Thanks everyone for the infos, sorry for responding so late, busy as usual :)
Well, the platform would be a good start for anyone who wants to start off with real-estates in any way in Europe. Direct competitors to a real-estate platform: yes, many, as its "only" a platform. Expendable to what the market wants - speaking of more of a real-estate management software.
Doable up to this point in less than 400 hours? Probably not significantly less. A lot of time was running into the details: e.g. Import/export to and from other portals, looking into open formats around in Europe. Legal situation. What software has to be supported, etc... As always, theory and practice are two different things. One would pretty quickly find its boundaries if coming from the US and plan to do anything in the European markets. A clear advantage when doing something here from Austria, right in the heart of the EU. Except someone has millions to invest, then it doesn't matter. Anyways.
So, basically, interesting for people who want to do something with real estates at the European markets. Who plan to extend the functionality and who are lacking the $200k+ seed money. Who do not have the time and the energy for extensive research on those markets.
the userbase: around 1k registered users (mainly estate agents) with around 1.5k active estates currently online. We clearly lacked of marketing, and the endurance to properly market the product. It was a naive idea at the beginning - no question to that - but lack of time, money and motivation let the whole thing fade away.
Well, the platform would be a good start for anyone who wants to start off with real-estates in any way in Europe. Direct competitors to a real-estate platform: yes, many, as its "only" a platform. Expendable to what the market wants - speaking of more of a real-estate management software.
Doable up to this point in less than 400 hours? Probably not significantly less. A lot of time was running into the details: e.g. Import/export to and from other portals, looking into open formats around in Europe. Legal situation. What software has to be supported, etc... As always, theory and practice are two different things. One would pretty quickly find its boundaries if coming from the US and plan to do anything in the European markets. A clear advantage when doing something here from Austria, right in the heart of the EU. Except someone has millions to invest, then it doesn't matter. Anyways.
So, basically, interesting for people who want to do something with real estates at the European markets. Who plan to extend the functionality and who are lacking the $200k+ seed money. Who do not have the time and the energy for extensive research on those markets.
the userbase: around 1k registered users (mainly estate agents) with around 1.5k active estates currently online. We clearly lacked of marketing, and the endurance to properly market the product. It was a naive idea at the beginning - no question to that - but lack of time, money and motivation let the whole thing fade away.