Online Real Estate Technology

During my research I’ve come across a great video that I thought I would share with you, the video was compiled by Socialnomics09, and is called Social Media Revolution: Is Social Media a Fad?

For those real estate business owners that have yet to consider social media as a business strategy then hopefully this will provide some insights into the On Line world of the future. This video details some facts and figures that are hard to ignore.

I’ve been like a voice in the wilderness promoting the value of a social media within the real estate industry in Australia so hopefully this video will add some weight to my voice.

If you do decide to adopt a social media strategy for your office, make sure you get someone who knows what they are doing, read my post on Fake Social Media Experts before you get fooled to part with your hard earned dollars by these so called experts, or better still, give me a call.

Please enjoy

I’m going to share some information with you all now, regarding my attempts to find out about property last Sunday 5th April, and this is the first chance I’ve had to write this post, so here goes. 

I’ve been interested in looking for a new home because of the interest rates being so low, so Sunday, I was motivated to search some suburbs very near to my local area on the Gold Coast, as I’m an Internet user, my first point of call was, of course the Internet. Just like 9 out of 10 other people in this country, well let me now share with you the frustrations that I encountered in just trying to get the information I was after.

I encountered out of date headlines, in fact one listing had “Must sell before Xmas” as the headline, and this mind you in the month of April, no open for inspection times, so I gather not one agent worked on the weekend, because none of the homes I looked at indicated any open times. Oh, i did find one listing that had an inspection time in the heading, but it was for March 31st!!!. No prices on a lot of the listings, in fact, when I did a price search between $700,000 and $1,000,000 in the area I was really interested in, I did find a fantastic home, so, given there was no price at all on this property, my wife got me to ring the agent, who then told me the property was for sale at a price of $1,300,000. $300,000 over the price search criteria, when I mentioned to him that his property was in the above price search, he coughed and spluttered and said he didn’t know that it was coming up in that price range on the net. 

 He should have taken the time to check it, and I should have called the OFT, because that was just downright annoying.

Of course a lot of the listings also had no addresses, which meant we couldn’t go and check it out, so we had to guess where the property was, and then, I couldn’t send an email from the site I was on due to an internal error, and they wonder why email enquiry is low. Then when I actually got out and found some properties by driving around, cos I really had no other option, Upon trying  to ring one agent to check the price on a block of land, she had no message bank, just a recorded message saying a text message will be sent on your behalf if you hang up now, which I naturally did. 

I then rang their office number, proudly marketed on their for sale sign, only to find it rang out engaged, which it did all day. I then rang the agents mobile again and got the recorded massage again,in fact that happened all day, when she finally rang me back the next day, she left a message on my voice mail saying she’d been in a meeting with clients, What all day?, so all in all a very frustrating exercise. 

AC Nielsen’s research on Internet usage in Australia late last year, found that 9 out 10 buyers,9 out of 10 renters and 8 out of 10 sellers now conduct research on the net and as I found last Sunday, it can be such a frustrating exercise for the consumer, yet all it takes is for you the agents to take a little more care in what you do. I’ll guarantee that if you take the time to make sure your information is correct, that you update your listings regularly, and don’t leave it to your admin staff, you’ll get more leads and property views, also remember, the more frustrated I got, the more I blamed you the agent.

It’s not good for your brand and it’s not good for your reputation.

And please, please, take care in what photos you use, because some of them that I saw were totally useless, but that’s another story for another day.

Overall, US visits to social networking sites increased 4% in February vs the same month last year, with Myspace and Facebook still competing for a share of the market. Myspace winning the overall battle according to Hitwise, with Facebook the big winner with a growth of 149% over February 2008. Facebook also achieved good solid growth from the 35+ market, which grew 23% in February, whilst Myspace’s grip on the older demographics is starting to slip.

The social media revolution is also affecting the way the average internet consumer uses the medium, with the use of the internet for on line entertainment decreasing by 29%, being replaced by on line communication sites.

So if all of this wasn’t enough to get you thinking about taking social media seriously, couple it with the on line consumers attitude to business and social media.

In a March 2009 Netpop Research study, 93% of social media users say companies should have a social media presence,whilst 85% believe companies should not only be present, but should actively interact with consumers via social media sites. 56% of social media users feel a stronger connection and better served by those companies when they interact in social media environment. So, there you have it. 

In my travels within the real estate industry, I still have business owners tell me they have banned staff from using Facebook and Myspace in company time, well my argument against this policy, is to employ your staff to work on your company profile as a trade off, so if they spend 4 hours a day on Facebook, get them to spend 50% of the time on building your business profile and updating the site, after all the fastest growing demographic using Facebook is 35+, right in the middle of the real estate buying public. 

As a start to creating your social media strategy, you can read my earlier posts here and here, these posts will help you enter the world of social media and show you how you can start to build a strategy for your business that will help you engage your customers more effectively and create the social media handshake.

Good luck and let me know of I can assist you in any way, to make this an easier journey for you. 

Hitwise Facebook Results

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

Well the Oscars are over for another year and it seems amongst the winners of the night of nights, were social media sites, blogs and our friend Twitter. People chatted or tweeted about their favourite movie or actors and shared information and their opinions on who would or should win.

So which  movies or actors got the most buzz out of the night? Well a Washington DC based company called New Media Strategies tracked the night across blogs and Twitter to find out who got the most buzz.

So who were the big winners last night? here’s the list for you:

Most tweeted about films:

Slumdog Millionaire: 6,369
Milk: 3,617
Wall-e: 1,284
Benjamin Button: 1,110
The Wrestler: 1,070
Dark Knight: 893 (add in Heath Ledger mentions and you get 3,503)
The Reader: 814
Frost/Nixon: 543
Kung Fu Panda: 139

Most tweeted about individuals

Sean Penn: 3,040
Heath Ledger: 2,612
Mickey Rourke: 2,040
Penélope Cruz: 1,843
Hugh Jackman: 1,827
Kate Winslet: 1,250
Angelina Jolie: 912
Brad Pitt: 592
Jennifer Aniston: 422

Sean Penn’s acceptance speech for his Oscar got the most activity on Youtube along with Ben Stiller’s Joaquin Phoenix imitation running a close second.

If you’d like to read the full story and get all the results here’s the link for you, happy reading!

So you think the real estate advertising market in Australia is tough at the moment, news coming out of the UAE’s is that the real estate advertising market has almost come to a complete stop. The real estate sector in the UAE slashed it’s advertising budgets by more than 69% in the last quarter of 2008.

The total real estate advertising spend in the UAE fell from $81 million (Dh297.2m) in October 2008 to $46m in November and $25m in December, according data from Pan Arab Research Centre in Dubai (Parc).

Real Estate advertising spend in the UAE in the first 3 months of 2009 is expected to almost come to a halt.

The Australian real estate advertising market is reportedly worth A$1.1billion a year and online sites generate only 12% of that spend per year. With 9 out of 10 real estate researchers going on line you’d have to wonder why more dollars are not invested on line.

If the advertising spend does drop off this year, it will be a case of having to work smarter, rather than harder, and on line does provide lots of ways that businesses can advertise without investing lots of hard earned cash, so maybe this year we’ll see an increase in on line spending.

If you would like to know how to make the web work harder for you, just come to one of my seminars or send me an email and I’d be happy to show you how to do it!

I’ve spoken a lot over the past 7 months this blog has been running about social media and why you should start to integrate it into your business plan for the future. Well a recent survey by Deloitte US has predicted that 2009 will be a breakout year for social media networks. Globally, social network sites have experienced a 25% growth in unique visitors in the last 12 months and research is indicating that around 40% of the users of these sites are over the age of 35.

Social networks, according to Deloitte, are a powerful tool for any organisation, and a way of tapping into the wisdom of crowds.

The graphic below shows the multi faceted nature of Enterprise social networking (ESN):

ESN Networking Graphic

Other notable figures, you may be interested in:

• 78.5 percent of the total U.S. Internet audience viewed online video.
• The average online video viewer watched 309 minutes of video, or more than 5 hours.
• 98.9 million viewers watched 5.9 billion videos on YouTube.com (59.2 videos per viewer).
• 48.7 million viewers watched 367 million videos on MySpace.com (7.6 videos per viewer).
• The duration of the average online video was 3.2 minutes.
• The duration of the average online video viewed at Hulu was 10.1 minutes, higher than any other video property in the top ten.

Comscore Survey Results

These results are something the real estate industry in Australia needs to monitor, the use of video is now to the point that the industry really can’t continue to ignore it.

Ever wondered what the total number of people world wide is that use the internet on a daily basis? this is one of those trivia questions that come up from time to time. Here’s the answer for you. Internet World Stats counted nearly 1.5 Billion web surfers world wide as of June 2008. Only 15 to 20% of the worlds population is currently connected to the web, which means the growth potential is still enormous.

So which countries are the largest users of the web? well here’s a breakdown by country and region as of December 2008, courtesy of Comscore:   

1. China: 179.7 million
2. United States: 163.3 million
3. Japan: 60.0 million
4. Germany: 37.0 million
5. United Kingdom: 36.7 million
6. France: 34.0 million
7. India: 32.1 million
8. Russia: 29.0 million
9. Brazil: 27.7 million
10. South Korea: 27.3 million
11. Canada: 21.8 million
12. Italy: 20.8 million
13. Spain: 17.9 million
14. Mexico: 12.5 million
15. Netherlands: 11.8 million

Worldwide Internet Audience

• Asia Pacific: 416 million (41.3%)
• Europe: 283 million (28.0%)
• North America: 185 million (18.4%)
• Latin America: 75 million (7.4%)
• Middle East & Africa: 49 million (4.8%)

Just lifting out the Oceania/Australia stats:

Population:  33,981,562

Internet Usage 2000: 7,620,480

The 2008 Stats are below:

Ever wondered how entrenched the mobile phone is in our society, and where people use their mobile phone? It has become an essential part of a real estate agents operating tools and most would feel naked without theirs hanging on their belt or in a  handbag. A new survey released has looked at the usage of mobile phones in Australia and the results are very interesting. For instance, in what strange places do you use your mobile phone? the survey found that 1 in every 2 Australians uses a mobile phone on the toilet, that computes to 48% of the population, small when compared to 66% of Chinese people who say they take it into the toilet with them,well it is a good place to do your business, I suppose. 

If you live in Melbourne, your partner is more likely to go through your text and phone messages than those living in Sydney. The survey commissioned by Microsoft and was conducted across Australia, China, Taiwan, India and Japan. The full story can be read here http://www.dnaindia.com/report.asp?newsid=1222736

Looking at this in a little more depth, the future development of the internet as predicted in my post The Future of the Internet – 2020 and Beyond  is the prediction that a mobile device will be the primary connection tool to the internet for most people, and with new real estate applications becoming available for both the IPhone and smart phone platforms, it is not hard to believe that this will be an integral part of how consumers will access on line information including real estate in the future and will shape how we do business in 2020.

One of the very interesting results is that 13% of Australians said they would use their phone during extremely intimate moments. Now that one I’m not going to touch!! Na, I can’t resist, maybe they just put it on Vibrate!