Properazzi Takes a Snapshot of Europe’s Real Estate Market
If you thought Trulia has had a tough time trying to pull together all US based listings into a single unified search tool, imagine what Properazzi.com had to accomplish.
They’ve just launched an early beta version of the first pan-European property search tool; so whether you’re hunting for property in Hungary, searching for a apartment in Spain, or checking out a house in the Czech Republic - there’s almost 1.3 million properties on this site for you to peruse.
What sets Properazzi apart from the pack, at least in my mind anyway, are the particular challenges they’ve had to overcome to pull this off; namely that they have had to provide the search tool in over 90 different currencies and more than 25 languages. (Which begs the question, when will see even a Spanish language version of any of the US based realty search tools?)
Properazzi has chosen to adopt a radius search interface similar to Realty Roundup (see New Real Estate Search Mashups). You can choose the size of the radius and click on an area of the map to narrow down the search results. Unfortunately, once you are past the first page, the properties themselves are not geocoded so there is no map available of your results. There also doesn’t seem to be many options to either reset or refine your search. Hopefully these are kinks that will be worked out in future versions.
All in all though, an impressive first step. As Renthusiast points out, Properazzi has been shortlisted as one of the Red Herring 100 most promising private ventures in Europe. More on the Properazzi blog.
Properazzi is based in Barcelona, Spain.
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9 Comment(s)
8 Trackback(s)
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DanITman | Mar 14, 2007 | Reply
I can see where this would be a great challenge. Some of these areas don’t even have an MLS system.
John Schroeder | Mar 14, 2007 | Reply
I think that you will see a big spanish language version movement in the near future. That along with seniors buying houses/condos and single women buying and selling are the largest groups of new buyers.
Arlingtgon Virginia Condos -- Jay | Mar 14, 2007 | Reply
True, there will be a LOT more spanish language versions MLS formats out there soon. If the markets want it they will get it.
J
Tony - bienesraicesvideo.com | Mar 14, 2007 | Reply
The 1M+ listings is impressive. Hats off to them for pulling off that difficult feat.
The geolocation issues are more than kinks. Google maps really only works in a handful of countries. It’s a luxury that most of the world does not share. We had to write our own geocoder to be able to do any sort of radious type geolocation in Latin America…property addresses just are not reliable and rarely tied to any sort of geolocation format. For instance, formal addresses for properties in most of costa rica - including parts the capital city -still consist of “800 meters west of such-and-such” (and the same information is often the mailing address).
Here is our blog post from several months ago about the issues with online geolocation outide of the handful of Google map geocoder areas:
http://forsalebylocals.wordpress.com/2006/10/09/online-real-estate-geolocation/
Rocco | Mar 14, 2007 | Reply
What a great idea. It figures it came out of a progressive city like Barcelona. I have wanted to buy a vacation home in Europe. Now that I can find the properties I just have to become a dual citizen and come up with the funds.
Yannick | Mar 14, 2007 | Reply
Hi, Yannick from Properazzi here.
Thanks for the kind words, everyone, they’re very encouraging!
Tony: I *love* what you guys are doing- particularly the idea of opening up emerging markets; I’d already seen several of the Bolivian property videos before reading your comment today (personal interest: I used to live in La Paz). Skype me sometime (yannick)- would be fun to have a chat.
Incredible Agent | Mar 14, 2007 | Reply
Very nice. I wonder if Properazzi is stopping in Europe? I can see some simple integrations with other sites throughout the world. When will we see the mashups of the mashups?
Tabike | Mar 15, 2007 | Reply
This is one of the best things done around here (in Barcelona) I’ve seen in the last months.
I like it a lot, and it’s good to see we are not the only ones to put a ‘keyword’ based searcher for real estate. But I’m still not sure about the ‘radius search’, it looks nice and techy but it’s a little confusing for the ‘low profile’ user, the vast mayority in the Spanish market and other european countries where usual use of internet is quite a new thing.
Anyway, congratulations.
Tony - bienesraicesvideo.com | Mar 15, 2007 | Reply
Thanks, Yannick. I’m on my to the airport to fly to Central America today so let’s talk when I get back in the first week of April. I’ll shoot you a mail later this week.
We’ll also be attending the huge SIMA real estate conference in Madrid in May so, if we can hook up while we are in Spain, that would be great. We’d love to add you guys to our growing list of real estate video interviews in English and Spanish.
Tony