Online resources a great help for homebuyers

“It made it easy for me to find a condominium located close to my office, and also gave me more information before I visited the projects, having found the best location for us from the website.
“This saved me transportation time, as some property websites also offered discounts of between Bt10,000 and Bt20,000 on the purchase price when I registered online. This made it cheaper than buying without registering online with them first,” Juthathip said.

Easier to use online resources
Nongluck Jaengkarnkij, 45, also searched online for information about Plum Condominium at Rangsit before deciding to purchase a unit there.
“I searched many websites to find condominiums close to Bangkok University to make commuting easy, and I found Plum Condominium. I also found more information about the project online, before deciding to visit in person – and I ended up buying a unit there,” she explained.
Nongluck said that using online resources had made it so much easier to get more information about the project, without having to make a personal visit.
“This also helped me make a decision [on which property to buy] and saved time surveying various projects by car and getting stuck in traffic jams,” she added.
Following the significant change in consumer behaviour in terms of using the Internet to research and home in on the best property, most leading residential developers have extended their marketing budget to promote products through online channels. Many are making use of all leading social-media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, as well as websites, blogs etc.

Digital media channel
“We are spending up to Bt190 million, or 15 per cent of our marketing budget, this year on digital media, such as websites, Instagram, Facebook, property-review websites, bloggers who comment and review residential projects, and more, after witnessing a significant change in the behaviour of home-buyers. Many are relying on digital media to find more information about housing and several also make a decision to purchase online,” Pruksa Real Estate’s co-chief executive officer, Lersak Chuladesa, told The Nation early this week.
The company has developed its digital-media channel so customers can book and make a down payment on a home online by clicking on Pruksaonlinesale.com, he said.
“Our customers can search online to find a residence at a location that matches their requirements, then they can make a reservation on the Net – be it for a detached house, townhouse or condominium,” he explained.
From 2013 through to the end of last year, Pruksa recorded sales worth Bt13.77 billion for some 5,600 units from the online system.
The developer targets online sales worth Bt8.22 billion, for 3,300 units, this year, Lersak added.
Property Perfect’s deputy chief business development officer, Wason Srirattanping, said the company was spending Bt50 million this year to promote its residential projects via the full range of digital platforms – from Facebook and Instagram to its own website and property-review sites as well as bloggers. He said bloggers bring the company more directly to its customer targets than mass media such as television, magazines and newspapers.
“We learn who are our customers are in terms of using our website. For example, when we open a project for bookings via the site, we can get more information about who is seriously interested and what they require. This will then be our database to be used when developing future residential projects,” he said.
Wason added that up to 30 per cent of those showing an interest actually end up making a purchase when a project opens for bookings – a statistic that helped the company to forecast presales when a project is launched.
“Digital media now has an [increasing] influence among the young generation, and the development of telecommunications networks for 4G mobile applications will have a strong influence on customers deciding to buy all types of consumer products, including homes,” he said.
Ananda Development, meanwhile, has developed both a website and a mobile application to serve the young-customer target segment, and is finalising an app to enable customers to reserve units online at its two condominium projects – the Ideo Mobi Asoke and Venio Sukhumvit 10 – from 9pm to12pm on September 22.
“Our customer targets are Gen C individuals who use the Internet all the time, which is why we are promoting on social media such as Facebook, Line, Instagram and YouTube,” said Ananda’s vice president for marketing, Phonganan Sookkasem.
He added that the company now used social media for marketing, advertising, sales and corporate campaigns. “The budget for social media is less than that for using mass media, but social-media platforms have an increasingly important influence over end users,” the executive said.
Nattagit Sirirat, vice president-marketing at SC Asset Corp, said the company’s marketing strategy was to use digital and social media to cover “external and internal elements” in focusing on its customer targets.
“We use all social and digital media to take our products directly to the customer, especially for homes costing between Bt5 million and Bt10 million per unit. This category has received positive feedback and shows the number of customers who visited the projects thanks to the online system accounted for 21 per cent of overall visits in the first half. This is much higher than 14 per cent in the same period last year,” he said.
AP (Thailand)’s business group chief for condominium products, Vittakarn Chandavimol, said the influence of digital media had grown among potential home-buyers, many of whom now use digital channels pretty much all the time to match their lifestyle needs.
The company’s website has chalked up 2.24 million “visits”, with many also registering to visit its residential projects in person – and up to 30 per cent of the latter ultimately deciding to buy an AP property.
“In my view, new media such as digital media and websites are the new channel enabling us to provide more information directly to our customers. This presents a challenge for marketing: to customise online information that matches our customers with our products in a more effective way than mass and traditional media,” he said.
According to a survey by the Electronic Transactions Development Agency, online trading in Thailand across all sectors was worth some Bt2.1 trillion last year up 3.9 per cent from 2014.

User-friendly technology
Around 58 per cent of online trade value, or Bt1.23 trillion, came from business-to-business (B2B) transactions, 22 per cent from B2C (business to consumer) and the remainder from B2G (business to government).
About 25.66 per cent of the B2C market was for computers and accessories, followed by cosmetics at 24.4 per cent, and fashion at 17.27 per cent.
Though not yet one of the leading sectors in terms of online trading, the rising trend to buy a home via the online system will see strong growth as homebuyers – especially the young – find it more convenient to search for and purchase a home via increasingly user-friendly technology.
“If the project at which I want to buy a home has online booking, or the mobile application makes it easy to book, I will use it because it is easy for me to select and pay,” Juthathip said.