Viewpoint.ca , a Halifax-based online property data and brokerage site, is gearing up to enter the Ontario market this year if a regulatory case forces greater competition in Toronto. And the company may have to raise capital to do so.

Founder and CEO Bill McMullin said in an interview last week that the company is interested in expanding into other provinces, but has to wait until the bodies overseeing real estate data willingly share that data with the site. So far, the company has only had success doing so in Nova Scotia, but it believes Ontario will open up later this year. And the addition of Ontario will only be the first step to expanding the site across the country.

“We aspire to be national,” said McMullin. “The value of a site like this is much greater if people know it is comprehensive.”
McMullin started Viewpoint two years ago this month with a view to establishing an online marketplace for real estate, a site that provides the most complete data available so buyers and seller would make informed decisions about transactions. It’s quickly developed into a place where you can get information on values in your neighbourhood, where a reader can find the assessment values, listing and transaction history for every property in the province. But it also functions as a full real estate brokerage, where you can list your property for as little as $900.

According to the site, people so far have visited ViewPoint more than 1 million times and clicked on more than 11 million Nova Scotia properties and viewed more than 30 million pages of property information. Those numbers are changing rapidly because of McMullin’s aggressive marketing.

Last week, the company began advertising on TV for the first time, and McMullin saw a huge jump in traffic, so much so that he had to call his internet service provider and order more bandwidth.  As of Thursday, the site had attracted 64,700 visits in the previous 30 days and 31 percent of them were new visitors.

But there is one challenge to the business that McMullin must overcome: so far he has the data only for Nova Scotia. Even though the company has a licence in Ontario, New Brunswick and other provinces, Nova Scotia’s is the only real estate board that has granted the company the data it needs. But that soon may change.

Last May, the Competition Bureau filed a lawsuit against the Toronto Real Estate Board, which could force Canada's largest real estate board to open up competition. McMullin believes this case will open up the Ontario market to him, and that it could be resolved this year. And it also seems logical that the opening up of the Toronto market would establish a legal president that would open up the data in other markets.

However, McMullin is realistic about the costs of going into Canada’s largest city. “It would be a very costly exercise to have any material amount of market share in a market as large as Toronto,” he said.

Having spent $2 million developing the technology on viewpoint.ca, McMullin said the costs of adding the Toronto data isn’t the expensive part of the proposal.  The expensive part is the marketing that would drive consumers to the site.

When I asked him how much he would need, he answered simply, “Millions”.

 McMullin is ready to raise money for such a venture, though he’s reluctant to discuss details, other than to say he could enter the Toronto market this year. He’s had discussions with realtors, media companies and possible investors in the Toronto area.

So far, the company has been funded with the money he made exiting previous investments, most notably InfoInterActive Inc., a publicly listed telecommunications software and service company he sold to America Online for $43.3 million in 2001. All the stock of viewpoint.ca is internally owned, he said.

“What hasn’t changed is the mission,” said McMullin. “We want to be the primary source of real estate information for the majority of consumers looking for Nova Scotia real estate.”