OPP has learnt that Spanish property portal Kyero.com has soft launched a new company, Portal47.com, which will allow property portals in other countries to benefit from Kyero.com technologies.
 
Deriving its name from Kyero’s research which suggests that there are now 47 countries in which British buyers are active, MD Martin Dell told OPP: “This is a complete turn-key service that will utilise the technology that exists within the Kyero.com site,” he explained. “Over the course of its history, we have spent some €2million on the development of the site. We realised that it solved a number of problems common to country-specific property portals, hence the formation of Portal47.com to deliver a full-service technology solution based on the developments which have made Kyero.com successful.”
 
Portal47 will work with a single in-country specialist that, while are perhaps good at attracting domestic buyers, are not able to adequately address the needs of foreign buyers active in the country.
 
“The niche we have addressed in Spain with Kyero.com also exists in every country where foreign buyers are active. What Kyero.com does better than most is to make the geography of Spain accessible and meaningful to a foreign buyer. Kyero.com allows them to browse property at the level they’re familiar with as well as giving them clues and inroads into other interesting options, geographically speaking. By opening up the technologies we’ve invented to apply to other countries, we believe we can work with an in-country partner and be successful in other markets in the same way.”
 
Dell told OPP that the new company’s first clients will go live in Portugal by December and in France by Q1 2009. He added that the end goal is to licence this technology to portals which will pay an initial set up fee, annual licence and a threshold-based commission structure. He stated that rather than diversifying away from Spain, the new company aims to improve it’s performance and exposure in that market too.
 
“We don’t expect Portal47 to be generating revenue for at least 18 months following the launch of each country-specific portal. This is very much a long-term-investment, and one which will enable each portal using Kyero.com technology to benefit from incremental improvements. Yesterday, for example, we added support for Italian & Portuguese languages to Kyero.com. As we roll-out to new locations, every country-specific portal will benefit from such developments simultaneously.” Source: OPP