Online Real Estate Technology

Back in December of last year I wrote a post on the future of the Internet in 2020, and in that post one of the predictions was that mobile devices would be the primary connection tool to the Internet and social media for most people. Well I thought I’d revisit the progress of that statement and look at if the mobile device is in fact having any impact on searching trends.

Some new research from a company in the US SRG, has found the mobile phone is displacing the PC among US women in terms of usage – especially in the 12-24 age group, the survey has found that young women spend twice as much time with their cell phones as women over age 40.

The survey also revealed that more than 80% of US women now use a wireless device and 17% use a smartphone, such as an iPhone, BlackBerry or models from HTC, Samsung, LG or similar. Among those in the 12-24 and 25-39 age groups,  smartphone ownership is now 23%. In contrast 11% of women ages 40+ own a smartphone.

When asked about the top benefits of owning a smartphone, the top answers among women were convenience, the ability to send texts and email, and access to social media online.

When asked what technology had the most impact on their life in the past two years, women overall picked the internet, followed by the PC/computer, and cell/wireless in a distant third spot. This changed amongst young women, where a wireless device took the #1 spot:

Technology with the most impact on my life

So how does that impact on how they use social media?

The study found that more mobile usage and smartphone ownership is enabling women to bypass the traditional PC to upload their pictures to social media sites:

• Nearly 74% of 12-24 year-olds say they have taken a photo with their cell phone in the past month.
• Young women are twice as likely have used the internet browser on their cell phone in the past month.
• 22% of 12-24 year-olds used their mobile device to access Facebook, MySpace or Twitter in the past month, making them four times as likely as older women to have accessed social media such as a Facebook profile or MySpace page on their mobile phone.

From that research and the upward trend of smart phone usage, particularly amongst women, who are the bigger users of social media, you don’t need to be Einstein to work out that the smart phone will be the primary connection tool for the Internet and social media online well before 2020.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this, so please leave me a comment on this post.

Whilst Twitter & Myspace already provide vanity URL’s for users, Facebook has not until today, well actually from Saturday the 13th June,because that’s the date you’ll be able to get your vanity URL on Facebook. The vanity URL is an important part of social media, because it allows you to create a common theme across all the sites and it makes it easy for your followers to find you.

To get your URL, you’ll need to visit the following link on Saturday, http://www.facebook.com/username/, on the page you’ll find instructions on how to claim your URL or create your own, you will only be able to use numbers, letters & periods , no hyphens or underscores will be allowed. Once you have selected your URL you will not be able to change it.

I would think there will be a rush for names on Saturday so If I were you, I’d make a note in the diary and get in in as soon as the site goes live.

Good Luck   

I’ve written about the progress that Century 21 in the US has made with regard to the web and social media sites in the past 12 months and now they have announced a new initiative called “C21 Communities” which is available directly from the companies web site.

The new platform bundles a dynamic set of social media tools designed to enable on line conversations between it’s agents and consumers.

The bundle includes:

• Talks, an online interactive advice forum,
• C21 Talk Radio, an online radio channel for consumers interested in real estate, and
• CENTURY 21® social networking sites on Facebook, Flickr, Twitter and YouTube.

“Social media offers a powerful new way to reach consumers,” said Bev Thorne, senior vice president of marketing for Century 21 Real Estate LLC.  “It is dramatically changing the way that we market our brand and it opens up an entirely new space for our brokers and agents to market their properties and services.  By taking a leadership position in this space, we are positioning our System members for success with the next generation of home buyers and sellers.”

I’m really impressed with the way Century 21 in the US are looking at ways to increase the conversation with on line consumers and to me owning the conversation is something other franchise groups or independents, big or small should be looking at.

Well done again Century 21!!

Another real estate portal has launched onto the Australian property market and this one with the unusual name of Enormo Australia. Their tag line, “Every property Everywhere” sums up what they are all about as well as being one of the worlds largest property portals with over 7 million properties world wide.

I’ve been playing with the site today and I have to admit to being a little underwhelmed by their search functionality, and I can’t really see what they are doing differently to the other portals.

The site is nice and clean with little clutter and free of annoying third party advertising, but as a consumer tool it’s a very bland offering. Compared to what’s currently available with video and multiple photos etc, this really doesn’t offer me, the property consumer, anything I don’t already have or want. In fact in checking some of the properties, I noticed a lot were listed back in 2008 and 2 examples I looked at were 12 months out of date.

Enormo Australia Front Screen

As I’ve said a lot of times in the past, when asked the question about whether an agent should support new property web sites coming into the market, if it is a free offering by all means, use the site, but if they are charging you to list your properties then you really need to look very closely at what you will get from paying to be there.  Yes, they have a strong international base and if you are looking for that market, then you could justify the cost, but for the domestic market, I’d wait a little longer and look at how they perform locally.

Property View Page

 
When I searched Google for Enormo Australia they didn’t come up on the first page, so that they’ll have to fix.

The cost to you at this stage is US$ 129 for 1 – 100 listings and US$188 for 101 – 1000 listings. This without any qualification on traffic numbers etc in Australia and with Myhome and Homehound still offering a free listing service and struggling to get consumer support, it’ll be interesting to watch how Enormo plans to sell this to the consumer, let alone the industry.

My advice, is wait and see how they perform before you go and spend your money on advertising and listing, particularly when budgets are tight and you need to account for every dollar and make those dollars drive leads.

Now, if one of the portals would look at taking advantage of what is happening with Social media and include as part of or supplemental to the subscription, tools such as Blogging,podcasting and Video logging, all attached to the suburb searches and feeding off the traffic, to me that would be providing you the agents a valuable tool, instead of looking at new product all the time that AM’s struggle to sell.

Aussie Banks About To End First Home Buyers Party

Today whilst conducting some office visits, I mentioned to the teams I was working with a story I came across last night on Crikey, regarding Australia’s leading banks and their move to end the first home buyers party.

From Monday, headed by the Commonwealth bank, banks will not recognise the the $14,000 for an existing home and the $21,000 for a new home government grants as proof of saving. The banks will now require first home buyers to have saved 3% of the purchase price over 3 months leading up to the application. This move has been brought about by the overwhelming number of home loan applications banks have received over the past few months.

I don’t normally cover this type of story, but given that the agents I spoke with this morning were not aware of the move I decided to post it today for your information. 

The full article written by Glenn Dyer is available for you to read by clicking here

Step right up and read all about it, a little while ago I mentioned that a number of the US’s newspapers were in trouble financially and the current owners were trying to either sell the paper or would move them to an on line model. Well news today from the US is that the Hearst Corporation, owners of the troubled Seattle Post Intellingencer have been unable to find a buyer and have decided to move the paper to an on line version effective from today.

According to the paper, “the last print edition of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer will be published Tuesday. The Hearst Corp. announced that the P-I will become the nation’s largest daily newspaper to shift entirely online.”

It will be worth watching the move as this could well be a model that other print based papers may have to follow to stay afloat. May make a few print supporters in the real estate industry here in Australia start to look at these trends.

Nice to see one of the major portals being proactive in creating better information for the agents to use as part of the subscription costs. Again getting one up on the competition realestate.com.au, the Domain team announced the ability for agents to get more indepth reporting from Domain property data by offering free access to advertised sales and rental history. The Domain media release is below for your information. 

FREE ‘JUST LISTED’ AND ‘JUST SOLD’ AGENT DATA.

Domain Property Data has always equipped you with the most reliable and accessible market knowledge. Now we are changing the industry by offering Domain.com.au agents free access to advertised sales and rental history, as well as agent reported sales results. Our new agent reported data platform is launching on the 2nd March.

 Agents that report their sales results to Domain Property Data will be able to keep up to date with properties that have ‘just listed’ or ‘just sold’ right across the state, for no extra charge. What’s more, your sold properties will enjoy increased exposure across various sections of Domain.com.au and several of the Fairfax Media newspapers and websites. Domain.com.au also distributes sold content, including weekly auction and private treaty sales results, to a wide range of media channels, and auction results are syndicated for publication in leading metropolitan, community and regional newspapers and internet portals.

To ensure that your sales success is published across these channels, report your property sales to Domain Property Data. When searching on Domain Property Data, you will have the ability to do the following: View a property’s sales data (price, sale type, etc) and key attributes (bedrooms, bathrooms, etc) Search a property’s advertised sales and rental history View historical agent reported sales data for the property.

In addition you and your team can receive a weekly email from Domain.com.au, keeping you up to date with agent reported sales in your key markets. Agents that do not subscribe to Domain.com.au and/or do not report their sales results will not be able to access agent advised data on Domain Property Data. Please note, Domain Property Data is not available in Western Australia. To access agent reported ‘just sold’ and ‘just listed’ data on Domain Property Data or to find out more about Domain.com.au simply contact your Account Manager or call us on 1300 799 109.

Report your sales success easily You can now report your sales results easily (even when the sales price is marked ‘Confidential’) via your bulk uploader or Domain.com.au Agent Admin. As well as gaining free access to Domain Property Data, agents who regularly report their sales success will also benefit from increased exposure for their agency. Agents that choose not to subscribe to Domain.com.au and do not report sold data will not be able to access Domain Property Data.

Kind Regards The Domain.com.au Team

I first wrote about walkscore.com back in September, How Walkable is Your Home or Suburb? – Like to Find Out? and I’ve been an advocate of it’s use by real estate agents in Australia. One of the real estate sites has even done some research on it’s impact on a property listing, when used as one of the images and surprise surprise, it’s the most clicked on image on the listing, so it comes as no surprise to me that the site has continued to grow in popularity.

Last week, at the Inman Technology conference in new York, it was reported that the Walk Score rating system was being added to over 85 million property listings in the US. You’ll soon see the rating system on the major real estate portals such as Zillow.com.

Walk Score promotes the car free lifestyle by providing a personalised walk-ability rating for any address. 

The company says: “Homebuyers rank proximity to daily conveniences as one of the two most important factors in choosing a neighborhood.

Check out the web site on www.walkscore.com.

The Hearst Corporation in the US has finally put Seattle’s oldest newspaper the Seattle Post Intelligencer up for sale, saying that if it can’t find a buyer in the next 60 days, they will close it down or continue to publish it as an internet based information source. The owners have also stated that in no way will they continue to publish it in it’s current form.

The media release from the Hearst Corporation states:

After 146 years of delivering news, the Seattle P-I faces becoming what it has chronicled: history.

“We’ve been on the knife edge all this time,” P-I managing editor David McCumber said Friday. “We finally slipped.”

Economic reasons have forced the state’s oldest morning newspaper into a sale, Steven Swartz, president of The Hearst Corp.’s newspaper division, told employees Friday.

“One thing is clear: At the end of the sale process, we do not see ourselves publishing in print,” Swartz told employees gathered in the newsroom overlooking Elliott Bay. “Since 2000, the P-I has lost money each year, and the losses have escalated and continue to escalate in 2009. We have had to make a very tough decision.”

Hearst said the P-I lost about $14 million in 2008.

One observer noted “The speed with which the 200-year old newspaper industry is disintegrating is remarkable. The model no longer works, at least not for most papers. And most of the industry seems incapable of–or unwilling to–adapt to the new reality”

There are signs that the same situation is starting to impact in Australia as well and that is why I can’t for the life of me understand why some real estate franchise groups and individual offices are continuing to invest in a medium which is very quickly starting to die. These groups that have so much invested in press will pay the price in the future if they don’t start to create and invest in digital communication channels and open up new mediums to communicate and advertise to the changing consumer.

Yesterday, the Gold Coast Bulletin real estate section had over 208 pages of advertising from real estate agents, and not one agent advertising listings in the paper integrated into their press adds their on line presence, this is so important today. I wrote about this back in November Integrating your On Line and Press Advertising- How Important Is this To Your Brand?  The other interesting situation with all of this, is that some of those agents spending on full page adds in the lift out have just recently cancelled or halved their on line spend.   

It’s been my experience in working with real estate businesses, that they mostly work for today and not to the future. You really need to now look at opening or creating new communication channels for your business, because most of the real estate industry uses a very small fraction of the power of the web and most leave it to the major portals in Australia to drive leads and branding.

Look forward to 2015, how will you communicate to the consumer then if you have no strategy in place today to gear your business to the future and to open up new marketing opportunities on the web.

The writing is on the wall for newspapers, don’t let your agency be so press oriented that you fail to see the bullet coming. Create that strategy today and start to implement a digital communication strategy for the future.

If you don’t know where to start with this, let me know because that’s what I do.

I don’t often post news from other sources mainly because I’ve set this blog up as a technology resource, but reading the following story it got me thinking about why, you as real estate agents, really need to continue to market and promote yourself agressively in the market. Wether you do this in traditional media or on line, it’s imperative that you keep your profile high, because when the consumer does start to look at buying or investing, you want to be the one they’ll use. So keep your profile “TOP OF MIND”, use the tools I’ve posted about on this blog and let me know if you need help. I’m only a comment away.

So on that note, here’s the story from the domain.com.au property newsletter.

To buy or not to buy? That is the question…or is it?

There’s so much going on in the economy at the moment as a result of the global financial crisis. The headline news talks daily of recessions, comparisons to the great depression, stock market plunges, rising inflation, increasing unemployment, the collapsing Australian dollar, freezes on management funds, record lows in consumer confidence, low retail sales, the biggest car financing companies pulling out of the Australian market and the list goes on and on and on. So what’s one supposed to make of all this?!

There are always a lot of things you naturally consider when you decide to invest in property. For many the prospect alone can be quite daunting, especially when you consider that it is usually the single largest purchase you will make in your lifetime. Add to that the fact that the average person will spend most of their life paying it off unless of course you inherited wealth, were fortunate enough to marry into it or you successfully created it yourself.

We asked Domain.com.au users if the recent global financial shake-up has changed their property investment plans. The resounding result? Schreeeeeech! Half of Australians have put their property investment plans on hold. 48% said they are delaying their property investment plans and are not making any big decisions right now. 17% of people said they are going to continue with their existing property portfolio and 19% signalled their intention to grow their property portfolio as planned.

While many blame the US property market and its irresponsible lending institutions for causing the financial crisis in the first place, it has come full circle and has now resulted in significant cuts to interest rates here (my rate has reduced 1.3% in just a few months), with more rate cuts expected in both November and December this year.

Enter Mr Rudd to the rescue, who is now guaranteeing your bank deposits and boosting the first home owners grant from $7 000 to $14 000, or if you purchase a new home or newly constructed home you’ll get a nifty $21 000 in your pocket.

Are these new measures enough for you to screen out everything else going on in the world at the moment despite the uncertainty of it all? It would seem for some that the answer is a simple YES. 17% of respondents indicated that they are going to invest in property sooner that they otherwise would have.

This weekend I was at the Home Buyers Show in Sydney and I was very interested to see what the attendance at the show would be. Would it be quiet? Would anyone turn up? By the end of the weekend I would have a clear signal as to how people were feeling about the property market right now. What happened? There were a lot (and I mean a lot) of people at the show, the tide may have turned. It was standing room only at all of the seminars and I nearly lost my voice from answering so many questions. 

Thanks to Jeff Lim for his insightful look at the current property market.