The problem aggregation solves
Picture someone in Perth weighing up a villa in Bali against a condo in Phuket. Without an aggregator, they would need several local portals, each with its own language, currency and way of describing property.
Each of those portals works well for its home market. The trouble starts when a buyer wants to compare across markets. They end up with a dozen browser tabs, three currencies and no easy way to tell which listings are still live.
I founded Kinnara in 2021 to fix that. It pulls in property from 76 partner portals and puts it into a single search covering 44 countries, and over 15,000 agents now use it to list property. More on the business is on my Kinnara page.
I'm not a programmer. Jason Noorman, my co-founder, leads the technology. My side is the partnerships with portals, agents and developers that give the platform something worth searching.
How property portal aggregation works in practice
Aggregation sounds like copying listings from one place to another. In practice it is a long list of small translation problems, and each one has to be solved for every market.
Languages
Listings arrive in the languages of their home markets. A buyer has to be able to read a listing without losing the details that matter.
The hard words are often legal ones. Terms for tenure, land type and permits don't always have a neat English equivalent, and a loose translation can mislead. Where it matters, the original term should stay visible next to the explanation.
Units and formats
Land is measured differently from country to country. In Thailand it is often quoted in rai, and one rai covers 1,600 square metres. In Indonesia, land is often sold by the are, a unit of 100 square metres.
Bedrooms, land area and floor area all need mapping into one format. Otherwise a search filter for land size means something different in each country.
Currencies
Prices are set in baht, rupiah, pesos, dollars, dirhams and euros. Kinnara shows them in the currency the buyer uses.
Exchange rates move daily, so a converted price is a guide, not a quote. The number that counts is the one in the contract.
Sending each enquiry to the right person
An enquiry is only useful if it reaches the agent who holds the listing. Every listing is linked to its agent or developer, so a buyer's message goes directly to someone who can answer it.
Behind that sits a full sales system. Each enquiry is tracked from the first click through to settlement. Maya, our virtual assistant, is available around the clock for a buyer's first questions and can set up a call with someone from the team.
Keeping listings current
This is the least glamorous part, and probably the most important. Properties sell, prices change, and not every agent updates every portal straight away.
Stale listings waste buyers' time and wear away trust. Any aggregator has to refresh from its sources often, drop listings that have gone from the source, and catch duplicates. The same villa can easily appear through several agents on several portals.
What one search gives a buyer
For a buyer, the result is simpler than the work behind it:
- Side-by-side comparison of markets in one place
- Prices in their own currency, with the caveat above
- A direct line to the agent or developer selling
- Help from Kinnara's concierge team with shortlisting and questions about due diligence
Most of Kinnara's buyers of Indonesian property are Australian, which I write about in why Australians buy property in Indonesia.
Why agents take part
Aggregation only works if agents and portals want their listings included. Agents can list at no cost or choose a paid network plan, and none of them pays Kinnara a share of their sales. I explain why in why Kinnara charges no commission.
Developers market through the platform too. Kinnara Capital, the development business I also lead, uses it under contract like any other developer.
Where property technology goes next
I think the next big gains are in markets like Indonesia, where land records, past sales and zoning information are spread across different offices and languages. Software that joins those records up and verifies them automatically would make buying across borders safer and quicker.
That is a harder problem than aggregating listings, and it is the direction I want Kinnara to keep moving in.
The same instinct, letting software do work that people do slowly and inconsistently, sat behind iQuant Fund, the trading technology business I co-founded. I explain one part of that work in market regimes explained. My full profile covers how the businesses connect. The listings themselves are on kinnara.asia.