Overseas Real Estate Industry

Delivered August 1st, 2019. Contributors: Jasleen, Shahrukh, Supneet and

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Real Estate Databases: New Zealand and U.S.A.

Major databases that real estate agents use to research property owners and prospect for new business in New Zealand are CoreLogic and LINZ. Major databases that real estate agents use to research property owners and prospect for new business in the United States are CoreLogic and Realtor Property Resource.
MAJOR DATABASES IN NEW ZEALAND 1. CORELOGIC 
CoreLogic NZ has a coverage of 99% of the New Zealand property market and more than 500 million decision points in their database. 
 Five hundred million customers in New Zealand leverage CoreLogic data and APIs to enrich their own databases with valuable property information.
The database has up to 2,300,000 verified primaries in use physical addresses.
 
 2. LAND INFORMATION NEW ZEALAND (LINZ) 
LINZ is the authoritative government source of land title and cadastral survey records for New Zealand. These records contain information about property ownership and boundaries, and are essential to maintain property rights across the country.
 
LINZ data services include property title owners and title memorials, parcels, for example, lots, sections, easements, covenants, and marginal strips and survey marks, observations, plans, adjustments, and land district. 
MAJOR DATABASES IN THE UNITED STATES 1. CORELOGIC 
CoreLogic covers 99% of all properties in the United States, which equates to 147 million properties and 99.9% of the population.  
CoreLogic in the United States encounters approximately 4.5 million real estate transactions per month, and transaction assets boast historical data on 740 million real estate transactions. 
 2. REALTOR PROPERTY RESOURCE (RPR) 
RPR is a wholly-owned subsidiary of National Association of Realtors (NAR). NAR has more than one million members in the US, which is composed of residential and commercial realtors who are appraisers, brokers, counselors, property managers, salespeople, and others participating in all aspects of the real estate industry. 
RPR includes a national database of more than 147 million residential and commercial properties in the US, The database is available to NAR members and is included in their yearly NAR dues. 
RPR offers online access to comprehensive real estate market data, analytics and reports for each of NAR's constituencies. 
RESEARCH STRATEGYThe information pertaining to alternate tools that real estate agents in the United States and New Zealand use to locate information that may be missing from databases is not available. It is likely that such tools used by the agents are not publicly available in order to keep the real estate agents business going. Having it publicly available may enable sellers and buyers to remove an agent from the transaction.
 Further, it appears that there is no fixed pattern for the tools being used mandatorily by the agents in New Zealand and the United States, hence there is no information pertaining to the tools used by them. 

We commenced our research for other tools that real estate agents in New Zealand and the United States use to locate information that may be missing from databases to complete the property owner's contact details by going through real estate specific publications for both the countries where we aimed to find a relevant article or journal which could possibly have a direct or alternate information on major directories that agents use and other tools used. We looked into sources such as Boston Magazine, Property Institute, Bigger Pockets, among others. However, these included general information on condo listings and trends in real estate across both the countries, but nothing on the requested information.

We then moved on to check for real estate associations in New Zealand and the United States where the idea was to find some trends captured and presented as articles or blogs by these associations whereby they mention the use of specific tools as being a trend or use of directories as a trend. Scanning through websites and resources of associations such as the National Association of Realtors, Association of Commercial Real Estate Professionals (ACRP), Commercial Real Estate Development Association (NAIOP), National Association of Real Estate Advisors (NAREA), the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand (REINZ), the Real Estate Authority, among others, but we could not locate any relevant data that could be used. These majorly covered the real estate laws within the countries, rising problems, and their solutions, among others.

We then moved on to check for any specific reports which might have free sampled data (per country), which cites the name of the tools used or a common directory that is trending with more number of users across the two countries. Checking into reports from JLL, Newmark Knight Frank, Colliers International, Cushman & Wakefield, PwC, CBRE, among others, but no relevant reports could be cited. These are some top names in the real estate industry and are also into real estate business intelligence. The reports found majorly covered the overall revenue and sales, but nothing on the required subject of directory used and the tools used. 

Lastly, we checked tools and software databases like Capterra, Getapp, Siftery, Eventbrite, RapidAPI, and review websites such as Fit Small Business to find some widely used tools by the real estate agents. While these portals had lists of software tools per sub-segment, a specific real estate industry was not included. Sub-segments like IT management software, scheduling software, lead management, Business intelligence software, CRM software, among others were found. However, there was no trace of software widely used or famous among the real estate agents across the specified countries or globally. 

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Real Estate Databases: Canada and Singapore

Some of the major property databases real estate agents used to research property owners and prospects for new business in Canada are Sutton, Realtor.ca, and ICIWorld. Some of the major property databases real estate agents used to research property owners and prospects for new business in Singapore are SRX and ERA.

MAJOR REAL ESTATE DATABASES (CANADA)
1. Sutton
 https://www.sutton.com/About-Sutton 
Sutton is the first real estate company that offers its 7,500 realtors a personal email and website at the industry-renowned Sutton.com address. 
This initiative positioned its realtors as specialized information brokers and empowered them to continue growing.
2. Realtor.ca https://insights.realtor.ca
2.7+ million leads were sent to REALTORS® in 2018. These leads were made available to members as a benefit of joining the Canadian Real Estate Association.
 $162 billion average total value of REALTOR.ca listing.
 310,000 average number of REALTOR.ca listings.

3. ICIWorld.net
 http://www.realestatesalespeople.com 
The confidence of ICIWorld can be traced to the fact that their databases receive over 1.5 million hits per month from agents, buyers, and sellers in over 110 countries. The ads appear on over 18,000 pages throughout the Internet. 

MAJOR REAL ESTATE DATABASES (SINGAPORE)
1. SRX
 https://www.srx.com.sg 
The exchange is a digital platform that provides the property agents, bankers, and lawyers with computer-generated pricing (i.e., X-Value™ and Home Report™).
It also provides listing services, lead generation, and integrated applications to provide their services to buyers, sellers, landlords, and tenants.
2. ERA
 https://www.era.com.sg 
The ERA Realty Network boasts that it delivers the highest average income per agent among all SGX-listed real estate companies.

OTHER TOOLS USED
1. VOW integration (Canada)
A real estate website with the VOW (Virtual Office Website) tool allows real estate agents to provide their web visitors with increased access to MLS® data in exchange for their contact information.
Once a visitor provides their information, they are given a password to obtain valuable property information and the ability to conduct searches of all available MLS® listings.
The tool has a special feature for agents that tracks the visitors who register and it monitors their activity to find out the types of properties they are interested in, thus turning them into potential leads.
2. Preqin Pro (Singapore)
Preqin Pro, gives in-depth insight you need to make intelligent data-led decisions in the private real estate industry.
Using the tool, agents can be the first to know about new funds, fund searches, RFPs, deals and exits, and be alerted to activity in real-time.
The tool provides agents a transparent overview of the real estate industry including investment plans, strategies, criteria and data. The site also offers information on deals and exits, and service providers; as well as access to investment consultants.

ADDITIONAL HELPFUL FINDINGSFor many firms, the use of technology tools has been gaining traction. 
There are now more tools available to agents than just a simple listing on an online classifieds site. 
Virtual reality showcases are another way agents can better market properties and can reduce the average days-on-market (DOM) of flats. 
The average DOM for an HDB home is 104 days, whilst for a private resale flat is 185 days as of January 2017.
Agents that make use of technology to create quality listings consisting of a 360 Virtual Tour and an X Listing with certified valuation cuts DOM by half. 
In terms of negotiating, there are analytic tools that provide instant micro and macro information and offers analysis calculators. 
For facilitating insurance, automated underwriting and policy delivery are now available. 
When it comes to sealing a deal, automated conveyancing and document collection can now also be used.

RESEARCH STRATEGYThe information on major directories that agents use was not available. Only one tool per country was found that could be used by the agents in Canada and Singapore. We started checking for the above-mentioned missing information by going through real estate specific publications for both the countries where we were hoping to find a relevant magazine article or some sort of published piece which could have direct or alternate info on major directories that agents use and other tools used. We looked into Property World, CREA, DBS, Knight Frank, PropWise, MapleTree, Remonline, Canadian Real Estate magazine, Homesland, Towertrip, etc.; however, these included general info on condo listings, trends in real estate across both the countries but nothing on the required subject.

We then moved on to check for real estate associations in Singapore and Canada where we were hoping to find some trends captured and presented as articles or blogs by these associations whereby they mention the use of specific tools as being a trend or use of directories as a trend. Looking through associations like CREA, REIC, REALPAC, OREA, APREA, Council for Estate Agencies (CEA), REIT Association of Singapore, Global RealEstate Society Singapore, etc., we could not locate any relevant data that could be used. These majorly covered the real estate laws within the countries, rising problems and their solutions. 

We then moved on to check for any specific reports which might have free sampled data (per country) which cites the name of the tool used or a common directory that is trending with more numbers of users across both countries. Checking into reports from JLL, Knight Frank, Colliers International, Cushman & Wakefield, PWC, CBRE, etc. no relevant reports could be cited. These are some of the top names in the real estate industry and are also into real estate business intelligence. The reports found majorly covered the overall revenue, sales, etc. but nothing on the required subject of directories and tools used. 

Next, we checked tools and software databases like Capterra, Getapp, Siftery, Eventbrite, RapidAPI, etc. to find out some of the widely used tools by the real estate agents. While these portals had lists of software tools per sub-segment, a specific real estate industry was not included. Sub-segments like IT Management Software, Scheduling Software, Lead Management, Business Intelligence Software, CRM Software, etc. were found. However, there was no trace of these software systems widely used or famous within the real estate agents across the specified countries or globally. 

It is likely that the directories used by the agents are not publicly available in order to keep the real estate agents' businesses going. Having it publicly available may enable sellers and buyers to remove an agent from the transaction.
 For tools, it appears that there is no fixed pattern of the tools being used in a mandatory way by the agents in Canada and Singapore; hence, there is no info on the tools used by them. Based on the above-attempted strategies your research team determined that the data needed may not be available on public platforms. 

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Real Estate Databases: Hong Kong and United Kingdom

The major property database sites used by real estate agents to research property owners in the UK are Corelogic UK, and RealPage while real estate agents in Hong Kong use Spacious and Hong Kong Homes.

MAJOR PROPERTY DATABASE USED BY REAL ESTATE AGENTS IN THE UNITED KINGDOMCORELOGIC UK
Corelogic UK's website can be accessed here. 
Inclusion criteria: Corelogic is the largest provider of property information, analytics, and property-related risk management services in the world. Its UK database has more than 100 million property decision points which enables confident decision-making for real estate professionals, which are the company's primary business customers.
Corelogic UK offers real estate agency services which include connecting them with property insights to identify homeowners who are poised to sell, identify the current market value, estimated rental values and the number of properties sold in an area.
The company has more than 1 million clients users/real estate agencies who rely on their "data and predictive decision analytics to reduce risk, enhance transparency and improve the performance of their businesses."
The Corelogic UK website traffic analysis states that the company has gained 50.06% of traffic is from organic search under search terms of "avm providers in the uk" and "property data api uk". Also, the traffic sources are largely direct (49.94%) and internet searches (50.06%) which highlights that the company is predominantly looked upon by their direct customers for real estate related analytics.

REALPAGE 
RealPage's website can be accessed here.
Inclusion criteria: RealPage is a top competitor of Corelogic and is a global provider of software and data analytics to the real estate agents. The company has 12,200 clients worldwide from offices in North America, Europe, and Asia and suite of solutions benefits for real estate professionals to grow their business.
RealPage acquired PEX in UK to offer property management, online leasing and resident software solutions to market-leading clients in the United Kingdom and is UK’s largest provider of student accommodation.
Capterra UK rated RealPage with 3.5 rating based on its customers reviews and ratings in the country wherein it is highly rated for its customer service and features (4 star).

OTHER SUPPLEMENTARY TOOLS (UK)RD MARKETING
RD Marketing's website can be accessed here.
Inclusion criteria: RD Marketing UK Estate Agents Database contains 8,746 records for senior contacts which is useful for property management companies/real estate agencies.
It offers easy access to GDPR compliant database of landlords, property owners, and others along with their contact details and they have agreed to be contacted by the suppliers.

HOMESGOFAST.COM
Homesgofast.com's website can be accessed here.
Inclusion criteria: Homesgofast.com is based in London, UK and its network of international real estate websites attract thousands of buyers every day. By using this data, the company offers real estate agents free leads to those who are in search of investment property, luxury homes, second homes abroad, holiday properties, and houses to buy abroad.
Homesgofast.com had a rapid growth in its customers covering over 50 countries around the world. It works with thousands of homeowners, agents, and property developers.

MAJOR PROPERTY DATABASE USED BY REAL ESTATE AGENTS IN HONG KONGSPACIOUS 
Spacious' website can be accessed here.
Inclusion criteria: Spacious is a high quality real estate inquiry generation platform in Hong Kong which is a widely used real estate database site by real estate agents to gather information and leads on property owners and leads.
Through Spacious, hundreds of real estate agencies are working and have earned tens of millions in commissions from the leads generated.
 Large real estate agents such as Century 21, Colliers, Nan Fung, and others are clients of Spacious.

HONG KONG HOMES
Hong Kong Homes' website can be accessed here.
Inclusion Criteria: Hong Kong Homes is one of the leaders in Hong Kong specialized in prime residential sales and leasing and is an online platform for a number of associated licensed real estate agency firms in Hong Kong.
The company is the top competitor of Spacious and offers similar services nationwide in Hong Kong.
The Hongkonghomes.com website has a large engagement on web with 54,670 visits from Hong Kong, 38.93% through internet search and 79.55% from audience who have major interest in real estate business and consumer services.

OTHER SUPPLEMENTARY TOOLS (Hong Kong)KOMPASS 
Kompass' website can be accessed here.
Inclusion Criteria: Kompass is a company directory and business data solutions site which has presence in more than 70 countries and offers real estate agents in Hong Kong to access the global marketplace and connect with prospect list.
Kompass is widely used by more than 27 real estate companies in Hong Kong.

EGUIDE
eGuide's website can be accessed here.
Inclusion criteria: eGuide is Singapore's largest online business directory which helps customers to find businesses and businesses to find customers.
The company offers 245,000 listings.
It has a specific real estate agent directory with more than 1,116 registered real estate agencies listed and have access to customer data.
By listing, eGuide gives businesses direct access to the database and they can get direct sales leads and inquiries for their business promotion.

Research Strategy:In order to identify insights on 2 major databases that real estate agents use to research property owners and prospect for new business along with 2 other supplementary tools that real estate agents use to locate information in the UK and Hong Kong, we searched through multiple real estate agents community forums, blogs, and news articles which share insights on the business approaches being undertaken by these property professionals for growing business.

Through the search, we found the references of the above listed major database sites and other tools accessed by real estate agents wherein the inclusion criteria largely included those database sites whose target customers are majorly real estate agents in the country, have nationwide/global presence, have major database access, clients, customer reviews, and other notable credentials. Additionally, the inclusion of other supplementary tools was based on forums which are largely aggregators for real estate agents and have large listings, database, contact leads, past business passed to real estate agents as commissions, have large real estate agents as their existing clients and other similar notable considerations.