The general problem is property search with lots of options, and even that is a tricky niche... I worked at a company that tried to do this, and in the end we found it's too much work per niche.
Maybe if NLP gets a lot better.
The general problem is property search with lots of options, and even that is a tricky niche... I worked at a company that tried to do this, and in the end we found it's too much work per niche.
Maybe if NLP gets a lot better.
Is an apartment with a view not something many people want?
When I look at r/digitalnomad, the top post right now is somebody showing of the view of their apartment.
Booking.com has a filter 'View'. So there must be some demand, right? The filter just does not work. When I look at apartments with a view in Bangkok the first 3 they show me are:
https://www.booking.com/hotel/th/bangkokshortstay-3br-sukhum...
https://www.booking.com/hotel/th/aspira-parc-39.html
https://www.booking.com/hotel/th/ekkamai-prestige.html
None of these are what I mean with an apartment with a view. Some are just hotel rooms. Some seem to not have a view.
Now weigh that against the cost of creating/running a site, and digging out the properties with a view.
I've not done this rigorously at all. But in the site I worked on, I suspect people filtering by facets similar to "has a view" were, optimistically, about 1% of our engaged audience. Conversion rates were like 5%. So that was probably a few tens of people per day (we had a fairly big audience!)
If you monetise by referral bonuses, you'll probably get tens of dollars per referral. So at most ~100USD per day.
Now consider the costs of setting up and running such a site. Remember that we were a global property search engine -- to get that thousands-strong audience, we were running all over the world.
IMO it just doesn't add up.
You can always prove me wrong! One way might be to focus on high-end clients, and somehow make more money from them... larger referral bonuses, for example, or having the clients pay you to find them properties with a good view.
But yeah, I remain sceptical.