MIPARO, the Real Estate Portal You Never Heard of Hits 100K Listings

MIPARO, a residential real estate home listing portal for emerging markets, announced today that they have 100,000 listings six months after their launch.  MIPARO has become the number one online real estate listing portal in Bangladesh and number two in the Philippines.

“This is quite a benchmark for us. When we started, we had 5,000 listings. Now we are adding over 10,000 a month,” said Michael Westoo, the founder and CEO of MIPARO. “I don’t think any startup real estate listing portal was able to get over 100,000 listings in such a short period of time.” Westloo noted further.

MIPARO is aggressively expanding in emerging markets. To date, they have a presence in

74 countries but have fully staffed operations in fewer than six. That is about to change. MIPARO will be launching a crowdfunding campaign with FundedByMe, a leading European crowdfunding company. They hope to raise $500,000. These funds will be added to the recent investment from Milky Way Cap, an early-stage venture capital fund based in Sweden.

“All that’s holding us back at the moment is capital to expand. Fortunately, money goes a lot further in emerging markets. What might take an American listing website millions to achieve, we can do with much less,” Westoo said.

MIPARO’s strategy for emerging markets

MIPARO’s strategy is to leverage trends in emerging market where property search behavior is mirroring that of the U.S. and Europe. In these developed markets, over 90% of all home buyers start their search on the Internet. Furthermore, only two or three listing portals dominate home search.

In emerging markets however, online listings are scattered among dozens of broker websites and portals. Some countries have 50 individual home listing platforms.  As a consequence, it is difficult, if not impossible, for local and international buyers to find a single platform which features a country’s entire inventory of homes for sale. Language is also a barrier for international buyers.

MIPARO is positioning itself to be one of a handful of platforms that will remain after emerging markets consolidate. Their strategy is to provide buyers with an easy to use platform that features a large number of listings showcased in the language of the buyer. This will allow MIPARO to provide a large number of leads to their broker clients.

According to Santiago Demiere, the head of lead generation at MIPARO, “Our platform is one of the best in emerging markets and this attracts a large number of buyers to our website. With the ever growing number of buyers coming to MIPARO, we are able to pass a great number of leads on to our clients”.