Type of business that is lacking in the area

Here's a business idea.

Some sort of real estate service. This would have two components. One would be a discovery / listing and the other would be actively attempting to make the sell. I won't get into the selling part because we all know how that works. The listing / discovery is a more interesting problem to me because that's not solved here.

I would start out with a "war room" where I would have a huge map of the city printed out, trace out all the roads, and then hire people to "crawl" the map. For each house / apartment they find for rent, I would have them hand information for the service to the landlord, take pictures and take down all the details. I would have them going out every day and possibly even switch routes with others to see if one person is missing a bunch of listings. I might even give out bonuses for people who are able to find the most listings.

Getting this information in front of others is where you would have earn your stripes.

One possibility would be to post each listing in Facebook. That's okay for interacting with users, but the interface is a bit limiting. If you wanted to go a step further you could create a Facebook app. You could also further target users by buying Facebook ads. For Dumaguete web traffic, you could get traffic really cheap. The great thing about Facebook is that you can get great engagement info from their analytics and the many ways people can interact with your page.

Another possibility would be to setup one or more staffed kiosks where people could go look at an info binder with all the listings.

Further methods would require a lot of creativity. You would probably need to post advertisements in well trafficked areas to serve as funnels to get people to your Facebook page and Kiosks. Of course you could also setup kiosks at special events around the city.

As your service grows, you would also get people contacting you with their rental info rather than having to rely so much on your crew.

Monetization would also be tricky. You would want for all discovered listings to be in the service, so you wouldn't necessarily charge everyone a fee. Maybe you could serve as the gatekeeper. People contact you and then you make the connection and charge the landlord for an interested lead. Maybe you could have an agent take the person to the location and give a tour. Again, you would just need some creativity here.

Before going balls out on this service, I would do some initial ground work. It wouldn't be hard to take a couple of days to ride around the city to collect information and hire some family to do the same. Setup the Facebook page with those listings. Put together some basic ads and then run about $50 worth of ads (targeting people who live in Dumaguete of course) and see what happens. Do you get zero interest? Do you get a decent amount of activity? Are people pounding down your door? Then just grow out from there or bag the idea entirely.

If this model works in Dumaguete, then you could expand it to other cities.

 

Dude, that is one of the ideas I had a few years ago. Start an MLS service for the Phils, vs.....the way it's done now. (hehehe....I have an internationally known real estate website source code that could be modified/used)....just need the listings and the contracts/agreements. This is an idea that I have thought a lot about...the biggest problem I have run into is that the realtors in the Phils are not willing to have their listings shared by anyone. They are greedy bastards and they won't split or share a commision with anyone beyond a 50 piso thank you token payment. I have found that this is usually because they are advertising prices for land/homes that are way, way beyond what the owner wants to sell it for and they get to keep everything over the sellers actual price....which could be more than the actual asking price. There is no set commision percentage..it's all about whatever you can soak someone for.

What they don't realize and won't understand is that exposure is what sells a piece of property, not some slick tricks. They don't want to be bothered by lookers, just buyers. They think that if they show it, it should sell on the first showing. In my travels here, I have had realtors actually want to charge me 1,000 piso just use their time to look at a piece of property. Until the realtors learn what professionalism is and that exposure and commission sharing will sell a hundred times more property than they can on their own, this type of service won't get very far.

What might work would be just listing rental property and charging a set fee per month for advertising a unit for rent. Place all the info on the ad so that the searcher can contact the landlord directly, but will have all the info needed so as not to waste anyone's time.

 

Interesting idea but I'd be worried how stable it would be. I'd worry on Filipino's trying to copy or even those you hire to find trying to one up you on it or sell the info to one of the local broker guys. Also so many won't invest just a little bit to make their property look presentable so hard to imagine trying to get them to pay a fee and I'd think to many buyers or the sellers would try and go behind your back cutting you out of the picture. Its not like you have a chance of sueing for your cut. I'd really be thinking your just training a bunch of locals how to take over your business and steal it from out from under you. They could copy every aspect easy enough likely except any webpage and that can be fixed by them just posting in the various classifieds.

I'd be thinking a bit more of a solid thing for least short term would be just going for rentals with small finders fee's such as 1-4k for a completed job which would be split somehow with the local you may hire to manage the showing and finding. To many of the *brokers* try and stick someone for about 10% or 1 full month rent for such little work. Rent a place for 10k a month for 1 year contract and they demand 10k cash which is generally the deposit or first month. Trying to sell a big item such as your car and they want 10% fee which of course is always recouped from the seller/landlord who just raises the cost. This does drive away numerous potential buyers though.

 

I would think that you had to have a lot of people willing to pay (say 500PhP a month, thats what DI charges) the fee, I like the initial idea from the "TheDude", with having a map with all the objects on the market, it would be very helpful but you would probably get into troubles with the "Dealers" especially with the "Freelancers", in my area that are some very tough middle aged Mothers/Wifes that would get quite nasty if you tried to cut into their share...

 

just today an esteblished poster asked to be deleted or banned when i informed him the multi million peso property he was repeatedly trying to list in the genral chat section belonged in the advertising swection, and a fee of p500 paid for the listing. made him mad his post was deleted.

 

Ha ha...they can get as nasty as they want....I don't care. I bite, too. I'm not cutting into their share. If they steer a propective renter to a location, they should be paid by the landlord. However, my idea would be to get every landlord to pay a small fee to advertise their property on my website (think about a website like the "Apartment.com" website). To get to my target of 50,000 a month, then I would need 500 ads @ 100p a month. Plus then add whatever number is needed for the website hosting and other maintenance fees and expenses. I wouldn't have to hire a bunch of people. Just start slow and add as we can. Don't have to make 50,000 the first month or even the first year. Perhaps we would have to include more than one city to get to the magic number of 500..who knows? The more realistic number is probably about 750 to get to the profit target we need. I think a website like this would work because now, you have to hit sulit, ayosdito, locanto, and a host of others to find everything available or maybe what is available isn't even advertised except on a cardboard faded sign on the gate of the property. It could work...take a bit of research and legwork.

 

Copycats wouldn't be an issue. It's easy to copy a site, but then you get faced with the crushing reality that you have no visitors to your copy. If I were to see someone create something similar and see it blowing up then I would reach out for some sort of limited partnership. That person could largely handle bringing in traffic. Creating and running a business isn't easy. A lot of people may think they would like to copy your idea, but almost nobody is willing to budge when it comes to actually putting in the work required. The value is in the implementation, not the idea.

Dealing with all the "people" issues mentioned above is the same with any business. You always have x issue to deal with along with a long line of others waiting for your attention. You learn by doing. And that's also what creates a bit of a barrier to entry for others. You learn how to deal with x problem while other people who may want to copy you get stuck. Maybe the anticipation of these problems keeps them from moving on the idea. Maybe running into the first problem results in them giving up. You have to be tenacious.

The exact method of monetization is something that you would figure out by doing. You can make plans, but business is dynamic. You just try something to get started and then you tweak from there. I would want to get every listing that I could find into the service though. The best way to beat the local competition is to be far and away better than them. One way to do that is to blow them away by the sheer number of listings. If you have removed the need for someone to blank out a day or more to run around the city looking for available rentals, then you have done something valuable.

Another great thing about this idea is that it could be duplicated across the Philippines (and even across S.E. Asia.) Go ahead and start slow, but if it starts to accelerate then that indicates you have stumbled on the magic formula. From there I would mash the gas and go hard and relentless. That's how you get rich. You find something that works and then scale it like crazy. As you build it up, you also get brand recognition and that creates even more barrier of entry for others. Given there is no system for finding a house or rental here, then you would essentially be creating an industry. If you do it right, your service might even turn into a verb. If another market has it's own decent local solution, then you just swallow it up by buying it out or you smother it with your brand recognition.

I think done correctly, this is something which could be big. As I said before, this is a problem in need of being solved. That's usually a good start for looking for a business idea. As long as there is vacuum to be filled, there is room for this to grow. And there is a lot of vacuum out there. This is also a high value area. This isn't selling trinkets from china. You would be operating in the space of marketing the most valuable possessions that most people here own, their real estate.

 

So Dude, why haven't you done this? I know you already have a job, but if this is such a gold mine, I have to wonder what has stopped you from doing something you so obviously feel passionate about?

 

I have heard people bring up this sort of thing up before, but I haven't put much thought into it until now. As the thread progressed, the idea looked better. Of course, there is also a lot of blood, sweat and tears in making this work. To unveil the gold in a gold mine, you have to dig the mine first. And there is never a guarantee that you will find gold.

As I said before. Ideas are cheap. The value is in the implementation. My plate is already full for a while and I have other ideas I'm passionate about as well. Lets talk when you get here though.

 

A feature not available on any of the other sites is a local phone number (for the caller), which is answered via Skype or some other app such as Magic Jack. Also simply answer the e mail queries. I have attempted to contact any number of sellers and only four have replied, two americans and two filipinas that were married to foreigners.