When Roger Bannister broke the 4 minute mile he set a whole new mindset for a world of possibilities and now Google has made yet another major announcement that could change the internet world as we know it.
Do you remember dial-up internet & how time consuming it was to sit there waiting for a website to appear on the computer screen or heaven forbid, trying to watch a video?
Well, if you ever had any doubts about the importance that video will play in the world of real estate marketing you may want to sit up and take notice of what Google are about to embark upon. Read the rest of this article »
With talk of search, social media and mobile, real estate agencies are starting to invest in building an online presence. But whilst all of these strategies are important to any agency strategy, it is important to make sure you are getting the basics right. Our recent consumer research has confirmed our initial thoughts, and that is that agents need to focus on always providing the core information in a listing. By doing so agents will be able to attract more buyers to the properties they have listed on the market.
Content and information make the web go around, and it is detailed information that consumers are looking for when they … Read the rest of this article »
Newspapers are on the decline! A very fast decline. Readership and revenues are down and profits seem very hard to find anymore. Because of that decline agents appear to be dropping their support of print media a little bit more every year. Read the rest of this article »
Will the recent launch of the Apple iPad mean the end of the Listing Presentation Folder or FlipChart style presentation? Will we see agents showing off their listings via the iPad? Or perhaps they’ll be using it to watch real estate training sessions or live streamed sales meetings? Either way, could it be a Game Changer? Read the rest of this article »
Remember the iconic 1980s movie ‘Wall Street’ in which Michael Douglas walks along a beach watching the sun rise while talking into his mobile phone? The thing was about as big as his head (which was big), yet was the symbol of power, wealth, technology and cool. Looking back at it now, the device forces a smile, just like those beige box-like … Read the rest of this article »
Property Management site apmasphere have just announced the launch of aTV, property management’s first ever video channel. “aTV is dedicated to making learning on the job easier and more enjoyable – at any stage of your career.”
“aTV will provide the demonstration of key functions in the property management industry.”
The premise with aTV has been built around 100 questions the legislation and software can not teach or answer for a property manager.
aTV plan to keep the videos very short and intend to present a lot more insights along the way.
Membership to the apmasphere site is free & aTV is the latest in their long list of FREE resources for property managers to help them with their careers.
As a member, I’ve found that apmasphere provide an invaluable resource for Property Managers & Principals, with some of the industries best Property Managers & Property Management trainers providing guidance, thoughts and ideas on how to overcome many of the daily issues Property Management departments & Principals face.
Apmasphere has in excess of 1,000 members & provides some of the most up-to-date information available for Property Managers. Their forum acts like a brains trust for ideas on the ‘How To’ of Property Management and approaches questions on economics, structure and growth.
If you haven’t joined in as yet, you may want to head over to see what you’re missing out on. It’s a great online learning platform.
Recently, I had the joy of rebuilding the property exports for a new property listing system. This involved the tedious task of creating xmls for all the property data feeds to various real estate portals in Australia and across the World. With over 30 portals and some requiring a separate and unique xml specification, caused quite a headache for our developers.
There were 4 recurring issues which arose during this process and should be avoided by any new real estate application or real estate portal. These include; creating your own unique xml specification, requiring 3rd parties to sign confidentiality agreements, providing inadequate documentation and lastly, failure to provide upload confirmation reports.
Unique XML Specification – This has been a common mistake by new portals as they think they need to have their own unique xml feed specification. Although REA do not permit it, it is common knowledge that the REAXML is industry standard which is used/accepted by many existing portals (names withheld). Like any other developer we can set up an REAXML to a new portal in around 5 minutes. However, if a portal has their own unique XML then it could take days to write the XML and then days to test it.
Confidentiality Agreements – I’m bewildered why I’m required to sign a confidentiality agreement when all we are doing is sending an XML to a third party website. I can understand signing a Terms & Conditions for uploading agreement, but anything else is just a speed bump in the process to getting an XML in place.
Inadequate Documentation – Those portals who have their own XML specification need adequate and UP-TO-DATE documentation so developers can efficiently create the XML. Some portals do have excellent documentation while others have shocking documentation which is often out-of-date. IMPORTANT – Make sure your XML documentation is structured so it is easy to navigate and is up-to-date.
Upload Confirmation Reports – This is probably the most important aspect of running an efficient export/import system. These reports are sent back to the bulk loader after each XML has been parsed by the 3rd party portal. The reports highlight which properties have been added, updated or removed along with which properties had errors and what they are. Once again, REA have an excellent report system where they tell you the exact error for why a property was not added. As a further benefit, they also send a daily email to the real estate agency summing up the properties parsed for the day.
In my opinion the worst portals to export to are those controlled by the Real Estate Institutes. For some reason they believe having their own XML specification provides greater value to members. Most smaller portals accept the REAXML but only a few provide adequate upload confirmation reports which makes it hard to monitor the flow of properties.
For any new real applications it is important to reduce the barriers which allow them to receive property listings. There is no reason to “reinvent the wheel”, simply follow industry standard and use a system which is common practice.
I will not join your mafia, tend to your crops, find your lost puppy or swap aquariam fish with you. Can’t you get the hint…. Knock it OFF and LEAVE ME ALONE!!! Everyone must understand that all of these addictive little games they sign up for spam everyone on their contact lists.
Stop sending me requests to be a fan of your favourite causes, celebrities or your friends businesses.
If we have never met, never ever talked, in fact I dont even know you existed till now why would I be your Facebook Friend. Facebook is for personal contacts. I share my personal photos, thoughts and information to FRIENDS ONLY…. GET IT! Stuff I want to share with anybody who is interested is done through either a fan page, Twitter or a blog.
If you are an affiliate marketer just wanting to flog me stuff, a spammer of any kind, a pornographer trying to get me to watch your latest video……. I WILL DELETE YOU!!
There is no prize for collecting the most Facebook Friends or Twitter Followers. How can you follow 20,000 people on Twitter? Have you no life at all that you spend all your time reading other people’s tweets? I WILL DELETE YOU!!!!
Exactly like in real life I dont like being stalked on Twitter or Facebook …. If I delete you, say no to your request to be my friend and you keep coming back trying to be my friend and follow me I will block you and report you…. I PROMISE
Linkedin is a Business network of people you have done business with. You say that we worked together in your company but I would remember it if we worked together taking photos of properties in Perth I really would…. BUT I DON’T KNOW YOU!
You absolutley do not have to ReTweet everything. I checked out Twitters terms and conditions and nowhere does it say that you have to retweet everthing that someone sends you. How about being an individual and just SHUT UP IF YOU HAVE NOTHING TO SAY YOURSELF.
I know I have a profile on LinkedIn but that does not mean that I want you or your recruitment company to find me a new job. I dont want to meet with you, I dont want to send you my CV … JUST LEAVE ME ALONE!
Whether it be on Facebook or Twitter, if you post 10 or 20 times per day you are ANNOYING THE HELL OUT OF ME and you should know by now what happens next..
One of the biggest real estate auction events in the Southern Hemisphere is about to happen on the Gold Coast.
Ray White Broadbeach – Mermaid Beach are holding ‘The Edge’ on Saturday 17th April 2010 at the Gold Coast Convention Centre.
Brett Clements from PropVid sent me the ‘Hot Off The Press’ promo video yesterday.
Now for such a big event I’m sure that there has already been a lot of promotion done by the Gold Coast Network in the lead up till now & it looks like there is going to be a whole lot more promotion done between now and ‘The Edge’.
But I thought I might throw my 2 cents worth in & share some ideas on how Ray White Broadbeach – Mermaid Beach could leverage Social Media & the web more effectively to help spread the word.
Here’s ‘The Edge’ video promo.
The video went live on the PlatinumHD.tv site a few days ago & was uploaded onto YouTube 3 days ago. Whilst I think the video is really powerful there are a couple of things that could be changed to improve its conversion.
Changes to the Video: Within the video I’d have the agents website address GoldCoastNetwork.com.au appearing underneath the Ray White Broadbeach, Ray White Commercial Broadbeach, Ray White Mermaid Beach slide (which appears at the 2 minute mark within the video).
Also, towards the end of the video a slide appears saying “Spaces Limited Book Now”
Whilst I think it’s great to include a call to action. It’s important to define what you want people to do. Are they wanting vendors to book their property in now for the auction? Or do they want buyers to book their seat now? Or both?
On the web there is no room for confusion. It’s important that people watching the video know how to Book Now.
Improve Online Conversion: One suggestion could be that if you include the agency website address within the video, then on the home page of the Ray White website they could embed ‘The Edge’ promo video into the top right hand corner (probably cutting out the end of the surf life saving flag or surfer image) and then have a button underneath to say Click Here to Book Now for ‘The Edge’.
I would then send them to a long copy sales page that features some of the benefits of why they should be involved in ‘The Edge’ and provide an opt-in section which identifies if they are a buyer or a seller.
This will allow Ray White Broadbeach – Mermaid Beach to leverage the traffic that they already get to their website from Google and their other marketing, plus improve conversion from the people who view their professionally produced ‘The Edge’ promo video.
Obviously, with only 6 weeks to go till ‘The Edge’, to allow for the 4 week cut-through marketing campaign that they mention in the video, all sellers would need to be contacted straight away to include their listing in ‘The Edge’ marketing campaign.
I can imagine that the agency will need to have all properties listed by 20th March, but due to the size of the promotion & the incredible exposure there’s a possibility that they could include a few extra listings within a few days after this cut-off date. But, that’s obviously up to them.
Here’s a few other suggestions…
YouTube: One of the first things I noticed is that the video could also be optimised a lot better on YouTube. The wording used in the description & tagging has no chance of being found on Google by someone searching for real estate on the Gold Coast & I’m not sure that having it uploaded under the Entertainment category is going to help either?
Blogging: They should integrate a WordPress blog within their company website. This will not only help to market ‘The Edge’ but it will help with their SEO.
They should write a daily blog post about some of the build up towards ‘The Edge’ and ask all the staff to tweet or share each article with their followers on Twitter & their friends on Facebook.
When sharing the articles on these sites they could also ask people to click the like button when uploading onto Facebook and ask the followers to ‘Please RT’ their tweets on Twitter.
When posting daily updates on the blog it’s important to leave the comments section open on the articles because this may get people asking questions about how to be involved & could provide an additional lead generation strategy.
This could also provide an opportunity to set a deadline for the last day before properties will be allowed to be submitted & could create an extra sense of urgency for potential sellers and/or could encourage friends to tell friends to contact the agency so they don’t miss out on ‘The Edge’.
To protect the integrity of the event, Ray White Broadbeach-Mermaid Beach are the administrators of the blog so they have control to monitor comments too.
Facebook: I also noticed that Ray White Broadbeach-Mermaid Beach have a personal profile on Facebook. Whilst they currently have 67 friends, they should really have this as a Fan Page, because Facebook has a limit and once you get to 5,000 friends you have to change to a Fan Page.
Any company thinking about creating a presence on Facebook should start off with a Fan Page. They are better for business.
Celebrities, etc should also create a Fan Page. eg. One of my friends on facebook, Jack Canfield sent me an email the other day to ask me to join him at his fan page because he had reached his limit of friends.
Jack now has the task of getting all 5,000 of his friends that he has built up on his personal Facebook profile to go over & connect with him on his new Facebook Fan Page.
( Update: I found their company Facebook Fan Page – See Update at bottom of this article )
Twitter: With regards to Twitter I can’t seem to locate a company profile for them. At this point there appears to be no Twitter account linked to their site & no blog within their site.
Whilst ‘The Edge’ is an amazing concept, there are so many different things that Ray White Broadbeach – Mermaid Beach could do to make this the most incredible real estate event ever through Social Media.
(Update: I found their company Twitter account as well see Update at bottom of this article. I searched both facebook and Twitter for Ray White Broadbeach and Ray White Mermaid Beach. I finally found them under the Gold Coast Network.)
Print Media: Having seen the magnitude of the print media campaign from last years event, Ray White Broadbeach-Mermaid Beach should be advertising something like,
“For the daily inside scoop on ‘The Edge’ become a Fan on Facebook and/or follow us on Twitter” within their campaign.
This could help them to build a huge network of people connected to their company who live within their service.
It’s never too late: Even though ‘The Edge’ is only 6 weeks away, when you think about the real-time nature of Web 2.0, there is still a lot of time available for Ray White Broadbeach – Mermaid Beach to leverage the power of the internet & use this impressive Video Production from PropVid to generate the most amazing impression within their marketplace.
2 last things: A geo-targeted Pay Per Click campaign on Google could help overcome some SEO issues, plus a targeted Facebook Ads Campaign would help drive targeted traffic to their video campaign and/or their Facebook Fan Page.
The amount of ‘Free’ online PR that could be generated around ‘The Edge’ could be massive.
If Ray White Broadbeach – Mermaid Beach get this right, ‘The Edge’ could become so much bigger than they could have ever imagined.
And, if you tallied up every strategy that I’ve mentioned, they could make a huge difference to their whole campaign for around $500 – $1,000 plus time spent writing a daily update on their blog about ‘The Edge’.
PS: There’s a few more ideas I have about what they could do on realestate.com.au and other strategies, but at this point I just wanted to paint the picture of what is really possible, if a real estate agency embraces Social Media and uses the power of the internet the right way.
Please feel welcome to share your thoughts & ideas.
UPDATE: After writing this article I noticed that Ray White Broadbeach – Mermaid Beach do in fact have a Facebook Fan Page under ‘Gold Coast Network‘ and a Twitter account at Twitter.com/raywhitebroad with their username as ‘Gold Coast Network’. It’s great to see that they have established a fan page and a Twitter account.
At the time of posting this update, they have 97 fans on Facebook and 23 followers on Twitter, but unfortunately all the company seem to be posting is there sold listings & providing a link to the Open Homes that they have on each weekend.
Their Gold Coast Network Fan Page could become so much more engaging and simply because of its name, Gold Coast Network, it has the potential to become one of the biggest real estate fan pages on Facebook if they shared some other information about what’s happening on the Gold Coast as well.
British anthropologist Robin Dunbar argues that if you count people you “maintain a stable social relationship” with then you can never have more than 150. These 150 individuals may change in personnel, but at any one time, 150 is all the ‘friends’ you’ve got.
This is because our human brain can only handle around 150 meaningful relationships – that is, you know how the 150 people fit into your life, and they know how they fit into yours.
Apparently, this is a “direct function of the relative neocortex size” meaning the brain can only process a certain amount of information on stable friendships. This includes all close friends, family, colleagues and acquaintances, as well as past colleagues, school friends and people you might want to reacquaint with should you meet them again.
For some, his theory has become a “Law”. 150, that’s it.
We see the 150 number cropping up throughout history. In his original 1992 paper, Dunbar showed how early non-human primates grouped into clusters of 148. Later, neolithic farming villages tended to contain no more than 150 people (the ‘DoomsDay’ Book showed this too), and the basic size of Roman armies topped off at 150. Property managements max out at 150 per manager don’t they? Realestate.com.au account managers look after no more than 150 accounts. [So you see, it must be law!]
Dunbar further showed that for a group to have cohesion, it should have no more than 150 members. Companies or groups that grow beyond that size need to be physically broken up into smaller units in order to retain cohesion with that organisation.
Think about your own lives and its implications.
How many people do you have a meaningful stable relationship with at the moment (in real estate, technology and beyond)? Even for those with hundreds and thousands of ‘Facebook friends’ and ‘Twitter followers’, how many do you think they/we actively engage with? What does this mean for client relationship management (CRM) activities and software? For those real estate professionals with thousands of contacts that receive their regular blasted enewsletters, ebrochures and the like, what sort of meaningful interaction is going on?
Lots of business can be done by being the local real estate expert forged through solid, meaningful and trusted long term relationships. Maybe in our rush for technology, we over complicate matters, and rush to seek short cuts to contact loads of people, shotgun style? Should we just be happy with our 150 ‘meaningful relationships’ and make the most out of these contacts?
Disclosure: our company has 150 clients. Now I know why…
For More:
Dunbar, Robin. (1992) Neocortex size as a constraint on group size in primates, Journal of Human Evolution 22: 469-493.
Dunbar, Robin (1998). Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language. Harvard University Press
Gladwell, Malcolm (2000) ‘The Tipping Point’ . (Dunbar’s Law forms a central part of Gladwell’s argument and probably first made him famous)
Slowly but surely Google Real Estate is making inroads into the Australian real estate market with the recent signing of LJ Hooker on top of most of the major players in real estate in Australia. It will take longer for all of the smaller independent agents to come onboard, however it is clear that this is the beginning of a new era and it is time REA and Domain stepped up to the plate and opened themselves up to the Google way of life!
Why? Because not doing so will slowly end their dominance and when the decline occurs it will be so fast that no maneuvering will make a difference.
Some may argue that Google Real Estate has not made a difference as yet, but these people live in complete denial and it will only be a matter of time before visitor numbers begin declining and Google Real Estate begins its upward March.
Remember, Google only has to get comparative data to make a difference. Google also have a far greater capacity to let people know about it than all other real estate portals in the world combined.
Recently a number of videos have been produced that well and truly show how serious Google is about maps and real estate.
Finding a house on Google Real Estate Maps
Here is one to showcase real estate listings throughout Australia
Here is one on how to refine your real estate search on Google Real Estate.
Real Estate API’s
Realestate.com.au and domain.com.au must open their databases up to the general public to create a whole new wave of web and mobile applications.
I have been pushing API’s with these portals for over 2 years and yet we still have nothing. Maybe Realestate.com.au’s big announcement will include an API?
What can an API do?
As an example any website would be able to carry listings through this API, so community websites, industry websites, councils, agents, even business2.com.au would be able to carry listings, sales data etc. Portals do not need agents permission as agents have signed away all rights to the data when they join these sites.
Signing up should be simple and approval rapid and it should be accompanied by rapidly evolving documentation and examples.
Boon for portals
One other thing we will see is innovation across the board, even things we have not even thought of will take us by surprise, but the biggest boon will be for the portals. It will extend their listings and sales data reach and allow that data to be ingrained across 10’s of thousands of websites across Australia and the world.
Versions
There should be two versions of the API, the free version which carries 3rd parties adverts from the portals and is a little limited and then a paid version that carries no advertising and allows the user to do whatever they want with the data!
Flow on
The flow on effect of this will flow across the industries to jobs, cars and classifieds.
Will this happen?
Don’t hold your breath, large organisations are slow at moving on these opportunities, usually waiting until it is too late. We are fast approaching a time where I think realestate.com.au and domain.com.au will start going backwards unless they really innovate with API’s.
One only has to look at the music industry and the movie industry to see how stubborn incumbents completely ruin their own industries by not embracing and innovating.
This article is ‘Part 3 of How to Get More From RealEstate.com.au Without Paying Extra Money.’
In Part 1 of this series, I covered how to get the best coverage for your agency within the Find An Agent Section settings and in Part 2 I discussed an important internet marketing strategy where you can improve the number of visits you can get to your listings.
In that article I also covered 3 simple internet marketing concepts, the first of which was ‘The Image Catches Their Eye’ which leads me to…
You Lost Me At ‘Hello’
Have you ever seen that part in the movie Jerry Maguire where Renee Zellweger says to Tom Cruise “You had me at Hello?” If not, here’s a quick snippet from the movie.
Well, with this phrase in mind, I can not stress how important it is to grab a buyer or sellers attention over the web, especially on realestate.com.au.
Ultimately, you want to aim to ‘Have them at hello too’ which means that they will continue to keep reading about your listing.
The ‘Hello’ part is so important over the web, because with a woman you have somewhere between 2 – 4 seconds to grab their attention, whereas for a male, it’s 5 – 7 seconds, yet unbelievably there are still a number of agents who are committing the cardinal sin on realestate.com.au.
What’s the cardinal sin on realestate.com.au?
I find it astounding in today’s world of digital photography, that some agents are still uploading their listings onto realestate.com.au without any images of the property at all.
What’s more, realestate.com.au don’t allow listings to be uploaded to their site unless their is an image & some agents actually go out of their way to upload a generic image instead, just to get the listing up onto the realestate.com.au site.
Some agents must be in such a hurry to get the property uploaded onto the web on a Friday afternoon, before the receptionist goes home, that they upload the listing without photos, without considering the damaging consequences.
Maybe the owner is super keen to have the property uploaded before the weekend, but uploading any listing onto realestate.com.au without photos of the property is a huge mistake.
The image is such a big attention grabber and having no image could actually put the ideal buyer off.
Plus, lots of potential sellers subscribe to email alerts and if they see a property that is poorly marketed by an agent then they could easily be put off from listing with that agent.
It’s the biggest database in Australian real estate – Use it.
REA has the biggest real estate database within Australia & they have hundreds of thousands of people who have subscribed to receive email alerts when new listings come onto the market within their chosen criteria.
Realestate.com.au include the first email notification via their email alert service at no extra cost to the agent. It’s part of the subscription fees & is a very affective part of an agent’s marketing strategy for matching properties to suitable buyers.
Now, if an agent uploads a listing without the property photos & wants to access the REA’s database to re-send the property details out with photos now uploaded, they have to pay (normally hundreds of dollars) to send out one of REA’s e-Brochures.
Even though you could always pay to re-send the property out to REA’s database via the e-Brochure in an attempt to try to rectify the initial mistake, you’ll never get a second chance to create that great first impression.
No matter what the circumstances, an agent should ‘never’ upload a listing onto realestate.com.au without photos of the property.
Quick Tip: To get the greatest exposure for your listing as it is emailed out as an email alert to the REA database, make sure you set your price guides within the admin section as far apart as you feel that you comfortably can without misrepresenting the price.
This will allow you to broaden your marketing out to potential buyers in a lower price range who may end up deciding to increase their spending range and/or market to buyers in a higher price bracket that may consider reducing the amount they want to spend on a property.
But, make sure you reset the price range within the system within the first week after the first email alert has been sent, as by this time you’ll probably have direct feedback from buyers and you should have an even better indication of the properties real price point in the market.
Obviously, use your common sense, sending an $800,000 listing to buyers with $300,000 to spend isn’t going to win you any friends.
When Roger Bannister broke the 4 minute mile he set a whole new mindset for a world of possibilities and now Google has made yet another major announcement that could change the internet world as we know it.
Do you remember dial-up internet & how time consuming it was to sit there waiting for a website to appear on the computer screen or heaven forbid, trying to watch a video?
Well, if you ever had any doubts about the importance that video will play in the world of real estate marketing you may want to sit up and take notice of what Google are about to embark upon. Read the rest of this article »
With talk of search, social media and mobile, real estate agencies are starting to invest in building an online presence. But whilst all of these strategies are important to any agency strategy, it is important to make sure you are getting the basics right. Our recent consumer research has confirmed our initial thoughts, and that is that agents need to focus on always providing the core information in a listing. By doing so agents will be able to attract more buyers to the properties they have listed on the market.
Content and information make the web go around, and it is detailed information that consumers are looking for when they are viewing property listings online. Consumers are using this information to make preliminary decisions about property from the comfort of their own home. The process of elimination starts here and it is your one opportunity to convert browsers to inspectors. So what do you need to provide in your listings to get people off the couch and at the inspection?
1) Floorplans; Equally as important as images, floor plans are one of the first elements consumers look for when viewing a listing. However some agents are still not providing what should be a core component of any property advertisement online.
2) Images; Making a property decision from your computer is a visual process. Consumers have a limited amount of time to go to open for inspections and as many overlap, your property may be making it onto the “no time to see list”. Images are the crucial factor swaying a users decision, and providing 2 or 3 images to look at is hardly going to entice buyers to the property. With property portals providing the capacity for up to showcase 26 images, agents need to make better use of this facility and increase the portfolio of photos for their properties.
3) Pricing; Many properties are still listed without a price guide associated with them. Whether a property sells for the price it is listed at on the day will of course depend on the market. However a price guide helps consumers to determine if a property possibly sits within their budget, and is worth a trip to the inspection.
4) A full valid address; When inputting data, it is important that agents ensure an accurate full address is provided. Without it, map functionality, on portals and your own site, are unable to accurately pinpoint the location of a property within a particular suburb. After understanding what the property looks like, consumers want to know where it is located and what it is close to, so make sure they don’t have to traipse around the web to find it. If you focus on getting these fundamentals right, and combine it with some investment in attracting users to your site through online channels such as search and social media you are well on the way to attracting more buyers for your listed properties.
There are strong rumours circulating that Realestate.com.au will be launching a new site in early March 2010. What this site will look like is any one’s guess?
REA have come under criticism in the past that the realestate.com.au website is more about selling 3rd party services than actually marketing real estate agents listings, so it will be interesting to see how much of the feedback they have received over the years gets put into place.
Given that REA are the leader, I am be expecting something special, no excuses, I mean the site has had some minor adjustments over years, but this is 2010 and I would expect nothing short of brilliance from this team after this period of time. I am sure the hype will build up and can’t wait to get a sneak peak and report back to all.
Here are some of the things i will be looking for:
Make the Home Page Customisable
If you want registrations and repeat customers, make it so I can fully customize the home page. I should be able to login and set what types of listings I am looking for. The home page should then become ‘my home page’, with relevant listings, sales data, advertising and real estate news and media from my areas. I should be able to login with my Google, Facebook accounts and I should be to set up watch lists for local properties, agents etc.
Agents Listings First
95% or more of realestate.com.au’s visitors would be people looking to buy, sell, rent or have their properties managed, so it beggars belief that so many real estate sites make it difficult to contact an agent on a listing page. This should be prominent at top left of listings page (where eyes first look) and not hidden away down the left or right side.
Give me what I search for
I don’t care if a listing is one year old or one day old, I want to get accurate results for what I search for. Today agents need to re-list properties (which can get you barred on REA) on some sites every ninety days, otherwise they are not found.
Agents are commissioned to sell a property for the vendor. It makes it hard to sell if it cannot be found, it is just so pathetic that only the first 200 listings are displayed, load and data cannot be the excuse, especially when there is so much junk thrown in the users face on each page.
3rd Party Advertising
REA should by now have realised that pop up ads are a pain in the proverbial, just give me non-intrusive, relevant advertising and I am happy. Surely by now they would have some control over their advertising market.
API
Yes this is 2010 and not one of the major portals has an API (Application Program Interface) That allows anyone to mash data up and create just about anything you could think of and many things we hadn’t. This is why Google is such a threat, to companies like REA and Domain – because it likes to share and makes billlions from it!
Comments
We should be able to make comments on a property, agents should be able to choose whether the comments and their responses are public. This would provide great information to other prospectives! It could also separate the productive hard working agents from the rest. Maybe some kind of comment/feedback all star agent.
Peter Ricci is the Director of Agentpoint.com.au, Business2.com.au, Ginga.com.au and ZooProperty.com and has been involved in designing and developing real estate systems and websites since 1997. In July 2001 Peter founded Business2.com.au to help real estate agents better understand the power of the Internet and the real estate landscape in Australia and New Zealand. Since then he has penned over 300 articles on a variety of subjects in the real estate technology industry. Business2.com.au is now the leading real estate technology site in Australasia.
Blogging: They should integrate a 
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