OrangeTee & Tie, Singapore's third-largest property agency by sales force, has tied up with Carousell in a move that will see the property listings and reviews of its 4,000 or so agents posted on the online platform.
This collaboration follows last week's launch of SoReal Prop, an online platform initiative led by top agencies PropNex Realty, ERA Realty and Huttons Asia.
OrangeTee & Tie, which has not joined SoReal Prop, said the tie-up allows more than 20,000 listings and 9,000 agent reviews from OrangeTee & Tie to be added to the Carousell platform within the next three months, for free.
After the three months, its agents will have to sign up as Carousell pro members to keep their listings and reviews accessible on the online marketplace, but at special rates for three months.
With this partnership, Carousell expects the number of property listings on its platform to go up to about 30,000, and the number of agents using the platform to around 5,000.
An online marketplace that carries practically anything from fashion and food to credit cards and cars, Carousell branched into property listings only late last year.
It now has 10,000 such listings, with 70 per cent listed by agents and the remaining 30 per cent by individual property owners.
Carousell co-founder and chief executive Quek Siu Rui said about 30 per cent of its agent clients were able to close a deal successfully within 60 days of listing.
OrangeTee & Tie managing director Steven Tan said this success rate is one of the reasons why his company is tapping Carousell.
He noted that the two firms are also closely aligned in bringing greater transparency to consumers through their existing review systems. "Consumer consumption habits continue to evolve, and even for big-ticket items such as property, they are turning to digital tools first," he said.
It is timely for OrangeTee & Tie to engage younger consumers who are moving to the next stage - owning a property, he added.
OrangeTee & Tie has also lately collaborated with Ngee Ann Polytechnic to tap data analytics for insights such as the latest market trends by geography.
Speaking at the OrangeTee & Tie Business Conference yesterday, Second Minister for National Development Desmond Lee stressed the need for property agencies to transform amid a major shift in consumer preferences towards more efficient online services.
In the HDB resale market, do-it-yourself rates have grown from 11 per cent in 2010 to 28 per cent last year, he said.
Mr Lee noted that, internationally, things are also not standing still.
China's Alibaba, for instance, has teamed up with the Hangzhou municipal government to develop a one-stop online listing platform that will allow landlords and tenants to sign their contracts online through the portal and post reviews of each other as well as of their agents.
For now, PropertyGuru still has the most property listings in Singapore. There are more than 200,000 listings at any given point of time, according to Mr Lewis Ng, chief business officer at PropertyGuru Group.
