Find out who rules in this exciting region
SEA is undoubtedly one of the most interesting regions for online projects. There is a mix of frontier, emerging and more mature markets, very different from each other, but all of them represent a nice opportunity.
During the last two months I’ve been updating my property portals analysis, so now we can have a general overview of the current situation. Focused on the six largest economies:
Main players
Leading in four of the six markets we have the Property Guru Group. They’ve based their growth in bold acquisitions and they surely are the strongest player in the region. Then there is the REA Group leading in Malaysia and with presence in several other markets (recently quit in Philippines).
We also have Dot Property as the runner-up in two markets and it’s the only group of the ones mentioned with presence in every SEA market, going beyond the top six countries.
Finally I’d like to mention Lamudi leading in Philippines and with presence in Indonesia. And also two players based in Singapore that are currently in expansion: 99.co, who recently raised $15 million series B round, and EdgeProp. Worth tracking their progress!
Market stats by country
Let’s look into the volume of properties of each market leader as a reference, knowing that having duplicates is quite common on traditional portals. This way we can have an idea is each market is more for buyers or renters:
If we calculate the ratio of property for sale vs rent, we can get an idea of what kind of markets we have: Singapore 3:1, Malaysia 2:1, Philippines 5:1, Thailand 1:1, Indonesia 10:1 and Vietnam 5:1. Now I can understand some thing better like why in Indonesia, one of the top three portals (rumahdijual.com) is only for buyers. And surprising how in Thailand seems to be so balanced.
In terms of market size, the smallest is obviously Singapore. Then we have Philippines but the reason could be cause is a very young market, maybe not so many people are listing their properties in portals. Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam represent a good opportunity in terms of size.
Finally on the right axis I have included the estimated monthly visits of each market leader. So we can check the usual correlation between traffic and volume of properties, compared country by country.
