Online Investment

Earlier this month, Bonnier’s business area News Sweden announced it was looking for digital startups to invest in. In an article in Swedish business daily Dagens industri, the fifth and most recent investment was announced: real estate aggregator site HittaHem.se. The purchase was made jointly by Swedish dailies Dagens industri, Dagens Nyheter and Sydsvenskan.

We talked to Henrik Stangel, CEO of Dagens industri, about the investment.

Why is News Sweden investing in HittaHem.se?

We’ve seen that the market for real estate sales has evolved and the needs of real estate brokers as well as sellers have changed. An ever larger share of houses and apartments on the market are sold before they’re even advertised. There are real estate brokers who say that 20-40 percent of properties are never even advertised but sold directly through contacts the brokers have in their waiting lists of people interested in buying.

HittaHem.se has all the listings that today are found on Swedish real estate aggregator Hemnet, but will also have properties that brokers choose to market via their own websites. HittaHem.se has even developed a way for sellers to test the interest in their properties before they decide to list with a broker. That HittaHem.se is being built as a marketplace with a “pre-market” section is something new for the industry. HittaHem.se can work as an effective bridge for sellers, buyers and brokers.

How do you see HittaHem.se developing?

It’s all about growing with profitability. The model works by letting brokers use HittaHem.se as a lead-generating platform where they, as well as sellers, can test and build interest in objects and then buy the leads from HittaHem.se. The site is free for the sellers and the brokers will pay for the actual leads that are being generated through the site.

The revenue model is built, in other words, not with banner ads on the site but by connecting sellers, buyers and brokers. Given that some 200,000 properties are out for sale yearly in Sweden even a small portion of this should be able to generate meaningful income. We definitely believe that we can develop Sweden’s biggest and best digital meeting place for real estate within 2-3 years.