An Online Property Website...

JohnThomas09

Hey guys,i was recently thinking of purchasing an online Property website.I dont know anything about running an online business and need your advice.The business seems to be a real opportunity but im not sure,its listed in Google search engine under: Property for sale (page 1 of google No.9),which is think is a good hosting.Can a business like this make real money?Any suggestions?Hopefully Hammertime or TheEntrepreneur should be along any minute now...;)

conolan

I'd pay €100 for it, but not €1000. Might be worth something when market picks up, but DAFT and Myhome are so entrenched it's hard to see how anyone could compete.

JohnThomas09

conolan wrote: »

I'd pay €100 for it, but not €1000. Might be worth something when market picks up, but DAFT and Myhome are so entrenched it's hard to see how anyone could compete.

i think it would be easy to compete,everyone is selling houses these days and once your cheaper than DAFT your going to get the custom.

conolan

CORRECTION: Everyone is TRYING to sell. Nobody is buying.
Being cheaper than DAFT is easy. Getting thousands of homes on your site is very very hard. Nobody will look at the site if there aren't lots of houses, and nobody will pay to be on site if there aren't lots of houses.
Can you afford to make it free to advertise for a year or 2?
Can you afford to advertise it?
I have some specific knowledge as I worked on a similar site years ago. BE VERY CAREFUL.

JohnThomas09

conolan wrote: »

CORRECTION: Everyone is TRYING to sell. Nobody is buying.
Being cheaper than DAFT is easy. Getting thousands of homes on your site is very very hard. Nobody will look at the site if there aren't lots of houses, and nobody will pay to be on site if there aren't lots of houses.
Can you afford to make it free to advertise for a year or 2?
Can you afford to advertise it?
I have some specific knowledge as I worked on a similar site years ago. BE VERY CAREFUL.

thats what i said,everyone is selling houses these days.i thought if i charged a small fee for advertising this could cover the cost of my own advertising.Im sure in the beginning DAFT didn't have all the houses in the country on it.I realise it 2 completely different climates for me starting out and for the likes of DAFT starting out but if i had half the sucess DAFT had,i would be a wealthy man.

VO

Personally I would not touch it with a bargepole. There are lots of houses for sale at present - problem is no one is buying. If it is such a good opportunity why is it for sale?

Pixelcraft

JohnThomas09 wrote: »

i think it would be easy to compete,everyone is selling houses these days and once your cheaper than DAFT your going to get the custom.

This is a classic mistake of people starting an online business. Ok, so you're cheaper, and you get people to list their houses. Who's going to use the site? eventually when your advertisers realise there are no actual buyers or users of the site they'll pull out.

In short, think of the USERS first, and not the advertisers.

JohnThomas09 wrote: »

but if i had half the sucess DAFT had,i would be a wealthy man.

Sure, but what makes you think you will? personally I couldn't think of a worse investment.

Are you a property real estate expert ? If not, then I'd skip this one.

Daft are one of those companies in this specific field that I'd call "untouchable", it started from a passion and it shows because they are the best at what they do. There are a couple of other big players but Daft have it wrapped.

So with first place well and truly wrapped up, that leaves you fighting against "property for sale" sites (I couldn't see the site you were referring to, number 9 in my list is "Turkish Property" which I didn't click on), so essentially you're fighting for second place. In which case, you need to be an expert when it comes to property and then you have the factors of the economy (which are not being very kind to real estate agents online or offline) and then on top of that, you need to learn how an online business works.

It's all possible but you'd need to get on to your mate Obama for a loan.

*all in my opinion of course, very much still learning.

betonit

whats the site traffic and turnover.
Whats the sale price.

People may then be able to give you advice.

JohnThomas09

betonit wrote: »

whats the site traffic and turnover.
Whats the sale price.

People may then be able to give you advice.

not sure of the site traffice and turnover but the sale price is €29000.

W!zard

You need the site traffic info (all in detail) & turnover info.
Google ranking is one thing but its only a small part of it when looking to buy a domain name.

The domain name needs to have value beyond the turn-over and in an International space, so if you decide to sell it later, there will always be demand for it. Otherwise it is not worth it and better off to start from the beginning.

blue4ever

JohnThomas09 wrote: »

not sure of the site traffice and turnover but the sale price is €29000.

JT09 - that site has been on the market itself for months now - the price is a load of bo11ox. Absolute tat. It's infringing on Dick Turpins' franchise. The price was thought up by somebody who is most likely trying to clip the ticket on the sale.

I had a peek and ran, fast!

betonit

whats the site? It should be no problem mentioning the site name on public sale

Diarmuid

JohnThomas09 wrote: »

i think it would be easy to compete,everyone is selling houses these days and once your cheaper than DAFT your going to get the custom.

Trying to take some of DAFT's market is akin to Microsoft trying to get some of the Google market. First you need your offering to be better and cheaper then you need to invest a lot of money in getting people to your site. To compete with DAFT that could take you years and lots of money.

I'd steer away unless you can come up with some good angle or niche that will distinguish you.

JohnThomas09

cheers lads for your advice.im going to take all your comments onboard.

boomshackala

If your prepared to learn alot, work hard and niche in, you can ignore the naysayers

You will need to concentrate on building a list of prospects and find what they are interested in such as high yield investment property or bargain hard to fin holiday homes

Heres a resource that may be helpful
http://simsprofits.com/

betonit

boomshackala wrote: »

If your prepared to learn alot, work hard and niche in, you can ignore the naysayers

what you're saying is correct, but..The question as it turns out is about advice on paying 29000k for a website and not even knowing the traffic figures or turnover.

Asking price aside, but you're dealing with something that's a bit more complicated(with all due respect) than your average e-commerce store. You're dealing with a ridiculously competitive, exclusive market (property) that takes years and years to acquire the knowledge required and in a market which is taking a serious hit, it's not impossible, but you'll need a strong network of contacts and a very good expert and financial clout to be able to compete on for second place.

I'd never tell anyone to give up, that's not the nature of entreprenurship - but just make sure you know what you are doing. For a start, I think it's a bad idea talking about something this specific in an open forum - sure someone here could ill advise you as they may want it for themselves. It's just like making an announcement on a speaker phone in the middle of Grafton Street (Edit: then again, I trust very few people when it comes to looking for specific advice = my bad).

Best thing you could do, to make the learning curve easier for you is to focus on a segment of the property market and know it inside out. For that, you need to know trends and what's hot and what's not etc etc

betonit

the topic is about purchasing an online Property website for 29k with no turnover figures or traffic figures. Its not about starting an online property webiste. The price is the main factor here

Good man and I said asking price aside because I was adding other information for the OP to think about.

Fergal C

It would probably be unwise to invest that much in a business without first having a business plan for how you are going to move the business forward and generate a profit from it.

Have you considered what you could achieve with €29K if you were to start an online business from scratch?

professore

Henri wrote: »

Have you considered what you could achieve with €29K if you were to start an online business from scratch?

A Lot - for that money you could get a lot of website development these days.

golfman

I work in the property game and I can tell you straight off, there is NO NEED for another property portal. Daft and Myhome have the market serviced perfectly and are already established. The traffic on their sites is phenomenal, and thats what estate agents want....traffic.

You wouldn't be the first to think they can come up with and alternative to the "big 2" and I think it would be very hard to sign up estate agents unless you were free. Even then, they probably wouldn't waste their time uploading properties onto another property portal when 95% of the house hunters are using the "big 2" to search for properties online.

Sorry to rain on your parade but I'd say its a non-starter.

leitrim lad

yip i would be of the same impression,

you will get all this bull ,and waffle from auctioneers, that the saviour has come to resurect the property market, but all of them should be tortured for what they have done along side the bankers to the young generation of couples right across the country, leaving them in negative equity for the rest of their working lives.

there is no property market and never was and never will be, so there is no real need for a bunch of websites advertising houses around the country, for auctioneers, when i can just go direct to the builder, or the bank who has taken possession of the building site and buy a fully finished house for 50k in any county in ireland, whilst saving myself around 200k and cutting out the bull****t2r in the middle.

i can back up this as i have recently purchased 2 houses off a builder in co kildare for 100grand ready to be furnished in a big town