Lamudi Philippines (www.lamudi.com.ph) is now officially the most visited real estate website in the Philippines. Citing its own data and that from web analytics platform SimilarWeb, Lamudi reported that visits to its platform for the first six months of 2015 is 34 percent higher than those recorded for the entire 2014. In addition, at 320,000 monthly visits, Lamudi’s site visits via desktop are now at least 28 percent higher than its nearest competitor.
2015 was also a year of milestones for Lamudi. In February, the company secured $18 million in funding to boost its operations in Asia and Latin America. In May, Lamudi acquired competitor MyProperty.ph to further cement its position as the Philippines’ number one property website.
A first in Philippine real estate, Lamudi Philippines is also harnessing its massive online and listings data to generate reports and other content for Filipino homebuyers and property investors. For example, Lamudi analyzes data from its listings and regularly publishes content on condo, house, and commercial property price data.
The company’s onsite search data also provides a picture of online property-hunters’ behaviors and preferences. Lamudi found that most Filipino homebuyers still prefer houses over condos, despite Metro Manila’s condo boom, and that Quezon City is the most searched city in the Philippines for properties. Furthermore, Lamudi found that U.S.-based house-hunters are looking for houses more than half of the time (57.8 percent) and that after Quezon City, Makati, and Manila, Tagaytay and Baguio are the fourth and fifth most searched cities by Filipino-Americans.
According to Lamudi Philippines managing director Jacqueline van den Ende, these reports generated from the platform’s data provide sellers, brokers, and property developers much-needed insight to inform their marketing strategies.
“For a while, we’ve known that Filipinos are rapidly moving online to inform their purchase—from clothes, gadgets, and even real estate. But most sellers of real estate still have no idea as to how homebuyers behave online. Our data provides these sellers with data on buyers’ preferences, from location, price range, size, type, and even amenities.”
To tap into mobile-first consumers, the Lamudi Philippines app is now available for both iOS and Android devices, while the website itself has a mobile version. van den Ende said the importance of being available on mobile cannot be overemphasized. In the first half of 2015 alone, 32 and 15 percent of Lamudi’s traffic came from mobile and tablet users. Swedish ICT provider Ericsson also reported in June that mobile penetration in the Philippines will reach 40 percent by the end of this year, thanks to the popularity of more affordable smartphones.
One Comment