How to buy an apartment, or why don't developers and buyers trust the internet?

People wonder from whom to buy an apartment so as not to lose out. Developers, in turn, have to not only cut costs at all stages of the business, but also be at the forefront of marketing and use the most effective advertising tools. Otherwise they will not survive.

Below is information for investors, the manager, the sales manager, the head of the marketing department (if there is one) and decision-makers in construction companies in Dushanbe, as well as the regions of Tajikistan, regarding the Khonai Nav platform - an ecosystem for developers and a unified platform for builders and those wishing to acquire housing in new developments at developer prices.

Recently, representatives of several Dushanbe developers said that they did not trust us, thinking that we were just another bunch of amateurs who launched a website on the internet and would disappear within a year. And that we had decided to make easy money. But our project has already been working for more than two years since its launch - back then Elit Stroy Service, Salmon Insaat, Stroy Center trusted us. For some, the posted property has been completed and sold; for others, it has been completed and the sales process is ongoing; for a third, a number of blocks are being erected, among which there are some put into operation and sold, while sales are also ongoing. On behalf of the team, we express our gratitude for the trust shown.

Below in the text will be the observation of our team, which will allow some conclusions to be drawn regarding the personnel hired into the sales department.

Posting information about a residential complex and a construction company, in particular on the Khonai Nav portal, will allow:

* increasing brand recognition (of the residential complex and the developer)

* informing the public

* increasing trust in and loyalty to the developer

* reputation management

* filling the information space (posting news about the company, participation in new projects, the successful commissioning of completed properties)

* avoiding additional expenses for creating a website (this is at least $600 for a landing page, and from $1000 for a business-card site, a domain from 270 somoni a year, hosting depending on the server location and service provider from 400 somoni a year, and a reduction in SMM costs within 30-50% of the proposed cost of this service)

Increasing trust in the developer

This stage is important both for new and little-known developers and for developers with a large number of completed properties. If a person is interested in a specific residential complex, they will first study the information about it, and then begin to look for information about how reliable the developer is. 

When  the crisis came and construction of some residential complexes in the city was frozen, people became less trusting.  Now they diligently look for information confirming the developer’s good faith.

To increase the amount of information about Tajikistan’s primary real estate market, we invite the developers of Tajikistan to cooperate. Interested construction companies can contact us at the phone number +992-98-524-1042, Kholmatov Aziz - project development director.

The market’s difficulties

1. The sales cycle in real estate is very long. It has always been so, and over the past few years the cycle has become even longer. This is because the population’s incomes are not growing. People have less and less ready cash. And they are increasingly forced first to sell secondary housing, or to take loans and go into debt. This has added another one to six months to the purchase cycle.

2. The seller’s market became a buyer’s market many years ago. All developers felt this, but not all managed to restructure. Managers think that clients will find them themselves, call, and buy. Sales departments do not know how to work with buyers during a long sales cycle. Not everyone can even work with warm clients, and only a few know how to warm up and retain cold ones.

3. Marketers have not yet learned to calculate the effectiveness of advertising investments and, on that basis, optimize marketing. This leads to many developers «flooding» their advertising campaigns with money rather than optimizing them. Or by marketing optimization they understand cutting advertising budgets, but do not forecast how this will affect sales.

4. Banks do not provide convenient financial instruments to builders. The state supports developers indirectly, but on the whole the market is stagnating and even falling. Although the Association of Developers of Tajikistan has already held negotiations at the SSB RT Amonatbonk on providing preferential loans to developers and developing the mortgage lending market, of which very few people in Tajik realities are aware

5. The auction in contextual advertising, as the simplest and most convenient source of targeted traffic, is overheated. Competition between developers, brokers, and aggregators that have taken over all the organic search results is too high. The entry of capital players into regional markets further intensifies competition. All this leads to a constant rise in the cost of attracting buyers’ attention.

Features of the audience

The bulk of properties in residential real estate are sold under shared-participation agreements (SPA). Despite the fact that under an SPA the developer guarantees the deadlines and is financially responsible for the result, there have been situations on the market related to developers failing to fulfill their obligations. Buyers understand that they are investing large amounts of money in not-yet-ready housing. And if the building is not completed, they will lose money or freeze it for a long time. 

And many are firsthand familiar with the situation where one apartment belongs to several families, owing to the irresponsibility of a sales manager or one of the construction companies’ employees. Fortunately, the country’s and city’s leadership, having noticed this, began to revoke licenses and also tightened the conditions for issuing construction permits. Which is quite important, as only reliable construction companies that have earned the trust of the public and state bodies remain on the market.

Buying housing — is one of the largest purchases, and is made only a few times in a lifetime.  Therefore buyers approach the choice of property, developer, and study of the market with maximum responsibility. The decision-making process lasts from 4 months to several years and consists of a large number of stages. 

In the decision-making process the buyer goes through such stages as:

1. The formation of a need. A person develops a desire to improve their housing conditions.  Or to invest money in order to earn from the rise in housing value or from subsequent rental.

2. Researching alternative ways of satisfying the need. If the buyer has decided to improve their housing conditions, then they compare the purchase with other options: renting, building a private house.  If there is a demand for investment, then the buyer doubts whether it is worth investing substantial funds in real estate. There are other financial instruments too: stocks, deposits, business.

3. Monitoring of properties on the market. At this stage buyers compare properties by price, district, completion deadlines, landscaping concepts and so on.

4. Searching for information about a specific residential complex (RC): whether it fits the apartment-selection criteria. Depending on the class of housing, the comparison criteria may differ. And price is far from always the decisive factor.

5. Searching for information about the developer: whether it is reliable, which properties it built before, and what reviews there are of the previously built properties.

6. Choosing the payment method: 100% payment, installments, trade-in of secondary housing, maternity capital, mortgage.

At each decision-making stage the client formulates different queries in search engines, studies information in different sources (portals, social networks, forums, search engines), and asks for advice from relatives/friends/acquaintances.

We wish our developers - first of all, qualified sales managers, profit in sales and the completion of all the housing properties under construction; the financial sector - the development of the mortgage lending market and a reduction in interest rates on loans in both foreign and national currency; the visitors of our platform among potential buyers - reliable contractors and high-quality, comfortable and affordable housing at acceptable prices.

Sincerely,

The Khonai Nav team!