So you have been thinking about building your own property portal?

You've seen them going for some time, you've seen how well some of them seem to do  and you have probably been in the Real Estate Business for some time to know well that a Property Portal is good business.

Chances are that you have even been one of their clients, you have given them your hard earned cash (usually earned through Property Sales Commissions) to put up your portfolio or part of your portfolio on them.

So the next step is obvious for you: If they can do it I can do it too. Just that it's really not all that simple, I'm going to try and shed my view on the points of views and cases I've found through my many years of working with property portals (as a developer and Salesperson) and with companies that want to set-up Property Portals.

First thing's first: Why do you really want a Property Portal?

The quick answer to this would be 'Because I want to become rich running one, property portals seem to run themselves and every month it's just about money pouring down from clients'.

At least half of that previous statement is not true, actually, the only part that is true is the one about wanting to become rich (I think we all want that).

It is the part about the portals running themselves that is specially not true. Running a Property Portal is probably going to require you to work many more hours than you do now selling property and hiring more staff (or outsourcing them, but we'll speak about that later) than you would have ever needed to hire running any other businesses.

They don't run themselves? Really? So what do I need?

You are going to need a lot of things, you are going to need a lot of planning and you are going to need good business partners along the way that's for sure. Property Portal Software like for example that offered by Rivility Real Estate Software and excellent support too.

Apart from that you are going to need Developers, Sales, Telemarketing, admin staff and Website Marketing activities done. We'll be writing about all these things you'll need shortly and we'll identify the possible pitfalls you may encounter and the markets where you could succeed if you are determined to have your own Property Portal.