16 | MEDIA, TRAVEL & TOURISM
NEWS IN BRIEF Agency for the new buyer
NEWS By Geoff Hadwick
A new international online property agency has been set up in the USA called New Media 4 Agents designed, it says, to respond to the modern property investor who does everything online. “ Today is the age of real estate blogging to get leads, real estate SEO to increase branding and search sites like Zillow and Trulia to fi nd homes,” founder and chief consulting offi cer Tierra Wilson told OPP.
Mallorca is on the rise
LOCAL agencies have welcomed the news from Spain’s Institute of Tourism Studies (IET)that 20% of the 32.2 million passengers who chose to fl y to Spain with low-cost airlines between January and October this year landed in Mallorca’s capital, Palma. Stephen Dight, managing director of Mallorca Sotheby’s International Realty, says that he can see rising tourist numbers as “often a precursor to demand-led price increases in the housing market.” In the fi rst 10 months of this year, 5.9 million budget fl yers have passed through Palma Airport … a 12% rise on 2010.
’Virtual’ NRI expo in USA
A property website put a novel twist on real estate exhibitions last month by organising the fi rst ‘online’ expo for NRIs living in the United States.
MagicBricks.com ran the virtual property fair at IndiaCalling, allowing users to view the projects on display in several Indian cities. Online chats and webinars were also available. Sudhir Pai,
MagicBricks.com’s business head, said: “Physical fairs, in addition to being very expensive, typically address buyers who reside in 2-3 cities within the US. Our virtual event eases such restrictions, and through the integrated marketing programme that if off ers, will go on covering buyers’ locations across all the regions of the USA.”
St Regis China fi rst
THE St. Regis Hotels & Resorts group has opened its fi rst property in South China, The St. Regis Sanya Yalong Bay Resort in Yalong Bay, a resort destination on Hainan island. The Sanya Yalong has 373 guest rooms and suites, and 28 beachside villas and has launched South China’s fi rst fi ve-star Iridium Spa.
A new website called
Juwai.com, which means homes overseas in Chinese, has been launched claiming to be the world’s largest international property search and information platform for Mandarin-speaking Chinese international property buyers. The new site is up and running with
more than 1 million property listings from more than 80,000 agents and developers in the USA, Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and Japan. Advertising is free during the launch phase of the site, which is based on aggregated listings. Chinese buyers, interested in
investing overseas, are being given additional editorial content, buying guides, market analysis, social media integration, data and a call centre - all in the Chinese language. Indeed, the site claims to be the fi rst site to map international listings in Chinese, and also provide potential buyers with an estimate of all costs associated with buying a particular property. Juwai co-founder Andrew Taylor
told OPP that the site is the result of two years of extensive research into its target consumers and property agents. “Chinese consumers have three criteria,” he says. “Abundant listings, unbiased information and trustworthiness. Agents
www.opp.org.uk | JANUARY 2012 Asian buyer site in Mandarin
Breaking the wall |
Juwai.com allows Mandarin-speaking buyers to look overseas
around the world also want an easy way to access the Chinese market, and help communicating throughout the sales process. We’ve designed
Juwai.com with both of these users in mind.” “It’s not enough any longer to just
list property in English. Chinese will be the dominant language on the Internet by 2015, and Chinese are among the fastest growing group of property buyers around the world. We want to help agents market property to Chinese buyers, no matter where they are located.” The market that Juwai is targeting
is huge. According to the Global Chinese Real Estate Congress, Chinese
buyers will purchase US$50 billion of overseas property in 2012. Current trends suggest that in 2011, Chinese overseas property buyers are on track to acquire property worth a total of more than US$28 billion internationally, including US$10 billion in the US, more than US$2.4 billion (£1.53 billion) in the UK and more than US$3 billion (AU$2.9 billion) in Australia.
Juwai.com has done content partnerships with sites around the world such as
Zoopla.co.uk (UK),
Thehomepage.com.au (Australia), MLS in the USA, and - in China – with brands such as Baidu, Sina Weibo, and Renren.
New OPP China web Africa golf
The OPP group is working on the launch of a new Chinese B2B real estate portal called
www.opp-cn.com designed, says OPP chief executive Xavier Wiggins, to help “reach an increasingly wealthy Chinese overseas property sector that is on track to buy $50 Billion of overseas property all around the world in 2012 alone.” The site, which is currently under
development for a launch in early 2012, will tap into “China’s huge internet demand for overseas property information,” says Wiggins. And it will be designed from
the ground up to meet the needs of international property agents, developers and service providers, keen to work with the fast-growing Chinese market.
OPP-cn.com also knows that there is a genuine need for independent, professional and reliable information on the Chinese buyer market. “There is plenty of demand for good
quality business intelligence in China, but almost no supply,” says Wiggins. “
OPP-cn.com’s new real estate portal will bridge that gap.”
Morocco continues to expand into the luxury golf resort market, announcing plans this week to open a new world- class golf course called The Marrakech Golf Club, Assoufi d, in March 2012. The development has a 98-room
Connect | to China with
opp-cn.com
Rocco Forte Collection hotel and spa, and “a sumptuous clubhouse.” Morocco is determined to be “the fastest-growing golf destination in Europe, the Middle East and Africa,” the developers told OPP. The project sits on a 222-hectare estate located 20-minutes from the centre of Marrakech, and a 10-minute drive from the airport. “The setting, with the views to the mountains, is mesmerizing” said Niall Cameron, who has overseen the development of the Verdura Golf & Spa Resort, Sicily.
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