German startup aims to be top in online real estate

The Philippine unit of online real estate marketplace Lamudi is aiming to be the country’s top go-to website among property sellers and buyers within the year, on the back of a robust property sector as well as growing mobile Internet penetration here.

“The Philippines is a very important country for us; it’s growing very fast. We do believe this is where we want to win the real estate marketplace,” Paul Philipp Hermann, co-founder and managing director of Berlin, Germany-based Lamudi, says in a recent press conference.

Hermann cites that the Philippines belongs to the so-called “PINE” with neighboring Indonesia, and African countries Nigeria and Ethiopia—an acronym a Time magazine article published last week coined to refer to the four emerging economies that may upstage Brazil, Russia, India and China or “BRIC” as economic powerhouses.

Lamudi Philippines managing director Jacqueline van den Ende notes that the Philippine economy last year grew 7.2 percent despite the onslaught of a number of natural calamities, with 16 percent of the gross domestic product (GDP) contributed by real estate and construction.

Consumer spending is also on the rise, she notes, for the most part buoyed by the inflows of remittances from overseas Filipino workers. “OFWs will sustain the property boom,” van den Ende says, while Hermann adds that they believe there is no property bubble in the country.

Lamudi Philippines is being positioned as the first of its kind one-stop-shop for property buyers, sellers as well as landlords and renters. At present, it is the only online marketplace in the country that focuses on real estate.

The site also has a mobile platform, which will make it more accessible to anyone with smartphones. “Lamudi is into a business shifting from offline to online, especially in developing countries,” Hermann says.

Van den Ende says they aim to be the No. 1 site in terms of user traffic, high quality listings, and number of deals to be sealed in 12 months’ time.

Since the Philippine site www.lamudi.com.ph was launched in January, it has already posted 10,000 listings, or almost 6 percent of the global listings totaling 170,000 to date.

About 30,000 more listings signed with brokers are currently being evaluated, as a team of about 30 real estate specialists based in Makati City first double-checks the existence as well as evaluates the quality of every property to be posted on Lamudi Philippines.

With the rising number of clientele, Lamudi Philippines is currently on hiring mode, van den Ende says, especially as another office in Cebu was opened last month to focus on the “fast-growing” property market in the island-province.

Because property is a lifetime investment, Lamudi Philippines is ensuring the quality of listings on the site by dealing only with real estate brokers licensed by the Philippine Regulatory Commission (PRC), van den Ende said.

Lamudi Philippines has partnered with leading property developers such as Aboitiz Land, Crown Asia, Megaworld, Primary Homes, Robinsons Land, SMDC and Vista Residences so these companies can showcase their offerings on the site, she says, adding that they also plan to partner with banks to provide buyers with financing options.

Founded by German startup incubator Rocket Internet last year, Lamudi currently has operations in 21 countries found mainly in the emerging regions of Asia, Africa and Latin America.

Among the other Rocket Internet ventures also operating in the Philippines are Lazada, Zalora and Easy Taxi.