Waka This Way, Property Buyers/Sellers

by Mark Evans on April 27th, 2007

As everyone knows, real estate is the new porn given it’s a subject that now dominates dinner party conversations as sucking up hours of your TV time with all those quasi-reality shows about how to sell your house, decorate your house, renovate your house, etc.. In the U.S., Zillow.com has played right into this trend with a cool service that makes it easy to get all kinds of information about real estate properties. While we’re still waiting for the launch of Zillow.ca, there is already an online player in the Canadian real estate market: Waka.ca, which is a search engine focus on the real estate market. Samuel Bouchard, who founded Waka with his cousin, Jean-Sebastien, provided me with some insight into the Montreal-based company’s roots.

Q: Is Waka like a Zillow.com for Canada?
At the moment, it is only a search engine for the home buyers. But one can imagine that with the data we gather, some sort of Zillow would be possible in a near future.

Q: Why did you and Jean-Sebastien decide to start Waka?
A: We thought it was frustrating for the buyer to have to go to many different sites (agents, FSBO, classifieds) to find its home. This is especially true in fast markets like we had in the recent years. So the goal of the website is to provide the best tool for the BUYERS to find their next home.

Q: When was the the service launched?
A: It started a year ago in French, immobilier.waka.ca, with indexed websites from the province of Quebec. homes.waka.ca was online later in 2006 with homes from Ontario, BC and Alberta. The new bilingual interface go.waka.ca is still under development and got online a month ago.

Q: How much traffic is the site getting?
A: About 9,000 visits/week. The French version receives 75% of it.

Q: What’s the reaction been from the real estate industry/consumers?
A: Home buyers love it; we have positive feedback from them. They say we save them a lot of time. Some prefer the old interface, some the new one. At the beginning, the industry hesitated. I had a few phone calls; they wanted to know more. Later, the agents realized that this search engine was just more visibility for them and more chances of selling the homes.

Q: Do you have any investors?
A: The project is privately funded with love-money.

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