used the internet in their home search
  • 76 percent of homebuyers used a mobile or tablet search device in their home search; Millennials used mobile devices nearly twice as often as the Silent Generation (born from 1925 – 1945)
  • Younger Millennials conducted 65 percent of their mobile search on mobile devices, while Older Boomers conducted 75 percent on a desktop/laptop
  • Buyers typically searched for eight weeks, viewing nine homes, five of which were viewed solely online
  • All generations except the Silent Generation were most likely to have first found the home they ultimately purchased online; the Silent Generation were most likely to find their home first from their real estate agent

use of internet in home search

But what exactly does this mean for real estate professionals? Well, having a real estate website that can amplify property listings to online homebuyers is critical. However, to maximise reach, agents and property developers are also looking to popular real estate portals to showcase their properties to a wider global audience. But what is a real estate portal and what are the most popular?

Table of Contents

  1. What is a Real Estate portal?
  2. What benefits do Real Estate portals offer?
  3. Choosing what Real Estate portal to use
  4. Leading international Real Estate portals
  5. Qobrix CRM and Real Estate portal integrations

1. What is a Real Estate Portal?

A real estate portal is essentially an online real estate marketplace designed to bring sellers and potential homebuyers together. While some portals do accommodate private sellers, they do offer real estate professionals like agents, realtors, brokers and property developers the opportunity to boost the visibility of their listings significantly.

2. What benefits do Real Estate portals offer?

Real estate portals are a powerful sales tool which help realtors generate more leads and sell more properties. They do this with features and functionalities that include:

  • property matching
  • price indicators by area
  • online property valuations
  • mortgage estimates
  • geolocation of properties for sale
  • neighbourhood guides
  • optimised search and filtering
  • alerts and notifications
  • favourites

Notably, Real Estate portals also offer agencies and developers:

  • A wider reach: property portals offer real estate professionals the ability to showcase their property listings to potential homebuyers or investors in practically every part of the world.
  • More credibility: an online profile adds to the credibility of the real estate professional, be this an agency or a developer. Buyers or renters typically gain more trust if you have an online listing.

3. Choosing what Real Estate portal to use

Selecting a portal that will best promote your property listings to your target audience should be based on the following criteria:

  1. Defining who you are looking to sell to (audience demographic, geography)
  2. Selecting a portal that specialises in the types of properties you sell
  3. Exclusivity (to what degree are you restricted from listing your properties on other real estate portals?)
  4. Fees (what will it cost you to add your listings to the portal?)
  5. The ease of use with which a potential buyer can navigate the portal to find what they are looking for
  6. The ability for you to add video or provide online viewings
  7. If you can run ads easily on the portal
  8. The ability to integrate your CRM software with the portal to which you wish to publish your properties
  9. Access to key market intelligence on the portal
  10. The amount of traffic generated by the portal to identify prospective target reach and average click through rates on listings

where buyer found home they purchased

4. Leading international Real Estate Portals

Real Estate portals are becoming increasingly widespread across the globe for obvious reasons. These are some of the most leading property portals in use around the world today:

Rightmove

Rightmove is considered to be the United Kingdom’s number one property portal. According to this article, “Rightmove receives 127.5 million visits per month. However, in January 2020, they broke this record by surpassing 150 million visits for the first time ever. This is a 7% increase compared to January of the previous year. The number of time users spent on their website also increased, reaching 1.17 billion minutes.” More about the types of features Rightmove offers agents here.

Idealista

Semrush reports that in May idealista.com, a popular Spanish Real Estate portal, “received 43.1M visits with the average session duration 12:19.” The portal reportedly has over 1.4 million listings of flats and houses for sale and rent. It delivers much by way of key real estate market data to investors, developers, real estate agencies and individuals. It also offers a range of useful tools to help real estate professionals improve prospecting and marketing and identify customer demand.

Immobiliare

Italian immobiliare.it “received 16.4M visits in May with the average session duration 13:11. Desktops drive 38.8% of visits, while 61.2% of visitors come from mobile devices.” (Semrush) Immobiliare boasts “over 232 million minutes spent on the site and 6,7 million detail page views per month, and over 93 million minutes spent on the app and 1,8 million active users per month.” Immobiliare.it has over 1.2 million listings published by private advertisers and real estate agencies, accompanied by photos, videos, property descriptions and other key data.

Fotocasa

Fotocasa.es is a leading Real Estate portal in Spain. It received “11.8M visits in May with the average session duration 10:47. Compared to April, traffic to fotocasa.es has increased by 7.5%. On fotocasa.es, desktops drive 18.7% of visits, while mobile devices account for 81.3% of visitors.” (Semrush) The portal lists more than 1.5 million second-hand properties, new developments and rental homes. It offers a range of useful features including a pricing index, district guide, online property valuations, and mortgage estimator.

Zoopla

According to Semrush stats, zoopla.co.uk received “21.3M visits in May with the average session duration 09:26. Compared to April traffic to zoopla.co.uk has increased by 3.4%. The portal’s traffic has increased by 12.6% month-on-month up to current organic search traffic. In addition, paid search traffic has increased by 4.2% up to current paid search traffic. Desktops drive 31.3% of visits, while 68.7% of visitors come from mobile devices.” Zoopla offers agents and builders flexible pricing, access to performance data, audience data and a marketable database that reportedly saw “58% more leads delivered to agents through its app in 12 months, and a 75% increase in new homes email leads, year-on-year.”

Spitogatos

One of Greece’s most popular Real Estate portals, spitogatos.gr has over 400k active property listings for sale or to rent to millions of property seekers looking to find a property in Greece. In May spitogatos.gr received “7.5M visits with the average session duration 13:08. Compared to April traffic to spitogatos.gr has increased by 38.9%.” The portal offers agents important features like detailed analytics about property ad performance, a free client monitoring and management, search and visit requests, property listings and promotion reports.

XE

XE.gr is a renowned online marketplace in Greece. The portal has thousands of property listings that include houses for sale or rent, student housing, business leases, parking rentals or sales, land sales, etc. The portal provides important data based on its analysis of pricing fluctuations and broader trends of the real estate market in Greece. XE.gr sees about 1.7 million worth of monthly organic traffic (Semrush).

Bazaraki

Bazaraki.com is the number 1 online marketplace in Cyprus with thousands of residential and commercial properties listed for sale or rent. Organic traffic to the site is approximately 543,865/month. Listings on bazaraki.com are categorised according to building type. Search is also filtered according to the type of property (commercial or private), if it’s a sale or rental, rental period, room rental with or without flatmates, and more.

5. Qobrix CRM and Real Estate portal integrations

Qobrix is a powerful end-to-end platform built for real estate professionals worldwide. The system is comprised of a robust CRM, advanced client and agent portals, a unique bulk website generator, real estate websites, innovative landlord and tenant portals, and buyer and seller portals.

qobrix crm software

Qobrix CRM software can integrate with international real estate portals to help you amplify your property listings, generate more leads and boost sales. This includes Rightmove, Immobiliare, Fotocasa, Spitogatos, XE and Bazaraki. This is by no means an exhaustive list of potential integrations but rather one that is always expanding based on customer needs.

To discover more about the benefits our platform offers real estate professionals, schedule a FREE demo with a member of our sales team here.