Recently Property Portal Watch had the pleasure of chatting with Ricco Zuschlag, the Founder and Partner of boliga.dk, Denmark’s largest independent residential website.
We asked Zuschlag about the unusual name of his company (in English), and what is its meaning? ‘Boliga’ was not the first choice for the new company; the first name which the property portal was christened with was ‘Boligatlas’, which in Danish means ‘housing atlas,’ because the idea was to feature real estate for sale on a map instead of a list. However, as destiny would have it, the name and the URL were already spoken for and thus Boliga.dk was officially launched in 2007… sans atlas.
Though the idea to start a business may have been a good one, the year was a challenge. In 2007 when the housing market began to decline around the globe, Denmark was also hit very hard but with recent signs of the market picking up, now a mere five years later, Boliga has 80,000 listings on its site, and an approximate 800,000 unique visitors every month. Most of its visitors are from Denmark, with some coming from abroad.
Zuschlag said that, since the company’s launch the company’s goal has been to make the Danish real estate market completely transparent. “This means today we can show house hunters, what the previous sale price on each property was, as far back as 1992.” Boliga also shows how long the property has been on the market, if another real estate agent had the property for sale, as well as other pertinent specifics on the property, such as sale prices per square meter, etc.
Boliga has a real estate agent database, which indicates how each real estate agent performs, ie: how fast do they sell, how often do they lower the price of the property, what they have for sale, and what they have sold.
The company sends out a weekly newsletter to approximately 30,000 recipients, with information about the property market, and valuable statistics. A daily email called ‘watch emails’ is sent out to an average of 6,000 to house hunters, or people that are just interested in what is going on in specific areas.
Boliga has also ventured into the mobile apps realm, having developed and launched an iPhone and an Android app, both free of charge. So far they have noticed that the iOS app is significantly more popular than the Android one, as an approximate 80% of mobile users are on iOS.
It will be interesting to watch Denmark’s top property portal evolve in the years to come, and what new innovative features they roll out in the near future.
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