Real estate trading goes online

Philippine e-commerce takes a giant leap tomorrow as the Chamber of Real Estate and Builders’ Associations (CREBA) formally opens to the public the eCREBA Internet Portal, dubbed the Philippine Real Property Supermall Online. It will have a live demonstration at noon at the Dusit Hotel in Makati City.

The first real-time business to consumer Internet trading facility for real properties in the Philippines, ecreba.com provides local sellers of homes and other real property the communication and electronic documentation facilities that will enable them to capture the overseas market and close sales online.

A multimillion-peso project of CREBA and Geospatial Solutions Inc. (GSI), eCREBA builds upon the secure, cutting-edge portal and web conferencing technologies of global giant IBM and connects to the world through ePLDT’s internet expressway.

CREBA founder and chairman Manuel M. Serrano said the decade-long depressed state of the local real estate market has forced the industry to set its sights on the lucrative overseas market for Philippine real property, comprised of some eight million overseas Filipinos, retirees, foreign investors and tourists.

However, considering the peculiar nature of realty transactions and the distance separating the buyers and sellers, showcasing the properties, fielding inquiries, negotiating, closing deals, effecting reservations and managing remittances have been extremely difficult and time-consuming.

eCREBA’s electronic documentation functionalities, secure real-time web conferencing facilities – composed of text, voice and video chat with document collaboration tools – as well as payment gateways and reservations monitoring system, will considerably reduce these difficulties. The eCREBA Portal is but another project of this chamber designed to benefit not only our industry and the millions of homeless Filipinos, but the entire nation as well, Serrano said.

"If through eCREBA we are able to effectively tap just one percent of the overseas market, this would already contribute some $3.2 billion as it would revitalize our industry which, after all, is the number one economic pump-primer."

Equally important, this portal – in conjunction with eCREBA’s GIS mapping project – could serve as an effective medium in globally promoting the investment and tourism potentials of our various localities, Serrano added.

The portal’s central property data base and powerful search engine aggregates various categories of real property offered by different sellers, and displays their brochures, GIS maps, ownership documents, as well as "virtual tours" or video walkthroughs.

More importantly, an interested buyer can negotiate directly with the seller in real time, watch as the pro-forma sales documents are being prepared right on his computer screen, fill up the contracts also from his computer, and have these instantly received by the seller, after which he may remit payment either through eCREBA’s payment gateway or through regular remittance channels.