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Agents
Manager
Location:
Warwick
Salary: £50,000 -
£75,000
Company: Axis Property
Investment Ltd
Job
type: Permanent
Description: Do you
want to join a fast-moving company at the top of
its game?
£25,000 – OTE £70,000 uncapped
plus car, laptop + mobile
We are a
market-leadi...
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US
PROPERTY PORTALS GO MULTI-LINGUAL TO BOOST SALES
US,
portals,
multi-lingual
An
increasing number of US portals are ‘internationalising’ their
content by adding new languages to their website to appeal to
as many international buyer markets as possible.
The latest example of this trend
is Florida-based Prudential Palms Realty (PPR), which recently
launched an international division in April with the specific
goal of attracting non-national investors into the country to
shift the thousands of excess properties in the
state.
As part of this effort, PPR has
updated its different sites into 12 different languages
covering the majority of the world’s most active buyer
markets.
“This service is important to me
as an international property specialist for not only can my
clients view properties in the language of their choice but
they can also read my biography in this language as well,”
said Carla Rayman, director of international business
development for the company in an interview with OPP. “This is
a great tool to use with both buyers and sellers prior to
meeting them so they understand a little about you. Some words
cannot be translated but it gives them a general idea of who
you are and what you do.”
Commenting on the launch of the
international division, Rayman added: “It was an opportune
time to do this for a number of reasons – the currency
fluctuations and the interest for prospects to venture outside
their own markets. International is never easy and is
consistently a challenge. The process is ever-evolving and you
have to be up-to-date on new trends; what is happening where,
where is the next emerging market, how do you best reach your
clients and for us this is the simplest way.”
PPR is just one of the many US
firms to have taken this approach in the last six months. The
Houston Association of Realtors has also entered the world of
multi-language listings by updating its site into Spanish,
Chinese, Vietnamese, French, German and Italian.
In addition to this, one of the
world’s biggest property portals, Properazzi.com which
recorded over one million visitors to its portal in June,
launched six new languages on its website this month as the
industry takes a more global approach to the overseas property
sector.
A big driver of the
internationalisation of US portals is immobel.com, a
translation company specialising in the real estate sector. So
far the company has translated listings data for over 500,000
property professionals in the US alone, accounting for 25% of
all realtors active in the US market. Its clients include
Coldwell Banker, Century 21, Prudential, ReMax, several state
run realtor associations and the Parisian branch of FNAIM, the
French Real Estate Association.
Janet Choynowski, CEO,
Immobel.com, told OPP that to give an English language portal
the best chance of competing in a global marketplace,
multi-lingual services are a must.
“A point to consider is that
search engines in foreign languages (there are 162 Google
search engines, each confined to searching in one language and
or geographic location ) do not ‘see’ non-conforming web
sites,” she said. “A search on Google.com for example, will
not return web sites in French language. Whereas a search on
Google.fr is hardly likely to return websites in English
language. Unless a property agent wants to be effectively
invisible to all foreign language clients, they need foreign
language content on their website.”
Immobel supported languages are:
Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Italian, French, German,
Polish, Russian, Chinese Traditional, Chinese Simplified,
Korean, Vietnamese and Japanese and can reciprocate by
translating the languages above into
English.
What
do you think? If you have an opinion about the issues raised
in this news report, email it the web editor now.
Click on the red
keywords under the main headline or use the search box
on the left of the screen to navigate through OPP’s extensive
database.
Date added: 25 June
2008
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