A land broker built a land-lookup tool for peers: Parsel Sorgu Pro hit 1600 installs in three weeks, driven by his own Instagram

Before buying land in Turkey, everyone checks the official cadastral lookup, but the official site only gives you a boundary. Ahmet Arslan, a land broker in a seaside town near İzmir, overlaid zoning maps, nearby asking prices and a 'drone' flyover video onto that boundary. Web, Chrome extension, Android and iOS all launched within a month. The scale is modest, at 1630 Google Play installs, but it shows the path of 'people in the industry building tools for their peers' very clearly. Below: what it is, where its traffic comes from, how it makes money, who's competing with it, and whether you should follow suit.

'Please don't make it paid'

In 2026 Oct 27, a user named BeykBeykan gave ParselSorgu.Pro five stars on the Turkey App Store, titled 'Simple and useful':

I searched for an app like this for a long time. Please don't turn it into a paid one.

四天后,10 月 31 日,iOS 1.1.0 上线,加进了点数包:10 点 ₺74.99,30 点 ₺209.99,100 点 ₺669.99(App Store 土耳其区页面)。11 月 5 日,它出现在土耳其区导航分类畅销榜第 58 名。

The grossing bar for this category is low. Ranking #58 only means some people actually paid, not how much. Still, the fact is worth noting: a small tool less than two weeks old, its users feared it would charge, it did, and people paid.

What it is: the official site only gives the boundary, and it fills in the rest

Turkey's General Directorate of Land Registry and Cadastre (TKGM) offers a free 'Parsel Sorgu' (parcel lookup). Enter ada (block number) and parsel (parcel number), and the map shows a boundary, area and land type. It has 9.03M installs on Google Play and sits in the top ten of the free navigation chart on the Turkey iOS store most of the time. The problem is what it doesn't give you: what the land is zoned for requires a separate e-Plan lookup from the Ministry of Environment and Urbanization, and what it's worth means combing through listings one by one on the property site sahibinden.

Parsel Sorgu Pro puts those three things on one screen (App Store description, 11-06):

• Enter ada/parsel, and the parcel appears on satellite imagery at 3D. Boundary, area, acreage and land type from the title deed are all on one screen. One tap for 'drone flyover', which can be recorded as a 9:16 vertical video.
• Open zoning maps and various restriction layers directly on the parcel.
• See current listings and price per square meter within 1 km of the parcel, with land, farmland and built properties counted separately. You can also check whether the parcel was listed before.
• Look up, save and generate one link for multiple parcels. Recipients can view them on the map without installing the app.

The data sourcing is candid: boundaries come from TKGM, zoning from e-Plan, and market prices 'from current listings, not public data'. In other words, none of the data is its own. What it does is stitch together and present.

The builder: a user himself, with channels in hand

Ahmet Arslan works as a land broker in Seferihisar, a seaside town south of İzmir, under a brokerage called Seferihisar Yatırım Ofisi. His Instagram @ahmetarslan.pro has 17k followers, and his bio reads 'Founder / broker, @parselsorgu.pro'.

This app is not his first product. In June 2026, he first launched Sunum.Pro, a showing, presentation and client management system for land brokers. In Aug 19, the industry outlet emlakhaberi.com ran a feature on it. That's the only press coverage so far, and it was about the parent product. The App Store page says 'Developed by Sunum.Pro'.

The timeline was tight:

One month, four platforms.

Where the traffic came from: the founder's reels, plus extension capture

His own Instagram. His Oct 20 Android launch reel read: 'Now on Android. When you're on site, with a client, holding the title deed info, you can open a parcel in seconds... If you like it, please give us five stars on Google Play.' The hashtags were #emlakdanışmanı (real estate consultant) #arsa (land) #tarla (farmland) #imar (zoning). It's clear who he's talking to. From Oct 29 onward he posted one or two a day, many co-published with the product account @parselsorgu.pro and the brokerage account. On Instagram's 'parsel sorgu' hashtag page, it now ranks near the top.

Chrome extension, piggybacking on other people's traffic. The extension pops a card in the bottom-right of the official TKGM lookup page: whether the parcel was listed before, the price per square meter, and how many listings are within 1 km. On sahibinden's parcel listing pages, it adds an 'Open in ParselSorgu.Pro' button. Turks already look up parcels on those two sites, and the extension routes people away from them. Extension user counts weren't found on the store page, so its effect is unverified.

Every post by a broker is an impression. The product's outputs, including vertical drone videos, PDFs with the broker's own details, and install-free links, are things brokers send to clients and post on social media. Users' daily work is the distribution (inference; no data breaks out how much traffic this accounts for).

Store search. The app name leads with 'Parsel Sorgu', which is the official app's name and the term Turks type when looking up parcels. No ranking data shows how much search volume it captures (inference).

No paid ads spotted.

Results (Google Play installs):

Last 7 days +576. The Turkey Business Top Free chart peaked at #77 on 10-30, then slid to #113 by 11-06. iOS ratings grew from 0 to 12 (10-29 to 11-06), average 4.7. Tiny scale, growth is slowing.

Who uses it and what they say

A few App Store reviews show who the users are. One user signing as 'Architect Ali Y.' wrote on 10-30: 'As an architecture firm, all the data I need for site surveys and investment, from e-plans to upper-level zoning, especially the fault line analysis, is one click away... Works from computer to phone, and it's now part of how our firm works.' Another five-star review said 'Looking up parcels, viewing land on the map, and checking the surroundings is easy.'

One one-star review (11-01) said: 'Doesn't work, keeps throwing errors.'

The users aren't typical home buyers. They're brokers, architects and land investors: people who look things up repeatedly and will pay for accurate prices.

Where the money comes from: lookups free, market prices sold by the credit

Parcel lookups and zoning layers are free, same as the official site. The most decision-relevant 'nearby market data' requires phone login and is unlocked with credits. Beyond the three iOS credit tiers, the description also mentions a yearly auto-renewing tier. Google Play in-app purchases range from $1.49 to $13.99.

Revenue isn't public. Ranking #58 on the grossing chart shows sporadic payments, and nothing more can be inferred.

One long-term risk needs flagging: the market data comes from scraped listings, which may conflict with sahibinden's terms of use. If it gets blocked one day, the revenue-generating piece goes with it.

Who's competing with it: this niche is far from empty

(Install count is from Google Play, 11-06; Kolayimar and ProParcel figures are self-reported on their sites)

ProParcel has more features, and its user base is about the same size. Parsel Tapu, launched at the end of September, is not weak on features either, and got 120 installs in its first thirty-odd days. The difference isn't features, it's whether someone is pushing it. Parsel Sorgu Pro took off because of an industry account with 17k followers and a Chrome extension that rides the official site's traffic, not because it did anything more than the others.

How well known is it?

Very little. No public revenue, nothing on X, and the only press coverage is about the parent product. It only circulates in Turkish land-broker Instagram circles. In Nov 3 a similar tool, ParselStüdyo (0 users), hit the Chrome Web Store. It also runs inside the TKGM page and adds elevation, slope and fault distance. The approach is close, so it's unclear whether it's competing with this one.

If it were you

Verdict: copy its playbook, don't go head-to-head with it in Turkey. The Turkish niche already has the official tool and more than a dozen third-party ones, and two are already charging. Parsel Sorgu Pro got traction because its founder is a broker with an industry following and peer networks, and followers can't replicate that. The market is also small: one country, a thousand-plus installs, and sporadic payments.

Who it suits: people who already work in property, land or used-car deals in some country, or who partner with someone like that and have an industry account with a few thousand to tens of thousands of followers.

Who it doesn't suit: indie developers with no industry background who expect features alone to win. Turkey's ProParcel and Parsel Tapu show that no matter how complete the feature set, nothing takes off without someone pushing it. It's also not for anyone aiming at a mass market. This is a small, specialized tool.

How to build it: repeat it in another country. Look for places where the official free lookup gives only half the picture, where there's a public cadastral or zoning lookup and a popular listings site people already use. Layer zoning, past listing history and nearby price per square metre on top of the official results. Make the output something brokers can send clients: vertical video, a PDF with their own contact details, a link that needs no install. Lookups stay free, and prices are charged per credit. Start with web and a Chrome extension, then add an app.

How to get users: embed the extension in the official lookup page and the main listings sites, so it shows up where people are already searching for land. Have the practitioner post a reel every day demonstrating "the official site gives you this, I give you these". Put the product name on every video and link brokers share.

When to move: this isn't a window-driven business; no date will close it. The risk is the data source: if the listings site redesigns or blocks scraping, the market-data layer disappears. Have a backup source in mind from the start, or negotiate with the listings site.

What would mean you read it wrong:

• Its Google Play installs stalled below 2000 by late November and it dropped out of the 150 rankings. That suggests even someone with distribution could only get this big in their home market. Expanding abroad is harder.
• If sahibinden blocks its market data or extension, scraping listings stops working and the model only holds up with a different data source.
• The reverse signal: if the iOS Top Grossing rank stays in the top 50 of the Navigation category, or it starts selling annual subscriptions to brokerage firms, that means brokers are steadily paying. Then it's worth seriously finding a partner practitioner in another country.