breeze-france.com

breeze-france.com is a completely new property search website, launched in beta in September 2008. One of its goals is to improve the French property search experience, particularly for English-speakers.

The concept behind the site includes helping advertisers who speak one language to market to buyers who speak another – in this case, French to English. In so doing, the market for advertisers is widened and the choice for the buyers is improved.

Ownership | Market Position | Key Measurements | Market Coverage | Advertising Model | Financials | Site Sections | Technology | Key Management | History | Recent Press | Information Sources

Ownership

breeze-france.com is owned and operated by Purchase in France, a private company specialising in guiding clients through the entire property buying process in France.

Market Position

New to the market – no significant position yet established (October 2008).

Key Measurements

Not yet available.

Market Coverage

Concentrating start up efforts in the Midi Pyrénées region of south west France. Planned sales efforts and organic growth leading to coverage in all regions of France.

Advertising Model

During the beta phase, property upload and additional services are free.

A two-level subscription model is planned:

• Level One: 39 euros per month to upload all properties in portfolio
• Level Two: to upload all properties in portfolio with additional services for the international market (eg. written translation and telephone language assistance) – pricing is under review.

Financials

Starting position – no revenues yet to report.

Site Sections

The key sections of the website are:

• Houses for sale and rent
• Apartments for sale and rent
• Land/Prestige/Business/Other properties for sale and rent
• Gites/Holiday properties for sale and rent (planned 2009)
• Directory

Technology

breeze-france.com has been constructed using model-view controller (MCV) programming methodologies. The code base and current framework allows the site be be fully extendable with company growth. Core technologies are a combination of MySQL, CakePHP, Google API and geo-location data.

Key Management

The key management are:

• Heather Hughes – Managing Director
• Ronald Smith – Communications Director
• Gareth Hughes – Commercial Director

History

Purchase in France, based near Toulouse, France, offers a team of bilingual, native English-speaking staff to assist clients (often newcomers) find and purchase property in France. A project to work more efficiently has blossomed into a website to share with others.

The team decided to create their own database to match clients’ needs and work more efficiently. While pondering the best way forward, French estate agents kept asking for help to attract foreign clients. A lightbulb moment happened and a website was born, and breeze-france.com launched in September 2008 in beta form.

breeze-france.com will offer property direct from French advertisers and provide more choice to overseas/English-speaking property hunters. Search methods are directed at helping people find properties in locations that suit their lifestyle (we’ve all heard the stories of people falling in love with a property only to discover after buying that they can’t get a pint of milk).

Maps and a list of “Location Search” choices help pinpoint properties near or far from the beach, the mountains, schools, golf, the vet’s office, etc… Written descriptions of the area then feature first in the full property description.

A telephone language assistance service, “Anglo-Phone”, helps everyone communicate. Buyers can ask early questions – before they are ready to make a financial commitment to assistance services and without limiting their choice to only those properties represented by English-speaking agents. Sellers can answer the questions – they couldn’t before.

The site is currently written in English for buyers and in French for advertisers. It will be fully bilingual soon and contains ability to add languages. New features will include video, audio descriptions and informational podcasts.

Recent Press

Press releases are posted on the website or blog.

Information Sources

Management Interview
Site Review

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2. seloger.com

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3. kyero.com

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4. easyroommate.com

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5. inea.co.uk

   inea.co.uk stands for the Independent Network of Estate Agents, and offers a multiple listing service (MLS) for independent estate agents in the UK. inea.co.uk has signed up 150 agents to their portal