Ropani and bigha do not divide cleanly, the same house is listed six times, and nobody buys land online. What that means for how you build it.
Key Takeaways
- Ropani and bigha do not divide cleanly, the same house is listed six times, and nobody buys land online.
- What that means for how you build it.
The short answer
A property site is not a catalogue with bigger photos. Three things make it difficult in Nepal: land is measured in units that do not divide cleanly, listings are frequently duplicated across agents, and the real transaction happens on the phone rather than on the site.
Get those three right and the rest is ordinary web work.
Land units are the first real problem
The hills use ropani, aana, paisa and daam. The Terai uses bigha, kattha and dhur. Both appear in the same listings site, buyers search in whichever they grew up with, and nobody wants to see square metres.
Store one canonical unit internally, in square metres, as a precise value. Display in whatever the user expects, and let them search in either system. The thing to avoid is storing the display string, because "3 ropani 2 aana" as text cannot be sorted, filtered or compared, and sorting by area is the single most used control on a property site.
Be careful with the conversion constants and test them against real documents. Getting an area wrong by a factor is the kind of error that ends up in a dispute rather than a bug report.
The same house, listed six times
Agents list the same property, with different photos, slightly different areas and different prices. A site that shows all six looks dishonest to buyers, and a site that silently merges them makes agents angry.
There is no clean algorithmic answer. What works in practice is a soft duplicate flag based on location, area and price proximity, surfaced to a human moderator rather than acted on automatically. Decide early whether your site is a curated listing or an open noticeboard, because the moderation burden differs enormously and it determines your staffing, not just your software.
Location without reliable addresses
Nepali addresses are descriptive rather than systematic. "Near the school, Budhanilkantha" is a real address and geocoding it is not reliable.
Let the lister drop a pin on a map; it is more accurate than anything you can derive from the text. Then decide deliberately how precisely you show it, because many sellers do not want the exact house identified publicly. An approximate circle rather than an exact marker is a common and sensible compromise.
The site is a lead generator, not a marketplace
Almost nobody buys land online. They browse, shortlist, and then call. That means the metrics that matter are enquiries and calls, not sessions, and the design should make contact effortless on a phone.
It also means your contact handling matters more than your search filters. An enquiry that nobody answers for two days is a lost sale, and no amount of search sophistication compensates. If you are measuring anything, measure response time.
Photos decide everything, so handle them properly
Listings live or die on photographs, and agents upload whatever came off their phone, which is frequently eight megabytes and rotated wrong. Resize on upload, strip the metadata, correct orientation, and serve modern formats. Otherwise your site is slow in exactly the way we described in why your site is slow for Nepali visitors.
Frequently asked questions
How should land area be stored?
As a single precise numeric value in one canonical unit, converted for display. Storing the formatted string makes sorting and filtering impossible, and sorting by area is what buyers do first.
Should I support both ropani and bigha?
Yes, if you cover both the hills and the Terai. Let users enter and search in either, and show the one appropriate to the property's region.
How do I stop duplicate listings?
Flag probable duplicates for a human rather than merging automatically. Decide whether you are curated or open, because that decision sets your moderation cost for the life of the site.
Do I need a map?
Yes, with pins placed by the lister rather than geocoded from a text address. Offer an approximate location option, because some sellers will not list at all without it.
What actually drives enquiries?
Photographs, a clear price, and a contact button that works on a phone. Everything else is secondary, including the filters everyone asks for first.
Enjoyed this article? Share it with others!
Written by
Antbytelabs
Writing about the software we build at Antbytelabs in Bhaktapur, Nepal.