Among the first to display listings online

Already in 1996 it was possible to search for houses on sale using Internet through the Bovision service. (The service was a spin-off from Capitex a provider of CRM tools for residential brokers. In 2006 the Finish media company Alma Media acquired Bovision.)

The Associations of Realtors make their move

In 1998, two years after Bovision’s entry, the two Swedish associations of Realtors decided to create their own listing service, named Hemnet. This was done in co-operation with the two largest brokerage firms in Sweden and two large newspapers. Within a year Hemnet was larger then Bovison. Today Hemnet is used by ‘almost’ all the 2 000 brokerage firms in Sweden and has the most traffic (by far).

The next generation

For a number of years little happened in the market of listings. Then in late 2007 a new player entered the market — Booli. It was founded by Daniel Kaplan, a successfully serial entrepreneur who believes the user experience of searching for new homes could be done better.

In contradiction to Hemnet and Bovision which the brokers feed with information; Booli is a search engine crawling ‘all’ the Swedish brokerage firms sites for listings.

It’s to no surprise that this approach has caused some upset feelings in the brokerage market (especially from the owners of Hemnet).

However, there are brokers who are delighted to see developments in the area. Some even go public like the CEO of Bjurfors, one of the larger brokering firms. In this press release, he compares Booli with US services like Zillow, Trulia and UK based Rightmove.

In spring 2008 another service also saw the light, Bospindeln. Not as advanced as others but very fast and also includes homes for sale by owners.

The most recent to enter the Swedish market is Properazzi, the international search engine. However, they are just in the start up face and does not include a greater number of listings.

Example of listings

Here are a few examples on how an actual listings care displayed on the Swedish market. A house, an apartment, another apartment (which also displays the most current bid).

Conclusion

After an promising start with online listings in Sweden in the mid 90′s the development was slow for a number of years. But during the last 9 months more has happened on the market then ever before.

The new services have great functionality and some also great coverage, but it is a long road to take on Hemnet. However, just the presence could make it better for the consumers since the competition will put pressure on Hemnet to improve their offerings.

For me there wasn’t one eureka moment but actually a series of experiences during internships at construction and real estate companies back in the early 90′s. There were so many processors that were inefficient that it almost drove me crazy. Adding to this, I started to do some work for an Internet start up in the real estate market. By combining those two experiences, I realised that you could be using Internet to solve many inefficiencies in the market.

When I graduated from the Royal Institure of Technology (Stockholm, Sweden) in 1996, with a master in Civil Engineering, there was (hardly) no market for Internet in Real Estate in the country. Instead I started off as a business analyser at American Management Systems Inc. In 2000, I came in contact with Datscha which was right on target for my interest. I quickly joined and have been the Product Manager since 2001. Datscha is a Software as a service for analyses of the Swedish commercial property market. The service includes information, for example about all commercial properties and market information for hundreds of local markets. Furthermore, there is the facility to simulate properties´ market value using a DCF model.

On my blog, thebeliever.se, I write about Internet in the real estate market from a Swedish stand point. Either local services or about international services that the companies in Sweden can learn from. I also follow the SaaS market. I was delighted when asked to be a guest contributor to the GeekEstate Blog. My focus will be on writing about what services are available in Sweden since I believe that one can learn a lot by looking outside of your own country.