Hello.
I started writing today without deciding exactly what I wanted to talk about. But recently, I have been spending a considerable amount of time building websites and thinking about how real estate information should be presented online, so I decided to write about that.
I have been developing and operating various websites, particularly those related to real estate. One question I keep asking myself is simple: when someone outside Japan looks at Japanese real estate, how can we present the information in a way that is genuinely easy to understand?
I do not think property information alone is enough. For overseas buyers considering Japanese real estate, exchange rates and interest rates can also be important factors. That is why I have been working not only on real estate information itself, but also on news and related information that may affect a buyer’s decision.
We have also developed our own real estate information websites in Japanese, Chinese and English. The purpose is to make the properties and information we handle easier to understand for people coming from different countries and backgrounds.
The next project I am considering is a website that connects local area information directly with real estate.
Real estate is ultimately a combination of two things: a location and a building. Even if a building itself is attractive, its value and the experience of living there depend greatly on where it is located. For that reason, I believe understanding the neighborhood is an essential part of understanding a property.
This becomes particularly important when someone is looking at Tokyo from overseas. What is each part of Tokyo actually like? Japanese buyers ask similar questions. One area may be comfortable for everyday living, another may be popular with younger people, while another may be convenient for shopping. Some people care about access to hospitals, while others place more importance on schools. There are many reasons why people choose one location over another.
Yet property websites often focus mainly on price, floor area, building age and distance from the nearest station. Information about what it is actually like to live in the neighborhood is often separated from the property information itself.
I would like to bring these two sides together.
The idea is to organize information about individual areas and connect it with real estate data. What types of rental properties are available there? What is the general rental price range? What kinds of properties are available for purchase, and at what price levels? If this information can also be connected with maps, I think it will become much easier for someone overseas to understand Tokyo as a collection of very different neighborhoods rather than simply one large city.
I am thinking of starting with Tokyo’s 23 wards and then gradually expanding to the rest of Tokyo and the wider Kanto area, including Chiba, Kanagawa and Saitama. Rather than creating another simple property search website, I want to create something that allows people to understand a place first and then look at the real estate available there.
One reason we can experiment with ideas like this is that we develop our websites entirely in-house. We do not outsource the development. We think about what we need and build it ourselves. Of course, this requires time and effort, but we do not incur a new external development cost every time we want to create a new site or try a new feature.
It also means that when a client tells us, “I want this kind of information,” we can think about how to build a system around that need. Being able to develop information websites according to what our clients actually want to know is, I believe, one of our strengths.
The role of a real estate company is not limited to introducing properties. At least from my perspective, I want to connect the different pieces of information that overseas clients need when looking at Japanese real estate and present them in a clearer and more useful way.
That is what I have been thinking about recently: how the internet can be used to improve real estate information, and what kind of local information platform we should build next.