How Agents and Developers Can Compete with DDproperty and FazWaz in Search

Search “condo for sale Bangkok” and the first page is almost entirely listing portals: DDproperty, Livinginsider, PropertyHub, PropertyScout, Thailand-Property, Hipflat and FazWaz. Google’s AI Overview at the top pulls from the same sites.

For an independent agent or a developer with a single project, that can feel like a closed door. The portals have tens of thousands of listings, years of links and teams dedicated to SEO. Why would Google ever choose a smaller website over them?

Here’s the honest answer. For the broadest searches, it probably won’t, at least not soon. But those broad searches are only a small part of how property buyers actually search, and they’re not where the best leads come from. This guide to real estate SEO in Thailand explains where portals are strong, where they’re weak, and how agents and developers can win the searches that matter most to their business.

Why portals dominate the big searches

It helps to understand what you’re up against before deciding where to compete.

• Inventory. Portals have far more listings than any single agency, so they can create a page for almost every combination of location, property type and price.
• Freshness. New listings appear every day, which gives Google a constant reason to crawl and show those pages.
• Site strength. Years of links and brand searches build authority. In Ahrefs data, DDproperty has a Domain Rating of 69 and Livinginsider 65, well above most agency websites.
• Structure at scale. Portals generate thousands of location and category pages automatically, all linked together.

Trying to beat that with the same approach, a listings page for “condos in Bangkok”, is a losing strategy for most agents.

Where portals are weak

The same features that make portals strong also leave gaps.

• They’re generic. A portal’s page for a neighbourhood is mostly a grid of listings. It rarely tells a buyer what living there is actually like.
• The same property appears many times. One condo unit can be listed by several agents, with copied descriptions and similar photos.
• No local depth. Portals can’t tell a family which international school runs buses to which village, or which side of a building gets afternoon sun.
• No relationship. Buyers spending millions of baht want to trust a person. A portal profile with a phone number doesn’t build that trust.
• No ownership of your leads. When enquiries come through a portal, the platform shapes the buyer’s experience, and other agents’ listings sit right next to yours.

These gaps are exactly where agents and developers have an advantage.

Smaller sites already win some searches

The search results aren’t as locked as they first appear. In Ahrefs data from October 2026, the first page for “villa for sale phuket” included CBRE, Lazudi, FazWaz, Thailand-Property and Knight Frank, and also:

• a boutique villa agency with a Domain Rating of just 8, ranking sixth
• developer pages from Banyan Tree Residences and Anantara

Many specific property searches also have very low keyword difficulty, meaning few strong pages compete for them. A few examples, with monthly searches in Thailand:

Search term	Monthly searches	Difficulty (0 to 100)
phuket villa for sale	600	0
condo for sale pattaya	400	0
condo for sale sukhumvit	200	0
land for sale hua hin	200	0
villa for sale koh samui	150	0
chiang mai condo for sale	100	0
condo for sale jomtien	100	0

Low difficulty doesn’t mean easy, because portals still rank for many of these. But it does mean that a well-built, genuinely useful page from an agent with real local expertise has a fair chance.

Strategies for agents

Choose your battles by area and buyer

Instead of trying to rank for “condo for sale Bangkok”, focus on the areas, property types and buyers you actually know. “Pool villa for sale Rawai”, “pet-friendly condo Ari” or “family home near international schools Chiang Mai” have smaller audiences, but those buyers are closer to a decision and better matched to your expertise.

A good test: if you can’t explain why you know more about an area than a portal does, it’s probably not the right page to build first.

Write area guides portals can’t

This is the single biggest opportunity for most agents. A detailed guide to a neighbourhood, written by someone who works there every day, answers questions buyers care about:

• what the area is like to live in, by season and by time of day
• typical prices for each property type, and how they’ve moved
• schools, hospitals, shopping, transport and travel times
• who the area suits, and who it doesn’t
• the best buildings or villages, and the ones to be careful with

Link each guide to your current listings in that area. The guide attracts the search, and the listings turn interest into enquiries. Our analyses of the Phuket real estate market and Bangkok real estate SEO show how much search demand there is for this kind of local insight.

Build building and project pages

Many buyers search for a specific condo building or project by name. A page that reviews the building honestly (facilities, management quality, maintenance fees, rental demand, units you’ve sold, and what owners like and dislike) can rank for those names and position you as the agent who knows it best.

Answer the questions foreign buyers ask

International buyers search long before they contact anyone. Questions like “can foreigners buy property in Thailand” (around 250 searches a month), leasehold versus freehold, the foreign quota in condominiums, transfer costs and taxes, and how to move money into Thailand all deserve clear, accurate answers. Rules on foreign ownership can change, so keep these pages up to date and recommend buyers confirm details with a qualified lawyer.

Make your own listings better than the portal versions

If your website listings are copies of your portal listings, Google has little reason to prefer yours. Give your own site something extra:

• an original, detailed description, different from the text you post on portals
• your own photos, video walkthroughs and floor plans
• real prices and clear status (available, under offer, sold or rented)
• neighbourhood context and links to the relevant area guide

Schema markup for listings, your agency and your agents helps search engines understand all of this.

Treat portals as a channel, not the enemy

You don’t need to quit DDproperty or FazWaz. Portals bring real enquiries, especially for rentals and fast-moving resales. The aim is to stop depending on them entirely. Use portals for reach, and use your website to build trust, capture direct leads and win the searches portals don’t serve well. Track enquiries from both so you can compare the real cost per lead.

Don’t ignore local search

Searches like “real estate agent Phuket” or “property agent near me” show a map pack before the regular results. A complete Google Business Profile with accurate service areas, real photos, regular posts and genuine reviews from clients can bring in calls that never go near a portal. This is the core of Local SEO.

Strategies for developers

Developers have a different advantage: they own the project name.

• Own your branded searches. Buyers who hear about your project will search its name. Make sure your official site ranks first, with complete information, so they don’t land on a portal page showing competing projects.
• Give each project a proper page. Cover location, unit types, floor plans, prices, payment terms, specifications, completion date and the developer’s track record. Thin “register your interest” pages lose buyers to portals with more detail.
• Publish construction updates. Regular progress posts with photos and dates reassure off-plan buyers and give Google fresh content.
• Serve each buyer market in its own language. If you sell to Thai, Chinese, Russian or European buyers, build properly written pages in each language and use hreflang tags so Google shows the right version, rather than relying on automatic translation.
• Build location content around the project. Area guides help developers just as much as agents, and they reach buyers who haven’t yet heard of your project.

Get the technical side right

Property websites tend to have technical problems that hold them back, and fixing them is often the quickest win.

• Expired listings. Sold or rented properties left as broken pages, or deleted without redirects, waste search visibility. Keep valuable sold pages live and clearly marked, or redirect them to the most relevant area or project page.
• Filter pages. Search filters for price, bedrooms and location can create thousands of near-duplicate URLs. Control which ones Google can index.
• Listings loaded by JavaScript. Some listing plugins load properties in a way search engines and AI tools struggle to read. Check that listing content appears in the page’s HTML.
• Heavy images. Large photo galleries slow pages down, especially on mobile and for overseas buyers. Compress images and use a CDN.

Use AI Search to your advantage

Buyers increasingly ask ChatGPT, Perplexity or Gemini questions such as “Which area of Phuket is best for a family buying a villa?” or “Is it a good time to buy a condo in Bangkok?”. Portals provide listings, but AI tools answering these questions tend to draw on explanatory content such as area guides, market commentary and clear answers to buyer questions.

That favours agents and developers with genuine local expertise. Clear, factual content, consistent business details across the web, and mentions in trusted local media and directories all improve your chances of being included. Our guide to Generative Engine Optimisation covers this in more detail, and it builds on the same foundations as SEO.

How to measure progress

Rankings for a handful of big keywords won’t tell you much. Track:

• direct enquiries from your website, by area and property type
• which area guides and project pages lead to enquiries
• organic traffic to listing, area and project pages
• cost per lead from your website compared with portal fees and premium listing costs
• branded searches for your agency or project name over time

Where to start

Pick the two or three areas you know better than anyone. Search for the properties you sell there, note what ranks, and ask what a buyer still doesn’t know after reading those pages. That gap is your first area guide.

If you’d like help, we work with real estate agencies and developers on SEO and AI Search in Thailand. Start with a free SEO audit, and we’ll tell you honestly where your website stands against the portals and where you can win.