While tying up with e-tailer Snapdeal last year for the sale of premium houses, Ratan Tata was sure that the investment would be testimony to the growing interest of established business houses in India’s burgeoning internet trade.

The property carnival by Snapdeal in association with its realty partner Tata Housing on June 5, 2015 witnessed the largest deal of Rs 1.1 crore.

Hours after commencing the online sale of Tata Housing’s premium and luxury apartments on its website, e-commerce major Snapdeal announced its biggest transaction worth Rs. 1.1 crore. The property festival has received an overwhelming response with more than 1800 enquiries.

Snapdeal Vice President for Fashion, FMCG and Real Estate, Amit Maheshwari said, “We offer an effective and economical channel for Tata Housing to reach its target group across India”. “Since the launch of the real estate category, we have focused on forging alliances with some of the most trusted names in the industry to provide a range of housing options to customers”, he added.

While Snapdeal has reaped success in online sale of real estate, the Co-founder & Managing Director of realty portal Shopsandhomes.com Rohit Dixit says, “Buying homes online is preferred only by large Investors who believe in a particular brand.  “ . “ The end user who purchases a flat with the motive of occupying it will never choose a property online, be it any trusted e-commerce gateway ”, he adds.

Housing.com buys online discussion forum IREF

Recently, a real estate portal Housing.com buys online discussion forum IREF (Indian Real Estate Forum) with a aim to provide and improve the content which can help the real estate investors and home buyers to make choices which and retain or attract the first time buyers in the retail real estate market.

This Mumbai-based real estate portal is financially backed by Japan’s SoftBank and after the deal it is expected that Housing.com will pay Rs 8 crore to acquire Indian Real Estate Forum that have a base of more than 1.5 lakh active users. Apart from that the first two acquisitions of company is expected to close in next one to two months.

In December 2014, Housing.com has  received a funding of about $ 90 million or Rs 560 crore from Japan’s SoftBank and after that they has set apart a corpus of Rs 200 crore for acquisitions. According to the officials of Housing.com, after the acquisition IREF will function  independently under the charge of Ravish Naresh who is a cofounder at Housing.com.

The forum is well known real estate platform for its unbiased and transparent project information’s, developers information’s, localities information’s, agents or brokers information’s, and plots information’s. According to officials of Housing.com we are in the last stage to acquire PropEquity and the deal is of Rs. 80 crore, but executive of PropEquity are saying that they have declined the deal.

While coming to desired changes in IREF, it is expected that there will be few changes in the section of IREF as Housing.com is planning to answer each and every query related to the builders, projects, brokers and agents. Whereas;, the Housing.com also planning to buy PropEquity, so that it can attract more and more business users as it is well known fact that PropEquity is a real estate data it its most of the clients are PE developers,investors and financial services who love to spot the market trends to generate the insights about real estate market.

3D preview of flats

Now you can have a three dimensional view of your wannabe residential flats as the developers have created a buzz with digital marketing and soft tools to induce the buyers. The developers and builders are using every tool in the kitty right from using drones to film new projects and thus offer a preview of how the flat will look like to the prospective buyer.

Already affected by the sagging sales, the developers have resorted to digital marketing tools to sell at least 2, 00,000 residential units during the October-December period, which translates for about 40 per cent of the annual sales. Industry watchers say developers are hoping to close as many deals by the year end as possible.

A host of builders are using 3D walkthroughs that help prospective buyers to visualise what they are going to buy. Speaking about the new approach, Advitiya Sharma, co-founder of Housing.com told a newspaper, “We have used drones to capture the view of a project from various angles. For a consumer, the Internet is the first point of enquiry and we want the experience to be good.”  This company, which counts Tata Housing and Rustomjee among its clients, says it has about 10,000 projects under its net. Several developers, including Tata Housing, Godrej, Mahindra, Wave and CHD already have a digital presence on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Pinterest. Tata Housing recently partnered with Snapdeal to sell homes online.

It may be noted that the businesses are moving towards new age marketing. Real estate is no exception. Nowadays referrals and word-of-mouth are becoming very critical for brand building and sustaining growth. This explains why social media and online presence have become very pertinent for real estate marketers, as they help them engage with prospective buyers, says A Harikesh, Senior Vice-President, Marketing & Sales, Tata Housing Development Company.

As per the data put out by the ASSOCHAM, its recent study found that realty firms spend about Rs 2,500 crore every year on publicity across different media and digital marketing accounts. Real estate portal CommonFloor.com has launched an augmented reality-based property search app called CommonFloor Real Estate, which also enables GPS-based map search and brings all its services to the mobile phone. If compared with traditional marketing like newspaper advertisements or billboards, digital advertisements are far cheaper and have a longer shelf life. Besides, industry watchers say that the shift to digital media is also helping developers cut costs by 10-15 per cent.