Housing.com Owner Says Peak Losses Behind, Home Loans Next Growth Lever

REA India Pte., the owner of digital real estate firms like Housing.com, Makaan.com and PropTiger, has set its sights on becoming India's largest home loan origination platform with an eye on reducing losses.

"Housing.com is our real estate classifieds portal," Dhruv Agarwala, chief executive officer of REA India, said in a conversation with BQ Prime. "The way we generate revenues is essentially by selling listing packages to developers and brokers and homeowners."

"In addition, we have services which we provide to consumers along the entire home buying and home renting journey, such as paying rent on credit, interiors, packing and moving services, mortgages," Agarwala said.

Established in 2012 and later acquired by REA India in 2017, Housing.com is the country's most visited real estate website, according to Similarweb—a website analysis platform. It is followed by competitors Magicbricks, NoBroker and 99acres.com. REA India is a subsidiary of Australia's listed REA Group.

Agarwala said Housing.com remains the company's major business, with PropTiger being an online brokerage focused on new home sales and Makaan acting as a "flanker" brand to Housing.com—which refers to a brand launched in the same category, by the same company, but designed in a way that it doesn't hurt the existing brand's market share.

While he didn't disclose the revenue split between the three brands, REA India clocked in about A$80 million in revenue, which is about Rs 430 crore, according to data intelligence platform TheKredible. This makes up about 7% of REA Group's total revenue.

It also posted an Ebitda-level loss of about Rs 215 crore, despite being a largely asset-light business. Agarwala said that is because the company is continuing to invest in new business verticals.

"A lot of the big reason for the Ebitda losses is the ongoing investment in product, technology as well as branding. Given how big the Indian opportunity is going forward, we believe it's the right thing to do," he said.

"Having said that, FY23 was the year of peak Ebitda losses. Going forward, we're going to start seeing our losses come down."

The big focus will be on the core listings business, but a large part of the growth will be driven through new product integration, according to Agarwala.

"We've recently launched something called Housing Expert Pro, which is an in-depth product for our customers. We are expanding geographically over the last three years, having ventured into 13 Tier-II markets. Previously, we were only in the top eight metros," he said.

Housing.com has also forayed into promoting listings for commercial properties apart from just residential ones.

"On the adjacency side, we have a very strong vertical called Pay On Credit. We've introduced personal loans for home improvement, rental insurance and many other financial products," he said.

Earlier this month, Housing.com also made an undisclosed strategic investment in Easiloan, a fintech startup focusing on digitising the home loan journey.

"We believe that partnership will help us fulfill our ambition of becoming India's largest home loan origination platform because we believe there's a natural synergy with real estate," he said. "Given where we are in terms of our market position... we can leverage that to build India's largest home loan origination platform," he said.