During this interview, Byron Burley, started by presenting us as the largest network of property portals in the world. ListGlobally works with real estate agents, brands, brokers and we take their property listings and then we syndicate them over a 100 international property portals. We publish listings in countries like China, France, Thailand and others. We are a one-stop-solution to provide global marketing for property listings.
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The National Association of Realtors publishes a report annually that provides data about the sales, but at ListGlobally we don't track that kind of statistics. What we do track is the number of customers interest in buying property abroad. We track lead volume, we can track the inquiry amount, and others.
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Both Gregg Stebben and Byron agree that there is a growing number of retirees, in Europe and in the USA, that are looking to buy a property abroad. Considering this fact, Byron gave the example of 2 aunts that are Canadian and both bought a property in Arizona. On the other side he uses himself as an example because in the last 5 years he lived in the Australia, Hong Kong and he is now living in Canada. Lifestyles are changing and real estate agents that want to be different should pay attention to new buying trends.
There are markets like New York that are considered to be hot, and universities and colleagues are for sure really important when it comes to attracting foreigners. However, the USA education system also contributes to the development of the residential market in places like North Dakota. Buying a property while your children is being educated is important because if your kid gets a job in the USA, and ends up getting a green card, they already have a way to start. Either or not you have a yield, real estate will be like a savings account to the kids.
We hear about foreign people coming to the USA to buy property, but we never have a real sense of the work real estate agents must develop in order to reach them. Marketing properties worldwide is not an easy thing to do. You have people searching to buy a house in the USA, but real estate agents will also have to care about USA customers looking to buy abroad. Gregg Stebben, from Forbes was impressed by the fact that ListGlobally allows a broker to overcome some obstacles. For example, it provides the agent the ability to upload a listing in his native country and language, and then automatically translates it to the languages covered by it's network. ListGlobally translates listings into 16 different languages like Chinese, Russian, french, german, Portuguese and others. The idea is to simplify the communication process. On the other hand it allows that a potential buyer can read the property description in his/her own language. Currently we are even building a system where agents can modify translations.
If you happen to speak Russian better than the system, you will be welcome to go in and modify the translations- Byron Burley
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Even though international real estate is a trend, not every country accepts it. For instance, New Zealand is implementing heavy legislation to stop foreigners from buying property in the country. Right now they are only able to buy new construction properties. They expect that this rule will lower down the costs of buying a house for locals. Also Toronto and Vancouver are playing their game with taxes. However, according to Byron Burley, global access to property is a good thing, and if you have foreign buyers interested in your country and in your properties, this means you are doing great things on your market.
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The international real estate business have some specific characteristics. For instance, a consumer might be in the other side of the world and the agent will need 8 hours to reply back. Global consumers are everywhere and it is complex to build a system that will provide them direct replies. Note that's there consumers are already aware that the agent is in a different timezone. But how should this be tackle and improved?
The compensation is very different from country to country. For example, in North America the agent will pay for advertising, and in Australia is is a vendor pay model. There are lot's of real estate companies that will ask agent to be in charge of its own marketing and others don't.
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Real estate business is a real interesting business because you are selling yourself and your services individually. But if you want to differentiate your business you'd better be different. Offering global marketing to your listings, like real estate agents do with ListGlobally, is for sure a differentiator. You will be reaching 216 Million potential buyers globally.
These are the numbers that makes us unique, says our North America president. A company that develops a property portal tries to get traffic to their portal, but at ListGlobally, because we are a network of portals, we work with other portals that already have their agents and listings.What we do is to bring international buyers to them.
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Right now we are focusing on the promotion of properties and driving traffic to the listings. But there are plenty of other 3rd party services like mortgages, financing, legal advices, custom translation, or client relationship management systems that can be a good opportunity as we grow globally. Note that real estate is no longer a local business and all the professionals need to adapt. There is a global audience that is worth to explore.
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At ListGlobally is quite simple to promote listings worldwide. Contact us to know more.
access to +100 property portals in +60 countries around the world.
The good news is that we also more listings you have, the cheaper it gets. We can get quite economical for brokers that search for a solution for a larger team.
There is a whole world to explore once you decide to sell globally and at ListGlobally we help agents to get started and to improve their results.
Want to start? Contact us.