Looking for a nice villa in the South of France or for some offices in Silicon Valley for your tech startup?
A new app that launched on September 1 seeks to disrupt the unsatisfactory listings-dominated real estate market with a more tailored approach.
For executives relocating at the drop of a hat, Domobase has been created to help people new to an area with their property search.
Domobase founder and CEO, Paul Fleury, is determined to put demand from buyers and tenants at the center of the real estate market rather than prolonging the process with numerous listings.
“The current form of real estate industry is shaped around offer rather than demand. Domobase seeks to address that,” said Fleury.
“Clients who seek to rent, buy or invest in property have to spend endless time on huge listings. They waste money and lose focus. Listings are improving with better data and better interface, but still the pain remains to go through so many listings,” said Fleury.
The Domobase product is a mobile application that users sign into with their social network profiles. They can define the type of property they want and can then draw a perimeter on a map to represent the area where they wish this property to be.
Domobase’s artificial intelligence (AI) and team then promotes their profile to local real estate agents and landlords for a small fee.
Domobase takes the time to find good agents, said Fleury. It will have sold a high volume of houses and will have competitive figures for how many days their properties take to sell.
Meanwhile, for real estate agents, landlords and property developers, Domobase provides a supplementary, accurate and relatively cheap source of new leads, said Fleury.
“Our platform also allows real estate agents and landlords to sign up by defining their area of activity. That will allow them to receive a free notification when a user adds a new profile to the Domobase platform within their parameter,” he added.
The app is targeted at people looking for property investments as well as homes. “We can get in touch with any kind of agents,” said Fleury. “We can do commercial property, too; we will also find retail and factories.”
The CEO admits that for the app to succeed, it will need a big marketing budget — the business is just relying on networks of the founders at the moment. Fleury has an international team dotted around the world.
Incorporated in Delaware, but headquartered in San Francisco for now, Fleury said he would look at approaching Silicon Valley corporates who are hiring new staff at a fast pace and who need help with their housing needs.
“We could easily make a customization for them,” he said.
Long-term, the tech entrepreneur would like to take a leaf out of Airbnb’s book and include a service for people who want to rent a bedroom to a roommate. A new service, meanwhile, is due to be introduced imminently, which takes things a step further.
“We will be launching a service called Domobase Curated. It will allow you to pay $19.99 in order to get a listing of online properties that meet your criteria — specifically curated by a talented human freelancer. For another $99.99, this freelancer will call all the agents and landlords from that listing, and will make appointments on your behalf within your times of availability. Truly a time saver.”
