Housing.com, the most known (and once troubled) real estate startup of India, has today announced that it plans to re-introduce the home rental classifieds division early next year. This will operate alongside the now core business of buying and selling homes in the country.
For those unaware, Housing.com had been plagued with an internal strife and this had ultimately led to multiple top-level exits, including three co-founders. Thus, last year, the company took an important strategic decision to pivot the operational rental business into the most lucrative category of buying as well as selling real-estate property in the country.
This decision has proven pivotal for the growth of Housing.com over the past one year. It has not only enabled the company to stabilize its financial status but also put it on track to achieve $10 million in revenues this fiscal. Talking about growth figures,
Compared to last year, on a monthly basis, the Company’s revenues have grown by 400%, operating costs have decreased by 70%, traffic has increased by more than 200% growing from 1.3M to 4.1M and number of homes listed have increased by over 450% growing from 110,000 to 630,000.
But the one question currently swirling through our minds is – why launch the home rental business all of a sudden?
Housing.com believes that PM Modi’s landmark move of demonetising of older currency notes will lead to a slowdown in the home buying and selling segment. But it could prove to be a boon for the home rental division, which is most likely to witness a rampant growth in the coming months.
Thus, the company plans to bank on this opportunity and relaunch the previously core ‘rentals’ business. This move from the government has led to an advancement of plans and the team is now focused on launching the service as soon as possible.
Commenting on the development, Jason Kothari, CEO at Housing.com said,
The Company has delivered exceptional results in the last one year and has achieved a successful business turnaround. We are excited with the progress and believe now is the right time to expand, starting with Rentals.
Although we had planned to restart rentals around the end of 2017, but the recent demonetisation move has led us to advance our plans. We have started the preparations, and we look forward to an aggressive launch early next year.
The company will use its brand recognition developed via the home buying and selling business to reintroduce the rental business. In a planned move to further strengthen and grow its leadership in the online real estate segment, the rental division is slated to go live early next year – January/February.
