Words: Ashley Rigg
Published: 26th March 2009
Going Dutch
Willem Balkema has property in his blood. His father ran a large Dutch property development firm and keen to follow in his footsteps, he set up his own estate agency in Spain soon after graduating in law in 2002. He quickly decided there was a gap in the market for a portal selling overseas property to buyers in Holland, who he felt did not know who to trust or where to go on the internet for advice.
Willem now runs
Mysecondhome.eu the market leading overseas homes portal in the Netherlands. I caught up with him to find out how agents can reach the Dutch buyer market.
Ashley Rigg: Hi Willem. How’s business been since we met in New York? Are you finding it tough?
Willem Balkema: The market is not great but we are moving forward. We’re actually not doing too badly.
AR: is the Dutch market doing any better than the UK?
WB: Not really, real estate transactions are down between 10% and 15% per year. We are doing well because the competition is relatively weak in the Dutch portal market. We are the market leading overseas portal. We’re also doing well in Russia.
AR: Who are your main competitors in Holland?
WB: The market leading domestic portal is
Funda.nl. On the overseas side, the only other portal of note is
Zoekuwtweedehuis.nl. They are really exhibition specialists and exhibitors get a free listing when they take a stand at one of their shows.
AR: I’d like a free listing just for pronouncing it correctly! Anyway tell me a little about the Dutch market. You mentioned house prices are down. Is confidence low?
WB: There’s a certain amount of inertia. There is still demand but people are sitting on their hands and waiting for prices to fall.
AR: Sounds similar to the UK and many other markets. How’s demand for overseas property?
WB: Strangely we are seeing a similar number of leads to this time last year. Our traffic is up but conversion rates have held up fairly well. I don’t know how many of these people are buying though.
AR: I suspect not as many. What changes have you seen in the market as times have got tougher?
WB: Traditionally France has always been the top destination for Dutch buyers followed by Spain. This has changed recently. Portugal has topped our popularity lists for several months in succession.
AR: Why do you think that is?
WB: Hard to say. I think Spain has suffered from all the bad press and Portugal has had much more stable prices in recent years. In the longer term though it’s hard to see France and Spain not coming back to the top as they are convenient and have the weather and the lifestyle.
The other change is the move away from the UK and Ireland as the main buyer markets. Russia has become a lot more important and many of our leads now come from there.
AR: What advice would you give to overseas agents looking to partner with a Dutch estate agency? What’s the best way to go about doing this?
WB: Most agents in Holland are focused on the domestic market. There are around 4000members of the Dutch Association of Real Estate Agents but only around 5% of them sell internationally. It depends on which demographics you are targeting but the best way is to come over and target agents in the postcodes that match your demographics. You can’t do all business via the internet.
AR: What about targeting Dutch buyers directly. Any marketing tips for agents?
WB: I think it’s really important that agents keep investing in marketing in a recession. You need to be smarter but there are still buyers around. Using Google Adwords to target Dutch people can be worthwhile. I would advertise on property portals like Mysecondhome.eu. There are lots of portals around but it’s important to choose the right ones.
AR: You’ve recently changed your business model. What have you changed and why?
WB: We are still charging a quarterly subscription model but we’ve made our options much simpler and we’ve reduced our prices to reflect the economic conditions.
AR: What’s the minimum entry price?
WB: For 6 months, it’s E199 for up to 50 properties with manual upload or E349 for up to 250 properties with XML feed.
AR: What kind of traffic does to you get to justify that pricing?
WB: We average just over 300,000 uniques a month. The majority of our traffic comes from Holland, Germany and Russia. It’s a very niche audience.
AR: Do you translate into multiple languages?
WB: Currently, we translate into 13 languages including Russian, German, English, Spanish, French and Dutch.
AR: Where does most of your traffic come from? SEO?
WB: Natural search is the biggest traffic referrer but we also have an exclusive marketing agreement with Holland’s biggest daily newspaper, The Daily Telegraph. We sponsor their property section and syndicate properties to their website. We also have an agreement with IRR in Russia.
AR: Sounds interesting. I’m sure quite a few our readers would be interested in trialing your service? Are you willing to offer them a discount?
WB: Why not. If they mention Globaledge we can offer them a 10% discount for the first 6 months.
AR: Excellent. Great speaking to you again. I’ll have to try to get over to Amsterdam sometime.
WB: You’re more than welcome, any time.
About Myseconehome.euMySecondhome is the market leading overseas homes portal in the Netherlands with the largest database of second homes in Southern and Central Europe. Potential buyers can start their search for second homes on MySecondhome.eu. Real Estate agents and property developers can reach second home seekers from all over Europe through this international network.
MySecondhome, which is based in Amsterdam, is an initiative of Robin Friend and Willem Balkema. They were signaling the growing need among brokers and developers to one international marketplace for people who are seeking for properties abroad. In addition, they predicted a growing market for second homes in Europe. This was the reason for them to start
MySecondhome.
MySecondhome now offers more than 130.000 properties, published by 2,000 members. Several Dutch private investors participated in MySecondhome.eu amongst other Hans Verkoren, founder and former CEO of ING Direct.
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