The Real Group Blog

Real estate search engine HomeSpace.sg has unveiled their latest feature, HomeValue, which allows Home buyers to determine their negotiation advantage on real estate that they are interested in. “Homebuyers are usually very helpless when it comes to negotiation. They usually rely on an agent to advise them on the price to offer. “, said Vinod Nair, CEO of HomeSpace.sg.

With HomeValue, home buyers can now be well informed of the pricing trends and past transactions of comparable homes, which means that they are empowered with data that helps them determine the best price they should pay for the house.

HomeValue is unlike any other price trend feature available. HomeValue actually does a radius scan for similar property in the area and pulls up the past transaction and listing data for those units. 

“To derive an accurate offer price, you have to refer to similar properties in the area. You cannot compare 5 room flats with 3 room flats. Even units of the same type within the same neighbourhood differ in price based on proximity to amenities.”, explained Vinod.

HomeValue cuts down more than 90% of the workload and information gathering one has to go through before making a price decision on the house. Potential buyers can track the past transaction mean of similar houses within the area of their desired house up to 2 years back.

With this latest feature added into HomeSpace’s arsenal, it now boasts of the most number of pro-consumer features to help consumers effortlessly obtain relevant information on their desired homes.

Amazing. Simply amazing. The power of the media that is.

The Business Times contacted us late last year wanting to do a story. It started off with the focus being the team rather than the product; with interesting angles slanting towards how the brightest ideas may occur not in big, pretentious boardrooms, but in messy garages occupied by “young-twenty-something-internet-punks”.

 Somehow along the way, the product started selling itself more and more (much to our delight) and the story eventually became a full feature about HomeSpace.sg, not the people running it. But hey, we ain’t complaining. Check out the article here.

Since the article was published on February 4th 2008, our site traffic doubled, SMS leads sent out via HomeSpace doubled and sign-ups TRIPPLED! We were very shortly asked to do another interview with Entrepreneur.com.sg. Article here.

The Real Group would like to thank Felda Chay for writing the article and tolerating our never-ending rants.

It’s been a long time since the whole team embarked on the HomeSpace project and I’m happy to finally announce the launch of HomeSpace - beta to the public! Here’s the official press release

SINGAPORE, 28 Oct 07 – The Real Group launched HomeSpace.sg today, a powerful yet easy-to-use real estate search engine that effectively bridges buyer and seller in today’s hot property market. HomeSpace empowers sellers to easily post fuss-free listings via a simple online input in under 20 seconds. The platform, using only the home’s zip code, automatically populates the listing with the rest of the necessary information and maps it onto Google maps using its “SmartPins” technology which displays locational details for each property such as nearby schools, MRT stations and shopping malls.

While the proliferation of Internet use is notably high in Singapore, most users do not fully utilize its power in the real estate marketplace. “Sellers are usually mobile and away from their computers for most part of the day,” noted Vinod Nair, Chief Executive Officer of The Real Group. “How we’ve addressed this is to instantly deliver qualified property leads straight to them via SMS, making it remarkably convenient for them to contact buyers for their property while remaining mobile.”

“Creating a listing has never been easier. We have cut the time and effort needed to create one by over 80%,” said Timothy Kua, Director of Marketing. “All we really need are what we like to call ‘ZAP’ - Zip code, floor Area and Price - to put up a quality listing for you that is automatically furnished with road name, facilities if it’s a condo, nearby amenities like schools and malls and even the distance from these places. Gone are the days when every detail needs to be painfully filled out; now buyers can see almost everything you have to offer in just three easy steps. Of course, sellers can also add additional information such as the number of rooms and photographs just as easily on the website.”

HomeSpace strives to increase the value proposition to home-seekers looking for the best home within their budget. Vinod explained: “Buyers will appreciate the notably cleaner and uncluttered interface that is rid of irrelevant links and advertisements which are usually found engulfing other real estate websites. With our slick user-interface, wicked search technology and ‘Google-powered’ mapping system, we believe that HomeSpace will provide a user-experience so positive that buyers will repeatedly visit our website to conduct their home searches and also refer HomeSpace to their friends and family.”

As part of their launch promotion, HomeSpace is giving away 10 qualified leads for free per signup.

Visit www.homespace.sg today!