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Simeon Mitropolitski is a Canadian analyst, of Bulgarian origin, and a former syndicated columnist with the Bulgarian News Agency (BTA). He is the author of several hundred articles dealing with hot political and economic topics, both national and international.

He was part of the first group of Bulgarian intellectuals and students that began the opposition movement that finally put an end to the communist regime in this country in 1989, and in 1996-1997 participated in international observation teams during the elections in several Balkan countries - Romania, Albania and Bulgaria.

In 2002 Simeon and his family moved from Bulgaria to Canada where they live now in Montreal, province of Quebec. Simeon is a Master of Political Science from McGill University and a B.A. of Political Science and History.

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• EU internet 2003
  
• EU internet 2003, 2
  
• EU internet 2005
  
• EU internet 2007
  
• EU internet 2008
  

Since the early 2000s, the real estate companies in Europe have done remarkable good job of increasing their reach by embracing Internet as new information platform. Now, at the end of a long real estate cycle, there are many more internet-connected agents in Europe, although it seems that their number per capita is still below the rate we can find in the Untied States or in Canada. In general, and this trends still holds, there are relatively more sites per capita in countries with milder climate, such as France, Italy or Spain.

Much more important changes, however, have occurred in terms of quality. The old picture of the European real estate on the Net looked really like a textbook example of feudalism. Different agents were presenting different properties; potential buyers had to go over many different sites with different design in order to get a broader view. This isn't over, far form that, but alternative techniques are already present in several countries; it's just a matter of time before these new techniques make old practices obsolete. I have in mind here multiple listing services' (MLS) approach, merging databases from different companies into one comprehensive bloc.

Another interesting and encouraging development is that many real estate companies are already offering extensive area information alongside property information. This is a really helpful development given that an increasing number of new buyers come from different countries with no previous comprehensive knowledge about their new country. Generally, however, in 2008 these qualitative changes still can't overcome the feudalism, which is still a norm.

As far as the other secondary problems that we mentioned in our previous articles on this issue are concerned, the main one continues to be the posting of information in only one language, which is usually not widely spoken outside a particular country. Continuing on the language wave, some of the sites, presenting information in more than one language, actually present two different versions; one more detailed for local population use, and another truncated for foreign visitors. Besides the obvious inconvenience for those who don't speak the local language, this division indicates, let's repeat it, lack of interest or very little in attracting foreign buyers.

Another weak point that still holds is intolerably high level of diversity in the site designs that makes difficult finding fast necessary information, although this information may be present. Trying to show individuality, and beat the competition on yet another point, in this case actually goes against the interests of the real estate companies. To make a sale, they should try to 'fit' the buyers' shoes too, not just the sellers'.

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