Realtors shun Internet, stick to press
By : Roseanne Gerin
Realtors are looking twice before leaping online these days.
After Poland's brief spate of Internet fever last year, some realtors with Web ambitions have reconsidered the efficacy of marketing properties online. In the wake of a few recent dotcom disasters, they have merely settled for an online presence with a Web site, and continue to cast a cautious eye toward posting too much information about listings online.
Most large and small realtors in Poland have Web sites describing their services to would-be purchasers and renters. Warsaw agents, who try to target international clients in particular, said that most foreign businessmen and women looking for residential rentals or sales in the city are apt to research different firms and properties online before making initial contact.
"Many clients want to find something on the Internet first and evaluate the agency by the Web site," said Maria Bednarska, the sales director of Unikat, a Warsaw real estate agency.
Some realtors point to Poland's low Internet penetration and usage rates as one factor preventing them from taking a deeper dotcom plunge and posting more listings online. According to the latest figures from market research firm Taylor Nelson Sofres/OBOP, almost 20% of Poles have access to the Internet, but only 13% use it at least once a month.
"The number of internauts in Poland is too small," said Krzysztof Grzelak, the owner of Metro Plus, a small Warsaw real estate agency specializing in residential rentals. Grzelak said he has posted 80-100 listings on his firm's Web site since last June, but only two rentals have been generated by people who first saw the listings online.
Realtors also said the real estate industry's lack of exclusive listing agreements between property owners and agents is another roadblock to posting their offerings online. Agents realize that if they include too many details, such as street locations and photos, on a Web site, prospective buyers could easily locate the properties on their own and strike deals with the owners, thereby preventing them from receiving commissions.
"It leaves the Internet situation in Poland in a bad place because agents see it, but they can't use it as a tool," said Janet Choynowski, the former managing director of real estate agency Prime Properties and the CEO of Worldwide Property Web, which started a Polish Web page on its Immobel.com site last June. She added that while Immobel.com has listings for 5,000 commercial and residential properties for rent and sale, it does not view Poland as a primary market for online property.
For other industry professionals, Internet advertising is still too far removed from the face-to-face marketing and sales strategies that real estate transactions thrive on.
Pierre Couderq, president of the Warsaw-based commercial real estate agency Couderq & Partners, does not advertise on Web sites because he wants to draw clients in a more traditional manner. "It's about the power of people," he said. "Real estate is so important that it will take some time before something completely replaces it."
In addition, Couderq said the Internet is not a good advertising medium for commercial real estate. "For office buildings, it's impossible to have a good presentation via the Internet," he said. "It won't work. The market only exists with small flats because when you deal with other people like (building) property owners who are professionals, they will make things very complicated."
Those who sell ad space for online property listings to agents, however, argue that Internet listings are less expensive for realtors than traditional newspaper ads. A real estate ad in leading daily Gazeta Wyborcza, for instance, can cost zl. 2000-zl. 3000, according to Michal Dembinski, the managing director of Trader.pl, a Web site that features mainly residential real estate listings. Trader.pl offers monthly listings for zl. 150-zl. 349 depending on the details and additional services, such as links and e-mail addresses, he said.
But despite the few hundred zlotys they could save with online advertisements, many realtors are sticking to the tried and true methods of reaching clients through newspapers. To reach a mass audience, many realtors still place the bulk of their listings in Gazeta Wyborcza, which sold 462,000 copies a day last year.
"Gazeta Wyborcza is more expensive, but I have results from Gazeta Wyborcza," Grzelak said.
