Zameen – Pakistan’s premier online real estate platform
 
This review was long overdue. Zameen is a property portal with a professional and catchy outlook. It is a site that provides services in real estate, property trade and consultancy. If you’re looking for selling, renting, or buying property in Pakistan then you can browse the catalog provided by the site for 48 cities in Pakistan and find your deal. It offers wide range of Pakistani property listings though to search for property, you need to be a member of this site which is easy since registration is free and simple.
Key sections are plots, commercial, rentals, wanted, agents and development where you can search or browse through the featured offers. Hot developments are featured in home page where as featured homes are showcased in the bottom of the main page as well. One can find the complete description of home, its area (given in both Sqr.ft./ Marla) price and contact information. To sell or rent the property, one needs to fill in the information like area, price, images and location and submit it to Zameen.com. The slight drawback here is that they have not mentioned whether there is a price tag for this service or not and if there is then how much they will charge.
This site provides information on home finance as well, all you need to do is fill in the contact form and send it to them. Their news section is updated regularly and provides information on both Pakistani and international properties and upcoming housing projects. I would prefer it if the users of the site or members are able to comment and give their own reviews on the features and pricing of the property and usage this site provides them.
They also claim that more than 5,000 properties are added per month. The activity on the portal is significant but they have not included any tools like number of hits per profile or if a property is still for sale, among other things. As I mentioned above, the outlook is attractive but lack of details, especially about current status of a property, irks the users. They have to maintain an active database of all properties listed.
Zameen.com was put up in 2007 and immediately won an award for ‘best property portal- Pakistan’ and this year too, it has bagged the same award. While awards are certainly a thing to appreciate but the long-term business compatibility of a project plays a more crucial role. Zameen can be a success given the vast scope of business in the real estate sector if they overcome these pitfalls. They just need to implement a business solution and make it a profitable venture.
6:45 pm
I assume that you haven’t visited http://www.kirayadaar.com yet, and if u has visited it than you will never write the blog on it. I m an old customer of http://www.kirayadaar.com and have employed this site for many times for the purpose of sale and purchase of some of my properties.
I wanted to inform you that Zameen.com have imitate all its features from http://www.kirayadaar.com there was no such add-ons if you have visited it approximately 1 year before. There was nothing like what they are exhibiting now, they are imitators. I supposed that before promoting anything a clear research should be done on it.
6:53 pm
Lubna – I’m not sure if this is the the first such portal. I mean there are dozens of real-estate ones out there (the most high profile one perhaps being the worldcall portal) but I dont know who came first.
7:26 pm
Interesting website. Lots of content a bit hard to navigate at times, but overall a very good effort..
8:27 pm
Pakrealestate.com has been around for much longer I guess.
They were on the 4th revision of their website in 2006 if I’m not wrong.
But Zameen.com is laid out nicely as well!
9:35 pm
A pitfall that Seattle-based Redfin has faced, albeit informally thus far, is the issue of how to handle UGC comments about properties NOT listed exclusively on Redfin and that are also being handled primarily by conventional Realtors.
Realtors take offense when a property that they are handling is shown on Redfin with negative comments. Some Realtors have made noises about taking legal action.
Realtors by definition represent sellers. As such, Realtors have a vested interest in seeing a smooth sale of properties that are brought to them for listing. To somehow have a third party enter that process, even informally on a Web 2.0 neighborhood bulletin board, is not something that high-priced offline companies may readily accept.
It’s a question of First Amendment rights vs. charges of tortuous interference with commerce.
Whereas UGC provides a competitive advantage for real estate sites (from buyers’ perspectives) UGC sites such as Redfin and Zameen can display information that could depress the sale price of properties.
Sites such as Redfin/Zameen should be proactive about reducing their liabilities for disruption from offline competitors, while seeking new opportunities for incorporating UGC (especially Zameen). This begins with improvements in quality assurance measures now. A little semantics goes a long way.
9:55 am
Zameen might not be the first but they have got enough publicity and awards that they have carved out a certain niche for themselves. Still, the portal has many loopholes and they need to improve a lot.
3:09 pm
I’m not sure but from one of source I’ve come to know that Zameen has won the award because it is the only website which apply from Pakistan. CNBC has certain fees to apply for this award and it only count those websites who pay their fees.
While reading the article on Zameen.com I came to third paragraph where they mentioned that “Zameen.com is also proud to be the only real estate portal from Asia, which has been nominated for the Best CNBC International Property Portal Award 2008″. It means CNBC awards did not do their survey and count only those who pays them. Though I realize of some commercials I viewed at Indian Channels of http://www.makaan.com & http://www.99acre.com which seems to be far advance according to Asia perspective.
10:08 pm
hmm.. interesting links too… i have tried them all , I have tried real.pk,
their customer service is so great, they found me home within 2 days in Islamabad.
But the bad part is they are good in Islamabad only.
Cheers
10:55 pm
Hi,
Jaeydaad.com is one such website, it may not be as old as Zameen.com but they are catching up and I like the name too.
So check out Real Estate Web Portal for Greater Pakistan.