Hong Kong-based property marketplace Spacious receives US$500K
The funds will be used to boost the tech team and hire a business development person. Spacious is looking at expanding as well
With US$500,000 from family and friends, Hong Kong-based online property marketplace Spacious.hk is looking to “expand the technology team and hire a business development function”, according to StartupsHK. The company will also be looking at expanding into other parts of Asia and improving its coverage of Hong Kong once its product reaches a stage of maturity.
At the moment, the 15-month-old startup, developed by Landcrowd Limited, an Incu-App company under Hong Kong Science and Technology Parks (HKSTPC), has been growing its user base at 20 per cent a week since its launch in January 2014.
In an official statement, Asif Ghafoor, CEO, Spacious, was quoted as saying, “We were upset by the lack of market transparency here. The local property websites are blurred with fake listings as the agents intend to heat up prices. It was a headache for us to spend enormous effort in finding the place to live out of our hectic work schedules.”
Gene Soo, who co-founded StartupsHK, a community partner for startups in Hong Kong, told e27 in a conversation, “Obviously, everyone thinks places are expensive out here. But there are still a lot people buying/trading. There are a lot of people who own and flip properties. … From what I see people look for properties using agents. … As for using websites, I haven’t seen that use case enough around. People are just lazy; they just want people to show them around.”
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In Hong Kong, while there are other properties portals such as Hong Kong Homes and Square Foot, there is also one notable marketplace with a popular domain: Okay.com (the word ‘okay’ means ‘home’ in Cantonese).
We have reached out to Spacious for more comments. Watch this space!
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