The top Chinese investment portals you need to know about
The rapid rise in Chinese listings portals in Australia has many unaware as to what is now on the market, and which ones they should be keeping a close eye on.
In fact, the topic of technology and online portals to tap into the Asian buyer market was high on RE/MAX’s radar at their Asia-Pacific Rim Summit held in Hong Kong late last year.
Property Observer has compiled the sites that are becoming movers and shakers in the Australian market, and have used Traffic Estimate to provide information around the number of ‘visits’ each site manages to achieve.
We note that a number of these sites have multiple portals, and therefore their total traffic figure may be substantially higher. The algorithm used by TrafficEstimate works best on sites with more than 20,000 visitors per month.
First up, is SouFun.com and MyFun.com. We have put these two together due to their relationship with realestate.com.au or REA Group.
SouFun is the largest property portal in China, and a new partnership with realestate.com.au will see their myfun.com listings added to SouFun and REA Group owned squarefoot.hk in Hong Kong.
Myfun.com was launched by REAGroup as their property portal for Chinese consumers interested in Australian properties.
The SouFun site reportedly has a strong presence in the United States, Asia and Europe, and claims 30 million visits per month across their network. They also note that they have 15 million SouFun card holders. Their listings cover 30 countries, including the US, Canada, UK, Thailand, Malaysia and Greece.
Myfun looks to provide manual translations into Mandarin, including a property liaison specialist who can deliver enquiries in English to Australian agents and developers.
SOUFUN.COM CURRENT ESTIMATED MONTHLY TRAFFIC (VISITS) FOR LAST 30 DAYS: 9,073,100 (Source: TrafficEstimate)
MYFUN.COM CURRENT ESTIMATED TRAFFIC (VISITS) FOR LAST 30 DAYS: 87,000 (Source: TrafficEstimate)
Recently snapping up ex-LJ Hooker CEO, George Chmiel, after 18 months with the real estate company, iProperty Group also claims themselves to be Asia’s number one property portal site. It was established in 2003, and also as a commercial property site CommercialAsia.com.
They have received a number of awards, and their portals include Iproperty.com.my, the Malaysian branch (which we have ranked below), as well as portals for the Philippines, India, Singapore, Hong Kong and Indonesia.
The company was recording significant growth over the first quarter of 2014.
IPROPERTY.COM.MY CURRENT ESTIMATED TRAFFIC (VISITS) FOR LAST 30 DAYS: 2,190,000 (Source: TrafficEstimate)
Their annual report notes that total site visitors peaked at almost 1.6 million during the year for iProperty Malaysia. Hong Kong recorded total site visitors over 850,000 for the year.
Juwai was founded by Andrew Taylor, who has often written columns for Property Observer.
This Chinese listing site has been expanding into Europe as of early last year and it promotes itself as the largest international property search and information platform for Mandarin-speaking Chinese consumers.
Juwai.com search figures show that European properties were viewed over 882,000 times by Chinese investors in January 2013.
They’ve had LJ Hooker using the site, announcing a partnership back in 2012. They have noted that 32% of their visitors actually live outside of China.
Some of their other customers include McGrath, Lend Lease, Knight Frank, Jones Lang LeSalle, Richardson & Wrench, Raine&Horne, Savills, RE/MAX, Sotheby's and Ray White.
Juwai.com promotes itself as the largest international property search and information platform for Mandarin-speaking Chinese consumers and says that 84% of its traffic comes from high-net-worth Chinese buyers. They note that they have over 2.4 million property listings across 53 countries, and note that they have 1.5 million high net work Chinese consumers.
They run events a number of events including Juwai China Agent Summit 2014.
JUWAI.COM CURRENT ESTIMATED MONTHLY TRAFFIC (VISITS) FOR LAST 30 DAYS 2014: 1,195,700 (Source: TrafficEstimate)
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Headed up by Michael Yang it’s said to be the largest Chinese language property site in Australia offering international properties in Mandarin.
The site claims that it has partners including SouFun, Migration Institute, the Australian Government, Westpac, RealEstateView, REIV, Sydney Property, Sydney Today, 21CN, HK Property, BaoMoney, Pacific House, Wenzhou property, Sina property, Ifeng.com and ChinaProperty Institute
Established in August 2010, previously with the name YBI Group, the English version is called OurProperties.com.au.
They run a number of property events and seminars and have won a number of awards.
In late-2013, the expectation was that they would reach 1,000,000 unique visitors every month by the end of 2013.
They host data from Residex, who they list as a third party partner.
GIFANG.COM CURRENT ESTIMATED TRAFFIC (VISITS) FOR MAY 2014: 532,900 (Source: TrafficEstimate)
OURPROPERTIES.COM.AU CURRENT ESTIMATED TRAFFIC (VISITS) FOR LAST 30 DAYS: 376,400 (Source: TrafficEstimate)
The last few spots will be contentious. Here are some of the up and comers, and some that showed early promise.
Smaller cousin, AC Property, is an Australian-based Chinese language portal that aims to provide a ‘one stop’ solution.
They translate the advertisements for the real estate agents and provide online promotion through Google, Baidu, local Chinese forums, advertisements in major Chinese property newspapers and posters.
AC Property regularly exhibits in China.
NAB and Ray White currently has advertisements on the website.
ACPROPERTY.COM.AU CURRENT ESTIMATED MONTHLY TRAFFIC (VISITS) FOR LAST 30 DAYS 2014: 16,500 (Source: TrafficEstimate)
Taking an early leap and putting Chinese language listings on the site in mid-2012, at the time saying it was the only portal in Australia to have yet done so. At the time it was all off the plan product, and appeared popular with developers. Founded by Morry Schwartz, they also place listings on juwai.com.
It includes listings from Ray White, LJ Hooker, Acton, Raine&Horne, Hocking Stuart, Roberts, Barry Plant and Richardson & Wrench.
It appears, however, that they have taken down their Chinese language off the plan portal. Whether they'll look to step again into this market using their own site remains to be seen.
THEHOMEPAGE.COM.AU ESTIMATED MONTHLY TRAFFIC (VISITS) FOR LAST 30 DAYS 2014: 145,700 (Source: Traffic Estimate)
Also taking an early leap, Century 21 has used the strength of having offices across the world to launch Century 21 Global, that focuses across the world and not just on China, sharing the properties from all of Century 21’s offices.
It covers 74 countries and 16 languages on their new website, and includes automatic translation services.
CENTURY21GLOBAL.COM ESTIMATED MONTHLY TRAFFIC (VISITS) FOR LAST 30 DAYS 2014: 74,600 (Source: Traffic Estimate)