My Problem - I built a popular real estate site and I'm lost

[Isabelle Lalaine]

I’m looking for new perspectives on an interesting problem I have. I have a background in building web platforms & software products and a couple of years ago I built a land investing website. Specifically It’s a website dedicated to land investment in Central and South America. When I built it, I thought I’d test the waters to see if there was interest and also to see what people were interested in (i.e. apt rentals at local prices, help with residency visas, land buying, land selling etc.). So I cast a wide net in terms of the content I created. Most of the content I created was “placeholder” content which I search engine optimized. I searched engine optimized generic pages like “land for sale in XXLOCATIONXX” and in the future I was going to swap that out with non-generic content. But for now the generic content is doing well.

Long story short, today, the project ranks high in organic search results for low volume but high buying intent searches. The site gets about 2400 visitors / month and I’m getting between 15-30 emails / month from people interested in buying land, relocating, renting apts, getting help with residency visas etc. Most inquiries are from people who want to buy land.

So the platform is doing increasingly well in organic search. Yesterday was my best day for traffic in many months. I had 110 unique users (150 page views). In general it’s been up and to the right this year in terms of traffic and interest. Each month is better than the last. But I’m uncertain as to where I should take it from here. I’ve thought about the following paths forward:

1. Partnering with local real estate professionals in each country to help send them interested buyers. Not sure how this would work though, or if it would be worth the time. I should mention that I’m not a real estate agent. I’m just curious about international land investment and see a big pain point that needs to be addressed (foreigners looking to buy land but needing to navigate foreign investment laws, a different language, different banking systems etc).

2. Turn it into a listings directory and add more Spanish content geared towards land sellers. Essentially, I’m bringing together local Spanish sellers and Foreign English speaking buyers. I could allow Spanish sellers to list their properties for a fee, and then they can plug into the traffic / awareness that I’m continuing to generate each month.

3. Find a partner(s) / investor(s)and I would be responsible for finding the land deals and generating the buying interest. Then investors could help close the deal.

4. Sell the platform to someone who sees a clearer path forward or perhaps has the capital or network to make a website like this work. There are many website flipping sites out there. I could list it on one of those.

5. Continue to do what I’m doing now and grow it. Perhaps take a more staged approach. For example begin by doing more low-touch / lower investment type products like residency help, visa applications etc. Then maybe move up to apartment rentals with local partners, then I could use the money generated from those services to actually do land transactions.

6. ??? Some creative ideas that you see that I have a blind spot to.

When I first started this project I started it as a research project to see what the land buying process looked like in Colombia. I paid a lawyer to help me do some research and write some blog content for me. It piqued my interest and I continued building it out. But now I’m a bit lost in terms of where to take it.

Any new ideas / suggestions on the path forward would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks!