The Real Group Blog

Media Release – For Immediate Release

LAUNCH OF SMARTLOANS.SG – SINGAPORE’S FIRST INSTANT ONLINE MORTGAGE COMPARISON PLATFORM

The Real Group develops new innovative solution to help home buyers and owners compare mortgage rates across 8 major banks in Singapore

Singapore, 6 April 2009 – New and existing home buyers in Singapore can now sleep better at night, knowing that their mortgage is the lowest it can be thanks to SmartLoans – the first-of-its-kind mortgage comparison platform serving the local market. Developed by The Real Group, SmartLoans is a free-to-use online mortgage comparison platform that enables users to easily search, compare and enquire about home loan packages available across 8 different banks. Through SmartLoans, what previously took a couple of hours of research can now take a couple of minutes. More importantly, the unbiased information provided could result in significant cost savings as users can determine which loan package saves them the most amount of money.

Previously, to find the best mortgage rates in town, users had to plough through multiple banking websites, educate themselves on the many loan packages available and calculate interest amounts manually; all of which were complicating and time consuming. Alternatively, they could approach a mortgage broker, resulting in added costs and time spent. With SmartLoans, users enjoy the flexibility of going through the process independent of a third party, as well as the ease and precision of having the system perform the calculations automatically – free of charge. SmartLoans monitors the market closely and updates mortgage rates as soon as there are any changes, ensuring that users are always provided with the most up-to-date information.

The process of getting the best rates through SmartLoans is simple. The SmartWizard tool guides users through a series of short questions and automatically creates the user’s unique “mortgage profile”. This process typically takes about 2-3 minutes in total. Mortgage-related terms such as “locked-in”, or “floating rates” are explained clearly throughout the process, to help first-timers. The SmartWizard also gives details on how to arrive at the best package. For example, it advises users on when it would be best to take up a fixed rate, or when they should avoid taking up a lock-in package.

Upon completion, the SmartWizard presents a chart and table of all applicable loan packages; sorted in ascending order of the cumulative interest they would have to pay throughout the loan tenure. Users can then opt to connect directly with the bank should they decide to find out more from the bank’s loan officer. Should the users eventually take up a mortgage with the bank through SmartLoans, The Real Group gets a commission from the bank. No charge is made to the user.

“SmartLoans gives users more control over the mortgage and refinancing process. We aim to help our customers find the best deal when hunting for a mortgage,” says Vinod Nair, CEO of The Real Group. “Many potential home buyers will find SmartLoans very useful. At the same time, it will also help home buyers who are looking to refinance their existing mortgage compare their options.”

“With the current economic downturn, we needed to refinance our mortgage. We tried SmartLoans and were delighted at how easy and user-friendly it was, even to someone like me who is not familiar with using the Internet. In the end, we found a bank that was able to give us the best refinancing option and are in the process of finalizing the paperwork. Refinancing our loan would potentially save us thousands,” said Mdm Poh, who bought her house in 2006 and is refinancing her $200,000 mortgage.

The Real Group developed SmartLoans using advanced Internet technology and a customer-centric business model. The Real Group is the same team behind HomeSpace.sg and RentSpace.sg – both map-based real estate search engines for Singapore. The Real Group’s founding members comprise of NUS graduates, who aim to enhance and simplify the home buying process.

“I am heartened to see The Real Group developing new innovative solutions for the real estate industry. Although the economic situation has had a dampening effect on the home buying scene, The Real Group have adapted their business model and developed new revenue-generating activities. More importantly, SmartLoans provides real value to its users,” said Prof Wong Poh Kam, Director of the NUS Entrepreneurship Centre, which is incubating The Real Group.

To check out SmartLoans, visit http://www.SmartLoans.sg

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About The Real Group
The Real Group was founded in 2007 and is the same team that brought the popular map-based real estate search engines HomeSpace.sg and RentSpace.sg. The Real Group is funded and supported by MDA and NUS Enterprise. The Real Group continually strives to provide pro-consumer solutions for the real estate industry. http://therealgrp.com/

About NUS Enterprise
NUS Enterprise was established in 2001 as a university-level cluster, to provide an enterprise dimension to NUS teaching and research involving the university’s students, staff and alumni. The functions of the Enterprise cluster complement the academic cluster of the University to nurture talents with an entrepreneurial and global mindset. NUS Enterprise promotes the spirit of innovation and enterprise through experiential education, industry engagement & partnerships and entrepreneurship support. www.nus.edu.sg/enterprise

Media enquires may be directed to:

Chan Yiu Lin
NUS Enterprise
yiulin@greenergrass.com.sg
Mobile: (65) 9765-5897

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.

It’s one of the biggest bets you can place on another person: You hire a real estate agent to sell your home.

She sizes up its charms, snaps some pictures, sets the price, writes a seductive ad, shows the house aggressively, negotiates the offers, and sees the deal through to the end. Sure, it’s a lot of work, but she’s getting a nice cut. On the sale of a $300,000 house, you’ll typically pay a 6 percent agent fee of $18,000. That’s a lot of money. But you tell yourself that you never could have sold the house for $300,000 on your own. The agent knew how to - what’s that phrase she used? - “maximize the house’s value.” She got you top dollar, right?

A real estate agent is every bit the expert. She is better informed than you about your home’s worth, the state of the housing market, even the buyer’s frame of mind. You depend on her for this information.

As the world has grown more specialized, countless such experts have made themselves similarly indispensable. Doctors, lawyers, contractors, auto mechanics: They all enjoy informational advantage. And they use that advantage to help you.

Right?

Read the rest of this entry »

Local Real Estate Updates

1.    4 bungalows sold for 5.5million each despite subdued property sentiments

Despite the current quiet residential market, all four strata bungalows in a freehold cluster housing development near Eng Neo Avenue were snapped up at $5.5 million each at a preview on Friday last week.

The $22 million transaction works out to $1,128 psf of built-up area. The buyer was a European with a Singaporean wife. ‘The units were bought partly for the buyers’ own use and partly for investment,’ said Jerry Tan, managing director of JTResi, the sole marketing agent for Quartet on Vanda.

The bungalows, which are expected to be completed early next year, are being developed by Stanley Quek’s Region Development on a 12,300 sq ft site at Vanda Crescent off Dunearn Road. Each two-storey unit has an attic, a basement and a swimming pool. Built-up areas range from 4,844 sq ft to 4,919 sq ft.

‘The market is not as dead as people may perceive it to be. For better quality developments that are priced sensibly, there will be buyers,’ Mr Tan said.

-As adapted from Business Times 15 May 2008

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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.

I’d like to thank our early beta testers for helping us sort out bugs and for giving us suggestions on how to improve. We’ve sorted out as much as possible in this short time frame and we’re finally launching our marketing campaign… From just  our little marketing “experiments” we’ve managed to garner about 40 signups in 24 hours and it doesn’t seem like its going to slow down. Look out Singapore, here we come! Thanks for all your support! We could not have done it without you.

We’re working on some cool features and are looking for talented software engineers who love what we’re doing and want to be part of the team. Drop a mail to vinod at homespace.sg and I’ll be in touch. 

I was once again chillin’ out with my advertising guru friend over beers and somehow (as always), we started talking about Mediacorp’s questionable strategy of spreading the Mocca brand.

 ”What the hell were they thinking?” was my approach to the matter and loving to play devil’s advocate, he pointed out that like it or not, their “all-out” advertising campaign was a huge success. Why so?

Let’s face it. Within a month from its launch, almost every Singaporean has come to know of Mocca.com. People either talk about it or shoot spoof videos of the muscle dude and post them on YouTube (go check them out). In a nutshell, top-of-mind recall was emminent and perhaps that was Mediacorp’s number one objective.

The flip side of the argument however, is that people don’t always talk about or remember Mocca.com in a positive way. No doubt there is top-of-mind recall, but what is the point of that if they don’t recall anything great about it? Countless forums speak of its bad marketing and countless people take a piss out of its silly ad concepts.

Mocca’s tv ads have also been focusing heavily on its video embedding capability. Visiting the website however shows no such ads that have embedded videos of ordinary folks advertising their wares. Is the market not ready for this feature? Did Mediacorp play too many cards at one shot too soon?

Perhaps the 1o min video in “The Ries Report” (http://www.riesreport.com/index.php?month=10) is enough to illustrate where Mediacorp went wrong in their marketing strategy. Al Ries (marketing guru) elaborates on the difference between a commonly used ”big-bang” approach versus a “slow build up” approach, and why waiting for the right time (tipping point) to advertise “all-out” will yield a much greater ROI.

Our conclusion: Mediacorp doesn’t have a baaaaaad product (though we love saying it). The only thing that was reeeeeeally bad was their timing. The moment Mocca.com was launched, they almost immediately blasted the whole Singapore 24/7 with advertisments that have only served to set expectations way high. When people went to the website and realized that “it ain’t that great”, credibilty fell. And everyone knows that when a new product emerges in the market and loses credibility from day one, it’s going to take a miracle to gain it back.

What they could have done was to simply sell the fact that people can now turn to an online classifieds platform as opposed to the traditional newspaper classifieds. That capability already sells itself. Afterwhich, they can then focus on selling their search function which should really be their back-bone core feature because the truth is, searching for an item over the newspaper classifieds really just sucks.

When they start to win over early adopters and the early majority (hence stabalizing their initial user-base), they can then execute their “all-out-blast-the-whole-Singapore” advertising approach, not just because they have the easy means to, but because by then, they would have had a more solid product and a stronger user-base to back up their claims. And over time, when the masses have further grown to accept and approve the website, market the video embedding feature, which by then, should result in a higher acceptance and adoption rate.

But with all that has been said and done, alas…it might already be too late for them…

We’ll see…

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!

I was recently interviewed by Gwen Tan from SGEntrepreneurs.  Actually, we did an email interview a few weeks ago, but I had to tell her to hold off on the publishing because I didn’t wanna generate too much buzz when the site was not quite ready yet.

Me and the tech team have been staying overnight at the office for the past few days to meet the requirements for the launch. Staelen looks zombified from the lack of proper sleep for the past 2 days… We’re just working really hard to bring the best damn product possible. Possibly even rivalling US sites… The Biz team and myself have been prepping for a couple of presentations we have lined up next week, which hopefully land us some funding so that we can market this

We’re definitely going to be one of the first few companies in the world to launch a full frontal assault youtube marketing campaign. I met a bunch of really cool and talented animation and film guys from NTU and we’re gonna be working with them to produce a series of hilarious viral video adn print ads. You can look forward to that sometime in November.  In the mean time, if you have any feedback or comments reply to this post and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can

Ok I’ll admit it’s abit lame… but what the hell… I hate that ad so much, I thought I’d do a voiceover, Borat style….