DuProprio launched a mobile app on Monday. News that would be trivial if it weren’t for the fact that the sales service without a real estate broker had not produced an application since 2009, and that nowadays the expression “mobile Internet” is practically a pleonasm given the share of Internet users who browse from their telephone.
At the time of its launch, 14 years ago, DuProprio’s previous application had been showcased by Apple, no less. Its App Store application store had just been launched a few months earlier. Remaining pretty much unchanged thereafter, it was taken off the market in 2019 when DuProprio was still owned by British company Purplebricks.
In the summer of 2020, the Mouvement Desjardins extended $60.5 million to repatriate the company officially created in 1997 in the Quebec City region to the province. It will therefore have taken two years and dust for the real estate resale service to also reclaim its mobile platform.
An important gesture. The context makes the sale and acquisition of a residence more complicated and therefore requires better tools to reach the public. Not being a real estate broker, DuProprio also does not display properties for sale from its service on aggregation platforms such as Centris, the site that brings together the listings of a dozen real estate agencies present in the province.
“We may not be in a period of one-upmanship anymore, but that doesn’t change the fact that our application provides major visibility to our clients’ properties. Buyers look everywhere, not just on Centris. And our website is not well optimized for mobile viewing,” says DuProprio CEO and COO Julie Benoit.
“Our site is already the second most visited real estate site in Quebec after Centris. Our goal with the new app was to provide the same experience for all users, and to release something that was obviously superior to what we had until 2019.”
A “balanced” market
Among the various tools available in the DuProprio application — in addition to the famous 3D tour and the standardized sales sheets — are calculators and estimators for interest rates, mortgage loans and monthly costs provided by Desjardins. The network is natural given that the financial institution is one of the largest mortgage lenders in Quebec, in addition to owning DuProprio.
But the integration stops there, assures Mme Benoît. “We may offer better visibility to Desjardins, but we don’t make a distinction on the lender that buyers will choose. »
The opportunity could have been tempting for Desjardins to do a little more. The major Canadian banks are increasingly trying to diversify their presence in mobile financial applications, from savings tools to planning home renovations, and of course reselling homes.
Above all, the tightening of the real estate market that the Canadian government and the Bank of Canada are trying hard to provoke makes this niche more competitive for lenders. Especially since at the legislative level we seem to want a lasting slowdown in real estate speculation, to make more room for new buyers.
DuProprio also notes that the market seems to be resolving to this shift. “Resale has really slowed down a lot,” says Julie Benoit. “The market seems to have found a balance in terms of prices and we don’t see much change for the coming year. »
What has changed is the number of properties put up for sale in recent weeks. On DuProprio, there are approximately 6,000 properties in inventory, much less than the average number displayed just a few months ago. The time needed to sell has also stretched a bit.
This slowdown is not equal from one region to another in Quebec, but as many specialists anticipate, it should eventually spread to the entire province as 2023 progresses, estimates-t- we at DuProprio.