Renthusiast2.0

As mentioned earlier, Lokku ltd, the company behind vertical engine Nestoria has launched Nestoria.es; now covering Spain. We got a chance to ask Nestoria co-founder Ed Freyfogle a few questions about Nestoria.es earlier this morning:

R:
First of all, thanks for giving us the opportunity to participate in the Nestoria Espana beta test but why Spain, what was the inspiration behind the decision to choose that country as opposed to an English speaking one for example Scotland or Ireland, which would appear the more logical choice, certainly from a geographical and geo-political perspective

Ed:
Ha, we’re already live in Scotland it is still part of the UK –
http://www.nestoria.co.uk/edinburgh/property/buy
The decision to go with Spain is because it’s one of the hottest EU property markets over the past few years. Given the Spanish background of some of the team it’s a market we’ve tracked closely. We started getting requests from Spanish groups who wanted to partner with us, so we explored the possibilities and it all made sense.
From a technical perspective we’ve always designed the Nestoria system to be language independent, so it wasn’t as difficult to internationalize as it might have been for the typical British site.

R:
At the moment Nestoria.es functions exclusively “en espanol”. A lot of real estate sites in Spain and other countries often have an English language version on their website. Is this something Nestoria.es plans to do in the future, or will the site remain exclusively en espanol.

Ed:
To be honest, the market for UK buyers in Spain isn’t as big as people think. It’s also highly competitive. We don’t rule it out, but for now we’re focusing on improving our core property search experience in English in the UK and Spanish in Spain.

R:
What is the database size of Nestoria.es

Ed:
In Spain we currently have over 250,000 properties to buy and rent. It’s hard to get a definitive figure on how big the market is, most estimates range between 300-400,000 depending on seasonality.We’re in talks with a few more players in the Spanish market, and we’ll be adding more listings in the coming weeks. Of course size of the database (comprehensiveness) is only one of many factors in creating a compelling property search experience.
One final note, the entire database is there for the taking for anyone via our API and our webmaster tools. And our co-branded search will be coming this week.
http://www.nestoria.es/ayuda/herramientas-para-webmasters
http://www.nestoria.es/ayuda/api

R:
Does the “Nestoria rank” on Nestoria.es differ in any way from Nestoria rank on Nestoria.co.uk?

E:
Yes, in that it’s much less mature. We’ve learned a lot over the last 11 months about how people like to search in the UK. Some of those lessons are applicable to Spain, others aren’t. Our metrics and analysis systems are ready, what we now need is actual interaction with users. This was a big part of our decision to launch. For the site to get better we need to see people using it to see where we’re doing well and where we could do better.
Thanks for your time and support.

More coverage of Nestoria.es at Vecosys, Rat and Mouse and of course Nestoria blog (English and Spanish)