There has been a lot of negative, conflicting media attention of late about the current real estate market in Australia and views seem to differ greatly depending on what branch of the tree they are sitting on… throwing those ripe pieces of fear to an already confused buying and selling market seems to work for them.

It has been a challenging year for most who work within the Australian property market, increases in lending and borrowing fuelled by the credit crunch plus our own inflation rate has had an impact but is it that bad and, where are we heading now?

Call me an optimist but I came across this piece of news which I believe presents a balanced (factual based) and not so negative take on where our property market is currently positioned and heading towards for 2009.

You are the best judge of your own market and your feedback is welcome:

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Do you agree with the views of this video? What’s your take on your local market?

Google (in the US of A) have added Google Real Estate Search to their Google Maps application. Now you can search for real estate in America on Google Maps. The data comes from their Google Base application, however it seems they are going to add data from other sources also. You can try it out by going to http://maps.google.com and then adding (left sidebar) Google Real Estate Search under see more maps!

Here are some articles on this subject:
Google Maps is Going To Be My New Real Estate Search Page
Google Maps Adds Real Estate Search
Another Hint at Google Real Estate?

There are certainly interesting times ahead. I have no idea why Google has not released Google Base in Australia, but they should get their act together and release it shortly. It is not as if it would be a hard thing to do (add country, regions, suburbs) and I cannot wait until it does happen.

Joel Burslem’s opinion carries a lot of weight with me because I’ve seen how smart his real estate technology blog, future of real estate marketing, is. So, when he said Australian agents should not miss this year’s Real Estate Connect, I asked him why. And, I’ve posted his answers here. Read more »

Here is a handful of recent stories I thought you’d find of interest:

Real estate is spelled S-E-X in China.

Vodafone to sell the iPhone in Australia.

But, Vodafone might not be the only one (and here).

Suncorp and LJ Hooker launch real estate podcasts.

How to cope when Google dumps you.

First banks in Spain raise mortgage interest rates, then they encourage borrowers to invest in their own stock funds and certificate of deposits–instead of buying a house. Real estate agents are outraged. (in Spanish).

WAN gets realestate.com.au to power its real estate website.

Internet Marketing by real estate agents is often restricted to web based advertising , particularly individual agency websites and placement of property for sale on what seems like an endless supply of property portals.

Many agencies have added email marketing and e-newsletter solutions to improve their overall internet marketing results. Like other internet based marketing options, email marketing and e-newsletters are very cost effective. If done right the results can far exceed that of expensive traditional options.

Hard copy newsletters can cost thousands of dollars to print and deliver yet their effectiveness is often impossible to measure. In contrast email newsletters are extremely cheap and technology allows you to know exactly who opened their copy and exactly what they clicked on.

A recent report by a large email marketing firm MailerMailer (www.mailermailer.com) reveals some handy tips and trends when it comes to emarketing. With thousands of clients across many industry groups MailerMailer are able to analyse the results from over 300 million marketing emails sent over a 6 month period. Read more »