insight into enormo and worldwide property search

Online platforms which allow agents to manage and market their listings are springing up in Europe (see Property Portal Feeder, for example), but have been an essential and established tool for realtors in the States for some time.

One of the most comprehensive offerings in real estate marketing is the Real Estate Media Marketplace (REMM), a private-labeled online platform that offers real estate professionals one place to purchase their marketing services and products.  Companies who have integrated this platform for their clients include VHT, Inc., the industry’s leading real estate visual marketing supplier, and PropertyPreviews, a free online video creation tool.  VHT and PropertyPreviews.com clients go into the Real Estate Media Marketplace to create their flyers, postcards, DVDs, and to distribute listings throughout the internet, to specialist advertising channels like Enormo.

From today, Enormo opens up a gateway from REMM, allowing VHT and PropertyPreviews.com clients to list on Enormo and to get strong discounts on enhancing their portfolios.

Get in touch at info@enormo.com for more details.

Enormo already works with leading software houses in many countries, providing agents with an easy way to get their listings onto our portals. This week, we welcome new strategic partner Janela Digital.

Established in 1999, the JD Group aims to be a one-stop shop for property professionals, helping its clients with their websites, customer relationship management and providing marketing tools like virtual tour creators and window display ‘kiosks’.

Under the Janela Digital umbrella are Portuguese software brand Imoguia and the Spanish company Inmofocus, as well as the portals Casa Sapo (Portugal) and Casa Sapo (Spain), now also advertising properties from Cape Verde, Angola and Mozambique.

Thanks to the collaboration, all Imoguia and Inmofocus clients will be able to list their properties with Enormo easily, and benefit from an interesting advertising offer.

After a successful year working with Enormo, Network Communications Inc (NCI) has chosen to display over 10,000 listings from the anchor of its multi-family division, Apartment Finder.  NCI is the largets publisher of print and online housing information in North America,  with an impressive reach, and footholds in a range of markets.

The Apartment Finder brand, which publishes rental opportunities for communities across the US, is the fastest-growing multi-media platform in its industry. NCI has chosen Enormo as a channel partner to widen its online distribution network, now reaching both renters from overseas - for example, people with business interests both sides of the Atlantic - and local/national flat-hunters.

While an agent’s choice of ‘traditional’ media channels may vary between countries and markets (for example, ‘publicaciones inmobiliarias’ and newspaper classified ads are still favoured in Spain),  it’s now widely accepted that the internet is vital to the marketing mix. Latest stats indicate 70-80% of property seekers now begin their purchase process online; if your portfolio isn’t there, your business is missing out.

At Enormo, we’ll take this a step further and say that it can’t be just any online ad space - if your property isn’t being marketed on a fully-international online channel, you’re screening out all the potential buyers who may be very interested in your property, but may not speak your language or feel comfortable browsing in your national currency.

With this in mind, we’re delighted to announce a partnership with one of the largest real estate media companies in the world, Homes & Land, to give its agents truly-global online advertising reach. With a focus on the US and Canadian markets, Homes & Land is a leader in print advertising for real estate agents, publishing more than 50 million magazines every year; it also runs homesandland.com, which attracts 1.46 million unique visitors each month.

For a brand which clearly listens to its clients and reacts on market movements, adding Enormo as its international channel partner is a logical step. From today, we’ll be bringing new, international ‘eyeballs’ to 154,000 of Homes & Land’s listings, giving its agents access to the buyers across borders who are searching for American and Canadian real estate.

From the 80 countries Enormo lists property in, France is consistently popular, both for homeseekers and real estate agents. With this in mind, we’re happy to announce a collaboration with Eric Mey, the established French network, to give its agents one entry point to advertise on Enormo.com and all 80 of our new national ‘gateway’ sites.

Groupe Eric Mey comprises 14 real estate brands with a variety of portfolio types (commercial agents; premium properties), making up over 200 franchise branches across the country. It’s a great new Partner for Enormo: passionate and professional real estate agents with a central support network to help them make the most transactions possible.

If you belong to a network and you want to reach international buyers, get in touch: info@enormo.com

Today Enormo’s added around 27,000 listings to its index from the large Swiss portal homegate.ch.

The properties (both sale and rental) are located throughout Switzerland, Austria, Italy and France;  listings are online in the countrys’ languages.

homegate.ch agents will get exposure to Enormo’s pool of 4.5 million international buyers using the site every month, and can choose to ‘enhance’ their listings to capture leads directly.

We’re delighted to accept homegate’s inventory - especially the beautiful timber ski chalets!

After adding the new-build section, this week Enormo’s focusing on property of a different kind by introducing foreclosure listings into the index for the first time, in response to demand from our investor users in Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

Realising that a multi-lingual, multi-currency search channel would be of real benefit to these property seekers, we’ve launched a partnership with RealtyTrac, one of the largest and best-known online resources for foreclosed property in the States, to display their agents’ properties. The 1 million new listings are naturally focused around the ‘hotspots’ of Florida and California and cover all three stages of the process - ‘Pre-foreclosure’, ‘Foreclosure auction’, and ‘Bank-owned’.

The good news for our investor visitors, both professional and ‘armchair’, is the great value of this stock. The lowest-priced foreclosed properties on Enormo are currently around $1000 - yes, one thousand dollars! - for a lender-owned house in Houston, or San José, or Cleveland.

Enormo is now open to list ‘distressed’ properties (those on sale for far less than their usual value) anywhere in the world - we’re looking to partner with auction houses, repossession vendors and agents with discounted properties, to connect them with the new buyers coming to market to pick up a bargain.

Contact rosie.cade@enormo.com.

Fantastic news today - Enormo is now the ninth most-visited global real estate site.

An audit of the online real estate industry by comScore shows that, rated by total worldwide unique visitors, Enormo has become the top truly cross-border online marketplace. Enormo.com and its national domains now rank after only the large Chinese portals, US giants MSN and Yahoo, and German champion ImmobilientScout24 - sites focused on one buyer market.

comScore is the undisputed global leader in monitoring and measuring websites’ traffic, so the analysis of our growth is nicely definitive.

It’s also a good sign for the industry - despite the economy’s constraints, the buyers are still out there, and more and more, they’re starting their buying process online.

Details of comScore’s report are over at Property Portal Watch.

Today Enormo launches its New Builds section - a space in the portal distinct from our 7 million resale listings, exclusively for off-plan and just-launched development projects.

Responding to frequent inquiries from developers who wanted the access to cross-border buyers we give our agent clients, the section was built to be a more expansive offering, a substantial marketing space which would display clearly and beautifully some of the great resi buildings going up around the globe.

Enormo New Build section

Each development has a ‘detail’ page to itself, where property marketers can post titles, action text, prices, key features and as detailed a description text as they need. Visually, the page keeps to the Enormo brand but is media-rich - there’s space for 30+ images and up to ten video clips and multiple pdfs of floorplans, pricing and location info.

The developer detail page

Although the new build section can display properties from any country location, Enormo’s developer launch partners have suitably exotic offerings, which show off the section to its best advantage. Grosevnor Park International lists the divine Two Rivers dev in the Dominican Republic and four others from Barbados, St Lucia and St Vincent; A&M Global Services markets an exclusive gated development in North-East Brazil, while 7 Resorts is using Enormo to attract interest to its deluxe Tropical D’Santo Cristo beach resort.

We think Enormo’s second home-buyers and investors will like viewing extended info about a development before they contact the vendor - although we do expect some of our visitors just to set the virtual tours to widescreen, rustle up a quick mojito and dream some international property-seeker dreams…

Is there any vendor more truly ‘cross-border’ than an international developer?

Most of the developers we know at Enormo are of nationality a, working in country b, selling property in location c to buyers from region d. They can’t run the risk of marketing through just one channel, and they don’t bother advertising anywhere not properly tailored to their buyer base - the known client nationalities/languages AND the ‘new’ buyers out there, possibly from places they are just beginning to target, where there is still money for real estate investment.

These developers need an online marketing space that is flexible enough to adapt as their buildings take physical shape, that will last them the ‘lifetime’ of the project, and which works to complement other areas in which they advertise.

To try and answer this need, and to, dare we say it, offer more than other portals’ existing new-build sections, we’ve been building a new section for Enormo.com and its (now 65) country domains. We’re aiming to provide an online marketing space which will give selected developers the tools they need to display their portfolio in a properly tantalising way. Design and functionality differs from Enormo’s resale listings - the new-build section will hold up to ten videos and will have customisable headings and description text, and call-to-actions such as ‘Add me to your mailing list’ and ‘Send me a brochure’.

We’re launching the section with a choice selection of multilingual, multinational property companies. Grosvenor Park International’s latest five-star development is located in the lush Carribbean surroundings used for filming Pirates of the Carribbean; the company’s sponsoring promising boxer George Michael Carman Jr as part of its innovative advertising outreach.

7Resorts creates apartments for people looking for tranquility, space and an unspoiled ‘new’ Brazilian location. Its Tropical D’Santo Cristo complex has beaches among the best in Brazil, meccas for watersports fanatics, and provides  a low entry level for investors and great potential for rental, being the first luxury development in the area.

Turkish specialists Ekol Construction are targeting second home-buyers looking for additional benefits to their buy - their apartments and villas come fully-furnished. Their predominant target markets are Russian, Dutch and British buyers, attracted by the price point and the support for potential buyers throughout the buying process.

A&M Global Services‘ talent lies in matching properties to their buyers, depending on budget. The agency markets exclusively for overseas projects and currently has developments for sale in Panama, Cape Verde, Egypt and Macedonia.

Enormo’s new section launches on 15 April. Contact the new-build team on info@enormo.com for more information.