Bit of background... I'm currently in the early stages of creating a new property directory focusing on student houses with added information such as internet speeds, distance to uni bus stops, crime in the area etc. It aims to address the dispersed nature of many different estate agents offering properties on lists which all represent data differently, combined with the complete lack of neighbourhood knowledge students have when venturing to a new city. Furthermore, I am a student trying to address the problem I had.<p>Now, the APIs for the added will cost money when the service scales. I'm currently having a dilemma of which revenue avenue to go down and am seeking some advice.<p>1. Charge the estate agents to list their properties. Whilst this may be a good bet, it could lead to a lack of value for students if the list represents only, say, 50% of the total properties available.<p>2. Charge the students for a premium version. Offer the standard aggregated lists free and charge for the added neighbourhood information. But, what price? And charging students may be an unsafe bet. Additionally, even with 2% uptake, the revenues from one university would be small.<p>3. Charge completely for the product. No free version, but perhaps a trial. Take up of the product may be reduced in such a case, however it could be marketed as having the advantage over other students in house hunting, thus representing more value.<p>4. Charge estate agents per lead. Not sure how I'd track this and again, if one estate agent didn't sign up, the property list would lose value.<p>I have a meeting with the largest student estate agent for my university on Wednesday, and would love some advice.
As the founder of a London-based property start-up, I'd advise reversing the question: what are you offering the agent that is worth paying for?<p>Once you identify that, you can calculate how much it is worth to them.<p>For example, our auction allows agents to automate 'negotiation', so they can focus on landlords and stop annoying tenants.<p>For a small agent, this is worth tens of thousands of pounds. For a medium sized chain, it's worth hundreds of thousands in savings a year. For a large landlord, the same.<p>So we charge a percentage of annual rent, as a transaction fee (rather than a listing fee - our hypothesis is the listings/lead generation model is dying and needs a bullet to the head).<p>Hope this helps. Feel free to get in touch; I'm on twitter @rayhanrafiq
I would suggest flat fee from the estate agents and obviously encourage apartment complex guys to post directly (you can offer discount to them) so that you can remove middle men as much as possible.