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Archived Articles
Simeon Mitropolitski is a Canadian analyst, of Bulgarian origin, and a former syndicated columnist with the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA). He is the author of several hundred articles dealing with hot political and economic topics, both national and international.
He was part of the first group of Bulgarian intellectuals and students that began the opposition movement that finally put an end to the communist regime in this country in 1989, and in 1996-1997 participated in international observation teams during the elections in several Balkan countries - Romania, Albania and Bulgaria.
In 2002 Simeon and his family moved from Bulgaria to Canada where they live now in Montreal, province of Quebec. Simeon is a Master of Political Science from McGill University and a B.A. of Political Science and History.
Global Real Estate Project
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Europe: Real Estate Meets the InternetLooking for information on the Internet to find the right property isn't something new for Europe, but compared to the U.S., the industry there has many things to learn. There are in Europe thousands of real estate companies offering their products via the electronic net. In spite of the great expectations in the late 90's, the Net didn't bring much more clients to the real estate offices. In the "Old Europe", as it has been recently called, the Internet didn't become the universal panacea for the malaise, expressed by many in the business. But before they blame the technical tools for their market failures, let's take a brief look at the ways they use the Net. In Europe it isn't still a rule for a real estate company to have its own web site, which is almost a must for their American counterparts. Some of these European agents, which have one, prefer to include there just their contact information. Other companies, which are sufficiently diligent to put inside as many as possible properties with their photos, don't worry about listing their sites at as many as possible open business directories. A brief look at the European sections at IRED, Inc. shows that the ratio of the listed companies per 1 million of the local population varies between 0.5 and 2.0. This means that just 30-120 sites represent a European country of 60 million. Randomly picked up U.S. state, Maryland, with a population of 5 million has approximately 300 real estate sites, which represents a ratio of 60 companies per million residents. This is just a quantitative comparison and it's not at all in favor of Europe. What about the quality itself of the European sites? Some of them are real masterpieces; others are better not to look at. Where is the truth? Also randomly, I picked up 10 sites, 2 from France, Germany, Italy and Spain and 1 from the Netherlands and Belgium. The United Kingdom and Ireland were left aside in order to check the language policy of the agencies too. The results were quite interesting. Half of the sites used only one language (the national language of the country itself), which automatically shrinks the clients' pool. Four sites didn't include any local link to make at least a little impression to the clients of the roundabouts. Also just four sites worried about writing at least one page explaining why the clients should choose precisely their area. The general impression looking at the European sites is that the continent in some respect still lives in the Middle Age; there is so little cooperation between the companies under the form of MLS. Many real estate companies in Europe think that putting their listings next to the others' will cost them some market share. In fact this turns away both the sellers and the buyers. It's not surprising then that in some countries in Europe the agencies' share of the market transactions is much less than 50%, while in the U.S. it's almost 90%. What should most of the European companies do in order to use all of the Net's potential? First, they all have to open their own sites. Second, they should put pages inside with area links as well as pages written by the company's owner. They could talk about the areas' schools or museums or lakes, whatever they like. This will make their sites friendlier and will attract more clients than just enumerating the properties with their price tags. Third, they should cooperate between each other within some sort of MLS in order to profit together from the bigger client's pool. Sounds easy like one, and two, and three. Let's do it!
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See also the directory of companies providing real estate services in, and general real estate information of Europe.
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