Propzee – A Property Portal That Gives You Money

Whenever I hear the founder of a website say that their site is the first or only site performing some sort of service or offering some sort of new product, my heart skips a little bit. I want to believe that innovation can happen in Singapore. However, more often than not, the site succeeds in disappointing.

Propzee.com, founded by CEO Mr Jarrod Lee, is one such site.

In its press release, the company claims to be “The first in Singapore, and the region, Propzee is an integrated online real estate brokerage which provides a full agency service, from home searches to transaction closure.” I guess they forgot about PropNex.

Further down in the press release, the company states “Home sellers can advertise their homes without charge, unlike other websites which levy a charge for listing”. True, there are some other websites which charges their users to list their properties, unfortunately for Propzee, not all of them do. One such site homespace only charge agents or sellers when leads are generated.

Another selling point for the site is that home buyers only need 1 agent as a point of contact even if they are interested in multiple homes. That sounds nice but what if the properties I’m interested in are not all listed on one site (i.e. Propzee’s). Say 1 property is listed on iProperty.sg and 1 on Propzee. Won’t a home buyer still need to manage two different agents? For this service of Propzee to be a differentiating factor, it would need to have a very large, if not the largest, database of listings.

The main problem with the site is that the front page spends all its screen estate trying to convince you why you should use their service instead of just providing you with a better interface to use their service. Take the three sites (i.e. http://propnex.com/, http://homespace.sg/, http://www.iproperty.com.sg/) mentioned above – once you hit the front page, you are presented with a wider set of tools and more information to help narrow your search.

Now, I haven’t used the site or its services to actually buy a property, so I can’t comment on their level of service. Their level of service might very well be a distinguishing factor from other agencies and online property portals.

The best thing about the site could be the fact that buyers can possibly get up to 50% of the commission paid by the seller as rebates. In other words, they can get a discount on their purchase.

The online property listings market is a crowded space. There are already many startups and established agencies competing for the attention of home buyers. Beyond the 50% of commission as rebate, there might not be much differentiating Propzee from the rest of the competitors.

Updated: CEO Jarrod Lee has responded to the post in the comments section below. As they say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. We would be grateful if readers can share their home buying experiences with any of the online sites.

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