KANANA KATHARANGSIPORN

Property developers should apply data analytics to win over potential homebuyers in the digital era, says analytics firm Thoth Zocial.

Managing director Kla Tangsuwan makes a comparison to crude oil: in order to maximise benefit, consumer data should be refined and converted into various outputs.

"People rarely share their lifestyle details with sales people, but you can know them from social media, where they always share their lifestyle," Mr Kla said. "To win homebuyers, developers should learn their behaviour by decoding their lifestyle from social media."

Social data is a useful tool because of the popularity of social media among Thai users, he said.

Thoth Zocial said 71% of the Thai population uses Facebook. Some 11 million use Instagram and 9 million use Twitter.

Last year, people in Thailand sent 2.5 billion messages from 3.5 million Twitter accounts, 100,000 Facebook pages and 200 websites. Thailand ranked ninth worldwide by number of Facebook users.

According to Thoth Zocial, the top three property brands by engagements on Facebook in the first half of this year were three SET-listed firms: SC Asset Corporation, Major Development and Property Perfect. SC led with 1.38 million engagements.

Sansiri was the developer with the most posts on Facebook (874). It had the most shares (24,399) and the highest average number of shares per post (28).

On YouTube, the top three property brands by average number of views were AP Thailand, Property Perfect, and Land and Houses, in that order.

Mr Kla said the most tagged topic at Pantip.com during the first half was home, followed by home maintenance and repair, home decoration, condominium, and homebuilding and design.

"The key decision factor when the consumer wanted to buy a house was borrowing, followed by salary and price," he said. "For condominiums, it was monthly instalment rate, followed by borrowing and price."

Thoth Zocial found that the bathroom was the top zone consumers were interested in, followed by bedroom and parking space.

The top three topics on review pages were usable area, location and instalment.

On Pantip.com, the top three tags with regard to houses were design and homebuilding, home maintenance and repair, and home decoration, while for condos the top three were mortgage loan, apartment and condo decoration.

Vichai Viratkapan, acting director-general of the Real Estate Information Center, said the REIC's own survey via the government's Home for All application in September revealed some interesting data.

Of the 78,586 respondents, Generation Y (21-40 years old) made up 72%, followed by Generation X (41-60) at 25.5% and Generation Z (younger than 21) at 2%.

More than half (58%) were employees, and 42% lived in Greater Bangkok, followed by the North (17%), the Northeast (15%), and the East and South (9% each).

Of the respondents, 70,068 or 89% were seeking to buy a house. Of those, 61,642 or 88% did not own a house or were looking to buy a unit for the first time. Some 66% or 46,095 people wanted to buy a house from a developer and 34% wanted to have a self-built unit.

Of the 46,095 who wanted to buy from a developer, 40,338 or 88% wanted to buy within 1-3 years.