Leuterio, Lamudi sign deal
Companies to help market each other; Leuterio to close deals for online searches in Lamudi
HOMEGROWN real estate firm Leuterio Realty and Brokerage along with affiliate Rent.ph have signed a partnership with Lamudi, the world’s biggest real estate marketplace.
Lamudi managing director Jacqueline van den Ende said the partnership will allow Leuterio Realty and Rent.ph to expand their reach by allowing them to list their properties in Lamudi.
However, the official clarified that there will be no changes in names on the part of the homegrown firms with the signing of the memorandum of agreement.
“(In fact), we are cobranding,” said Leuterio Realty president and chief executive officer and Rent.ph president Anthony Leuterio.
As online real estate marketplaces, Lamudi, Leuterio Realty and Rent.ph allow anyone to search, sell, rent, and buy properties online. Lamudi Philippines currently has 90,000 property listings with around 700,000 visitors per month while Leuterio Realty and Rent.ph have 23,000 property listings in total.
Network
Lamudi, which is part of Rocket Internet, is present in 32 countries worldwide. It was launched in the Philippines in January 2014. Leuterio Realty and Rent.ph have inventories scattered nationwide, but these are mostly in Visayas and Mindanao.
“For Lamudi, we have a thousand brokers and developers advertising, but with Leuterio this is not advertising but partnership,” said van den Ende. Leuterio said it is the first formal partnership en- tered by Lamudi with a realty and brokerage firm in the country.
Aside from property listing, van den Ende said the partnership will also allow both parties to help market each other by collaborating in events, improving websites and holding trainings, among other areas for collaboration.
“We’re very complementary in a sense that Lamudi is a lead generator. Leuterio closes those leads into sales,” van den Ende said. In addition, both parties are also exploring a study to determine how many inquiries in Lamudi will lead to sales.
To further expand its presence in the Philippine market, van den Ende said that Smart, being a wholly owned subsidiary of the Philippine Long Distance Company, which has invested 500 million euros in Rocket Internet, will be pre-installing Lamudi in all Android and iPhone units issued by Smart.
Other companies
She said data usage for Lamudi is for free. Aside from Lamudi, Rocket Internet is also the company behind online shops Lazada and Zalora, and taxihailing app Easy Taxi, among others. The German company’s thrust is to build proven Internet business models and transfer them to “new, underserved or untapped” markets where it seeks to scale them into market leading online companies.
With Internet penetration in the Philippines today still at 39 percent, van den Ende expressed confidence that this will grow dramatically in a few years’ time and will be driven by mobile use.
In 2008, she said Internet penetration was at 10 percent.
The increasingly mobile consumption, for one, supports and leverages the real estate industry by allowing industry players and buyers alike to sell and purchase properties conveniently.
The Philippines records the highest growth rate of smart phone penetration in the world, said van den Ende.