A single website for all French property listings

Real estate professionals have banded together to form the largest online property listing database. The aim is to offer one and a half million properties for sale on a single platform.

Increasingly, anyone on the market for a new home will look to the Internet as a first point of call. But it can be a daunting task to sift through the numerous websites listing properties for sale or rent. In France alone, these websites are plentiful and include Le Bon Coin, Se Loger, PAP, Acheter-Louer and a wealth of others.

Competitors in normal circumstances, French real estate professionals have decided to join together and take advantage of the ease of online property listing rather than fight it. They decided to create their own joint online platform and the website “Bien Ici” was born on 7^th December of last year.

Twenty-four real estate companies are involved in the creation of this common platform, which offers rentals and sales of existing property as well as buildings in development. CEO of the National Federation of Real Estate (Fnaim), Jean-François Buet has dubbed this a “historical alliance.”

The aim of the website is to banish the need for endless research on a multitude of sites by offering developers, unions, property managers and major real estate groups such as Foncia, Laforet and Century 21 the opportunity to place their ads on a unique site.

“We have move past the ‘every man for himself’ real estate practice and have enriched our offer and compiled our expertise,” Bernard Cadeau, CEO of the Orpi real estate network, tells FranceTV. The website currently displays around 300,000 property listings and creators hope it will reach 1.4 million ads, or as many as Seloger.com, the site’s main competitor.

In addition to rendering property search simpler, the Bien Ici website aims to appeal with its novelty 3D layout allowing users to turn buildings around to view them from all angles. Some ads also offer virtual 360° tours of properties and the detailed map displays essential points of interest nearby, from public transportation links to shops, schools, restaurants and cultural monuments nearby.

Through Bien Ici, realtors are hoping to modernize their image. Bernard Cadeau explains that the website 3D dimension “is both fun and practical, allowing buyers or renters to situate a property in its surroundings.”

According to its website Bien Ici is “the first site to also take into consideration a property’s neighborhood and the services available in its surrounding area” allowing users to “find the property best suited to their specific needs and lifestyle as well as immerse themselves in their future neighborhood.”

After free usage for six months, professionals will have to choose between two offers. One at 70 euros per month to publish an unlimited number of ads and the other at 150 euros per month for the added capacity to publish video ads and links to their own websites.

Photo credit: Bien Ici