Cebu as “second home” gets additional boost

CEBU, Philippines - International online real estate marketplace Lamudi and Cebu’s  Leuterio Realty and Brokerage and its affiliate, Rent.ph  have signed a partnership deal stimulating further the interest of the global market in Cebu as a second home destination.

As the world’s biggest virtual real estate marketplace, Lamudi has operations in 32 countries. The company, which is part of Rocket Internet, was launched in the Philippines in January 2014. With its partnership with Leuterio Realty and Rent.ph, anyone now has a wider market to search, sell, rent or buy properties online.

Currently, Lamudi Philippines has 90,000 property listings with around 700,000 visitors per month while Leuterio Realty and Rent.ph have 23,000 property listings combined.

“There is a growing interest from both local and foreign markets to make Cebu as their second home. But we can only do much in our overseas and out-of-town promotional events, that is why putting up these properties online makes it easier for buyers to shop for any property that they fancy specially in Cebu,” said Anthony Gerard Leuterio, president and chief executive officer of Leuterio Real Estate Brokerage and Rent.ph.

“The partnership we have with Lamudi is highly significant for the brokerage firm especially now that mobile internet usage is growing in the country. We noticed that buyers now prefer to search for properties for sale on  their smartphones,” Leuterio added.

Leuterio Realty and Rent.ph have inventories across the country, but most of these properties are inVisayas and Mindanao so it is really very convenient for the company to have online listing.

For her part, Lamudi managing director  Jacqueline van den Ende said, “this partnership will allow Leuterio Realty and Rent.ph to expand their reach by allowing them to list their properties in Lamudi.”

Van den Ende said it is the first formal partnership entered by Lamudi with a realty and brokerage firm in the Philippines.

“For Lamudi, we have a thousand brokers and developers advertising, but with Leuterio this is not advertising but partnership,” she said.

Leuterio said the partnership with Lamudi only allows the latter to become a lead generator. It is still  his company that will  close  the deal.

Aside from Lamudi, Rocket Internet is also the company behind online shops Lazada and Zalora, and taxi-hailing app Easy Taxi.

Lamudi’s partnership with the Leuterio Group is in line with the German company’s thrust to build proven Internet business models and transfer them to “new, underserved or untapped” markets where it seeks to scale them into market leading online companies.  (FREEMAN)