I’m talking to you.

Yes, you.

The person who thinks you will start an Australian real estate portal that will shoot right past domain, dethrone realestate.com.au and become the new number one.

Or, maybe you’re an agent who for some reason (perhaps because you have to send them a check every month?) doesn’t like realestate.com.au and wishes the industry would start a portal as a realestate.com.au killer.

I have a message for you: you’re dreaming.

I tell you this because of a very interesting discussion that developed in the comments of Ryan’s excellent post on FarmBuy.com.au. I thought I’d pull out the topic and expand on it.

Face it. realestate.com.au is the dominant market leader in online real estate listings in Australia. It would be very hard to beat them at their own game. What’s more, you cannot expect to copy realestate.com.au and win without their help, in the form of massive, ongoing self-destructive behaviour. They are not likely to give you that help.

All those hopeful entrepreneurs trying to create a new website to knock realestate.com.au out of its top spot and take it for themselves are on a fool’s quest. That goes for everyone from domain.com.au and on down. Domain can aspire to a profitable second place. Smaller, later comers can aspire to make a living, maybe, but certainly not to kill the giant.

The plain truth is realestate.com.au is the leader and will be the leader in online real estate listings in Australia as long as there are online real estate listings in Australia. There have been instances in business history when a player with a dominance similar to realestate.com.au’s was displaced by a competitor, but not many.

I say this as someone who has worked at realestate.com.au and with other real estate related web businesses on three continents, and as an entrepreneur.But, if you think I am missing something here, please enlighten me in the comments.

How to Make Money

Tell them they're dreaming!

Instead of leadership, go for a niche and establish a strong brand as the first and best in that niche. Here are some niches that are already in play, with varying degrees of success:

• Farms: FarmBuy
• Rentals: Rent.com.au
• Regional: AllHomes
• Premium property: Million Plus
• Free listings: The Home Page
• Chinese buyers: Juwai.com (a client of mine)

If you can be content with a niche, you could possibly be profitable, or at least one day sell out at a profit. It will be hard, because the Australian market is so small, but it seems possible. A niche could also be an add-on to another real estate-related business, giving that other business strategic advantages — like domain.com.au does for Fairfax’s newspapers.

Still Dreaming?

If a niche is not enough for you, and you want to beat realestate.com.au, there is only one credible strategy. You must dominate a new niche. This new niche by definition cannot be dominated by realestate.com.au and must be able to grow big enough to one day eclipse realestate.com.au. The flaw in this strategy is that you have to be riding a wave of history for it to work for you. Those waves don’t come along often.

For an example, look at realestate.com.au’s own history. The major media businesses had print real estate classifieds locked up prior to the realestate.com.au’s rise. They were unassailable. Classifieds were so reliable and profitable that analysts called them “rivers of gold”.

Then, three friends in Melbourne registered the domain name realestate.com.au and began persuading skeptical real estate agents to put their listings online. They chose a real estate classifieds niche the big players had overlooked: online. And they made themselves the leader in that niche.

(It is true that News International has a stake in realestate.com.au today, but that only goes back to 1992, when Simon Baker in his wisdom convinced News to buy it. realestate.com.au was a pure, independent startup in the classic mold. I reckon if you did the numbers, you would find realestate.com.au has been a much more profitable investment for News Corp than myspace.)

Over time, little realestate.com.au grew and grew by riding the growth of the internet. realestate.com.au won online and rode the internet’s historic growth into the very backbone of our economy and culture. The big media companies still dominate print classifieds, but print is sliding into irrelevance.

As of today, realestate.com.au has reported record revenue for six consecutive half-years, while the newspapers are struggling.

The lesson to draw from this history is simple. real estate portals should not take on the established leader head-on. Find a new niche and become the leader in that niche. You can make a living, and you may even get lucky enough to ride a historic trend into great riches.

I’m not really sure how to say this.

There’s something I think you need to know, but it involves a marketing client of mine — and I don’t want to seem like I am just spruiking my clients.

So, if you don’t want to hear about a new portal that helps Australian agents and developers reach buyers from China, just stop reading right now. If you read on, and still feel like I put my interests ahead of your interests as a reader, please abuse me in the comments section.

I’ll just talk about the four things that I think are most important for readers of Business2.com.au:

1. First, this news is not relevant to everyone. Advertising to buyers from China is not for every agent. The reason Juwai.com thinks that plenty of Australian agents will want to advertise on their portal is that Chinese buyers make up the fastest-growing buyer group in Australia at the moment. They spent more than $1 billion dollars in 2010 on Australia homes, and probably about $2.9 billion in 2011 — according to the best estimates Juwai.com has been able to make. (This data is not easily to track.)
2. Second, how much does it cost? For now it is free, if you go to juwai.com/advertise. Later, for a single property it will be $50 per month, for 10 properties it’s $100 per month, for up to 250 properties it’s $250 per month. (These are US dollar amounts, which amounts to nearly the same thing in Australian dollars.) Through deals with Thehomepage.com.au and Millionplus.com.au there already tens of thousands of Australian listings on Juwai.com. (In addition to more than a million listings from the US, UK and other countries.)
3. Third, how does it work? Like any portal, this new one has 2 heads: one that talks to the customer and one that talks to the agent. In this case, however, the two heads speak two different languages. The head facing the customer speaks Chinese and is full of all the best portal stuff for the Chinese buyer, like buying guides, news and data, social media tools, etc.
   The other head, facing the agent, speaks English. It works just like the agent admin section on just about any real estate portal you have ever used. And it also translates leads for you, and if you want can translate documents, emails, offers, etc. into English or Chinese.
4. The fourth thing is that this portal operates a call centre for Chinese customers. I found it interesting that the Chinese language is so difficult to type that — instead of sending an e-mail inquiry — people can be more likely to pick up the phone and dial a handful of digits. The call centre answers their questions, and also pre-qualifies leads for agents.

I’ll leave you with a few links to stories that I found in the media about Chinese buyers in Australia. Also, I’ll leave you with my apologies that this post is not in rhyme. (If you have no idea why I just said that, see the World’s First Rhyming Social Media Blog Post.)

• PropetyObserver.com.au: Asian buyers vital to Australian property market: Morry Schwartz
• Real Estate Business:  Mandarin listings a must to reach lucrative Chinese
• The Australian: Chinese buyers underpin housing prices
• Sydney Morning Herald: Chinese millions – and a loophole – keep luxury home market buoyant
• China Daily: Australia is now a hot real estate market for Chinese investors

Well, realestate.com.au is in just that position right now. But, they weren’t lying.

The old, larger number refers to “unique browsers”, the old standard for measuring web traffic. The new, smaller number refers to “unique audience”, and is supposed to measure the actual number of people (not web browsers) visiting the website.

Both numbers count the same people, doing the same things, but they count in different ways.

The new system is more precise and useful than the old system. There are problems, of course, like the fact that the new “unique audience” doesn’t yet count mobile users or international users. Even so, it represents real innovation by the people at Nielsen, who created it. (Here’s a shout out to my old buddy Matt Bruce over at Nielsen.)

For example, as of June 2011, the old method counted almost 120 million unique browsers per month in Australia. That is great, but only about 15 million Australians are actually online. According to the new data, each Australian who uses the internet sees 2,772 web pages in a month, goes online 69 times and spends nearly 69 hours there. (It’s nice that I finally found something in which I can be above average!)

Now here’s the paragraph you have all been waiting for. Robert Simeon, I write this especially for you, with a smile. The new system gives realestate.com.au almost exactly the same relative dominance over domain as the old system did. In the old system, realestate.com.au had 1.8 times more unique browsers than domain.com.au. In the new system, it has 1.6 times more unique audience.

I used to work at realestate.com.au. You can probably tell that I’m still proud of them.

Anyone who finds this topic fascinating should, first, see a shrink. After that, if you’re still not cured, you can read more at the following links:

• The Sydney Morning Herald gives a layman’s summary
• An information page from the IAB, which is the online advertising industry’s trade group
• A briefing to investors from realestate.com.au (this is a 13-page PDF file)

There are already plenty of blog posts about the topic (including some excellent posts on Business2). And, there are already plenty of rhymes. But, until now, there has never been a rhyming social media blog post. (as far as I know)

It is, therefore, my distinct pleasure to introduce to you this world’s first–in its global premiere.

World’s First Rhyming Social Media Blog Post

“Social media, should I use you?”
That is my query.
Tumblr. Twitter. Facebook.
“YES!” is my theory. (1)

On this climb start many.
Many give up.
If I paid you a penny,
would you Tweet me to the top? (2)

They say to study others,
Learn from the barely surviving.
So your tail is well covered,
Put in toe before diving. (3)

You must talk, talk, talk, talk.
It’s 24/7.
Cluetrains don’t stop,
Even if a rest would be heaven. (4)

What’s cheap is expensive,
When you’re paying in blood.
Not to cause apprehension,
Customers can now make your name mud. (5)

Follow the lessons Gary has given.
Go online with compassion,
And up, up, up sales will be driven. (6)

This is really just for fun, and I’m no poet. It does, however, point to some truths. Below, I give a little more information about each verse.

Verse (1)
For 100 years or more, traditional media let businesses broadcast messages in one direction. Social media let us start two-way conversations.

Many people in real estate already understand how this will change their business. For example, I am doing some consulting work with LJ Hooker, and I have been impressed by the excellent social media training they offer their network. I’d be interested to hear what other agencies are doing, as well.

Verse (2)

Lots of people have tried social media marketing. A Burson-Marstellar study of 20 excellent corporate brands found this:

“A large number of companies have dipped a toe in the social media arena without following through. The study revealed a lot of inactive accounts, which could suggest ad-hoc efforts with no clear strategy for online stakeholder engagement.”

Many people who try and then give up blame the medium, and say social media is too immature to be useful. That’s like saying a trumpet is broken because the first 100 people who pick it up suck, as Gary Vaynerchuck wrote in The Thank You Economy.

Luckily for you, you have the world’s first ever rhyming social media blog post and Business2, the world’s best real estate blog, to help you figure it out. Nothing can stop you now!

Verse (3)

It pays to learn from the mistakes of those who have blown it. Take the same precaution with your social media strategy that you would before jumping into a swimming pool: dip your toe in first.

Start small, test the waters, and learn to swim. Then begin to take on bigger challenges.

Verse (4)
Social media look cheap, but they take their payment in blood.

Opening a Twitter account is as easy as checking your email. But, it’s a bit like hiding inside of a refrigerator. It’s easy to get in, but once the door closes, you can’t get back out.

To use social media productively takes a lot of time and dedication. It will probably also require some changes to your business that go beyond adding your Twitter account to your business card.

But, yes. It will be worth it.
Verses (5) and (6)
Word of mouth today has much more power than before social media. Tools like Facebook and Twitter give your customers the ability to say things about your brand persuasively and to a huge audience. Before, it was limited to the people they could conceivably talk to, email or call on the phone in a day.

Overwhelm them with kindness and excellent customer service, and they will become loyal fans and customers. Give them crap service, and they will make your name mud.

The Gary I mention in verse (6) is Gary Vaynerchuck, founder of tv.winelibrary.com and author of the The Thank You Economy. You could write a book about this topic, but he’s much smarter than I and has already done it. It’s the book about social media I have liked best.

For now, I hope you enjoyed this rhyming blog post as a bit of fun.

PS: Some real experts regularly read and contribute to this blog. If you have any social media questions, I’m sure they or I would be happy to respond below in the comments field.

But, this group of agents have gotten used to paying a certain price and still believe that one-time price is the fair and right one. To them, a price rise is a betrayal of how things should be.

For the longest time, I couldn’t understand why this issue had become so intractable. Why was it making some agents in particular so hostile to realestate.com.au? (If agents have other reasons for being hostile, I don’t mean to address them in this post. I’m speaking particularly about pricing.)

Was it just a negotiating tactic on the part of the agents, to see if they could demand lower prices? Perhaps for some it was, but I thought the misunderstanding had a deeper cause.

Then I read Daniel Ariely’s book, Predictably Irrational, and suddenly I had an answer. Before I explain, let me quote a story from the book. (Bear with me. Even though this story is about pearls, it is relevant.) In 1973 a man named Assael began trying to sell black pearls from Tahiti to Westerners. At the time, black pearls were unknown in the West…and unwanted.

“At first, Assael’s marketing efforts failed. The pearls were gunmetal gray, about the size of musket balls, and he returned to Polynesia without having made a single sale. Assael could have dropped the black pearls altogether or sold them at a low price to a discount store. He could have tried to push them to consumers by bundling them together with a few white pearls. But instead Assael waited a year … and then brought them to an old friend, Harry Winston, the legendary gemstone dealer. Winston agreed to put them in the window of his store on Fifth Avenue, with an outrageously high price tag attached. Assael, meanwhile, commissioned a full-page advertisement that ran in the glossiest of magazines. There, a string of Tahitian black pearls glowed, set among a spray of diamonds, rubies, and emeralds.

“The pearls, which had shortly before been the private business of a cluster of black-lipped oysters, hanging on a rope in the Polynesian sea, were soon parading through Manhattan on the arched necks of the city’s most prosperous divas. Assael had taken something of dubious worth and made it fabulously fine.”

One lesson from this story is certainly that it pays to have influential friends, like Harry Winston. But the more relevant lesson is about imprinting on an anchor price. Research has proven that the first price at which a person seriously considers buying something becomes the “anchor” price against which they evaluate all future prices for that same product.

Let’s take this concept back to online real estate advertising. This product was dirt cheap about 10 years ago and justifiably so. The internet was in its infancy. Things are different today, and the ads deliver much better results and reach an exponentially bigger audience. Put simply, they are worth more.

Here’s the rub: even as the ads have increased in value, the perception of some agents of what they should be paying for them keeps snapping back like a bungee cord to that first price of the early days. Ariely’s research showed time and again that the anchor price has incredible influence on people’s behaviour. And, it seems to me, we are seeing that same dynamic play out in online real estate.

Here’s another excerpt from Ariely’s book that will be closer to your heart:

“Uri Simonsohn (a professor at the University of Pennsylvania) and George Loewenstein … found that people who move to a new city generally remain anchored to the prices they paid for housing in their former city. In their study they found that people who move from inexpensive markets (say, Dubbo, NSW) to moderately priced cities (say, Artarmon, NSW) don’t increase their spending to fit the new market. Rather, these people spend an amount similar to what they were used to in the previous market, even if this means having to squeeze themselves and their families into smaller or less comfortable homes. Likewise, transplants from more expensive cities sink the same dollars into their new housing situation as they did in the past. People who move from Los Angeles to Pittsburgh, in other words, don’t generally downsize their spending much once they hit Pennsylvania: they spend an amount similar to what they used to spend in Los Angeles.

“It seems that we get used to the particularities of our housing markets and don’t readily change. The only way out of this box, in fact, is to rent a home in the new location for a year or so. That way, we adjust to the new environment–and, after a while, we are able to make a purchase that aligns with the local market.”

My conclusion is that agents who resist paying more for online advertising today are like the person from Dubbo who has moved to Artarmon. They want to pay the same amount for something that (in the new circumstances) arguably is worth and certainly costs more.

Seeing things from this perspective takes some of the heat out of the argument. But, it won’t solve the problem, which affects realestate.com.au, its competitors and other online publishers, too. I have a couple of high-level ideas for solutions:

• One solution for online real estate publishers is to offer new products that are so dissimilar to existing online advertising products that agents don’t refer back to their anchor price for a comparison.

• Another is for agents to do a rigorous cost-benefit analysis of all the sources of leads to their business and allocate budgets accordingly.

I’d be interested to read any other ideas for solutions. I think both agents and companies like realestate.com.au would be happier if this problem was solved.

A personal note: I apologize for the time that has passed since my last post. I’m on a sabbatical year. However, I had a chat with Peter recently about something that’s been on my mind, and he kindly encouraged me to post about it. So, if you hate my post, complain to Peter! ☺ Let me also be clear that I am no longer affiliated with realestate.com.au; I resigned my position there to dedicate myself to the kids (and allow my wife the distinct privilege of working to pay off our mortgage). Of course, I still love the company and its people; I can’t hide that.

In the light-hearted spirit of the holidays, I submit these real estate classifieds ads, which are apparently from the US. (Editor Note: I should have posted this earlier, but it is still pretty funny)

Talk about a motivated seller!

Hard to heat and cool?

If that’s the best you can say about it…

All of these ads are courtesy of Criggo, the blog whose tagline is, “Newspapers are going away. That’s too bad.”

(Thanks to my friend Jodi for the heads up.)

Rather than make business2 readers wait until this seeps out publicly, I’m going to give you a heads up on two things that are happening at realestate.com.au today.

I’m sorry that I probably won’t be able to participate in the comment stream today. But, I didn’t want that to keep me from telling you about this.

In the first change, the company’s Agent Solutions Group (which provides the HubOnline Software) is making some changes that will be of interest to anyone using HubOnline.  Here’s the email they sent to HubOnline 1 customers today:

Over the past three months, REA have had a number of projects to investigate and understand what HubOnline customers (as well as customers of competing real estate Customer Relationship Management packages) need, use and value in their solutions.

As a result, we are announcing a roadmap for making some important and meaningful improvements to the version of HubOnline that you are currently using.

We intend to release improvements to HubOnline over the coming half-year. These will include:

• Simplifying the application to improve the user experience and reduce training requirement
• Improved performance speed of the CRM application
• Improved speed for vendors and buyers viewing your website
• Improved system stability and availability
• Improved disaster recovery and protection of your data

Some of you know that we have had an R&D project underway that would have eventually resulted in a newer version of HubOnline on a different platform.  Based on the user research we have done, we have determined that this is simply not the best way forward for the majority of our customers who want a simpler CRM solution, rather than a more complex one with advanced features.  The research tells us that most agents want easy-to-use and reliable software that provides an agent website, export to multiple portals and services, good (but basic) contact management and reporting.  Therefore, our intention is to focus on making these improvements to the current product.

We believe that this will get you more improvement in a shorter time-frame, and will ultimately meet your needs better, than the more complex solution we were building.  Again, this is not just our opinion, but is based on the feedback we have received from our customers and the customers of other Australian real estate CRM applications.

What do you need to do? Nothing.  Because HubOnline is offered as a “Software As a Service” over the internet, you will receive the benefits of these improvements as they become available.  We will communicate improvements beforehand, and as is our normal practice, will design and release them to minimise disruption.

Thank you for being our customer, and we hope that you will see these improvements as a net benefit to your business.

The HubOnline team made another announcement, too. Here are some excerpts from the letter mailed yesterday to customers of the Trust Accounting product lines–including Clarke Computers SalesTrust and RentTrust.

REA has agreed to sell its Trust Accounting product line to Rockend Technology Pty Ltd (Rockend). This means that from December 12th, 2008, your contract for the Clark Computers products will be assigned to Rockend. Rockend will also provide future services and customer support. You can reach Rockend on 1 300 657 700.

We have selected Rockend to take over your customer relationship in respect of trust accounting services because of its experience in trust accounting. Rockend has been recognized by the Customer Service Institute of Australia (CSIA) with both state and national awards for its excellence in supporting customers.

We believe that this change is in the best interest of our Trust Accounting customers as Rockend has proven its commitment to the excellent customer service and support.

Rockend have informed us that it is their intention to continue supporting these products for the foreseeable future, and over time to help customers make an easy transition to the core Rockend products. You do not need to take any action for this change to occur and there should not be any disruption to your support services, although the team will be physically moving to the Rockend office on December 12, so responses may be delayed on that day.

I would like to thank you for being a trust accounting customer of the REA Group. We look forward to continuing to provide you with our range of other services.

There are some fascinating things in here, so it’s well worth a read. For example, Teena feels she gets more leads than the office-based agents.Read on to find out why.

NOTE: Because Teena is a guest on this blog, I would like to ask the more aggressive commentators on business2.com.au to be gentle to Teena and grateful that she has been willing to share a bit of herself with us.

Q. Teena, tell us about your career trajectory. How did you end up a Road Warrior?

A. My background prior to real estate for 26 years was photographic processing & printing, marketing, graphic artwork and design. I have been in real estate for 8 years, worked originally at a traditional suburban real estate office and the impetus to make me move to Coldwell Banker Property Direct (CBPD) in May 2006 was the need to be more “independent.” I was looking for a company who showed something a little different from the other offices.  I had outgrown the office I was working at and wanted to operate and function in a different number of areas [ geographically speaking as well as career-wise ] which I wasn’t allowed to do, nor encouraged to do and CBPD offered the opportunity I was looking for.

Q. You have said that CBPD calls Road Warriors like yourself “Suburb Agents”.  How do suburb agents fit into CBPD’s business?

A. The original “suburb agents” model for CBPD came about I believe because the company saw the need to expand in the area of residential suburb sales. The office actually specialises in inner city projects and apartment sales, so the suburb model came in as a separate department. The suburb agents appointed have all had a number of years experience in suburban offices, and we were all looking to be independent operators as such, working the majority of our time out of our specific suburbs.

Q. What sort of properties and number of transactions you work on?

A. I cover a wide selection of property sale types including acreage, residential, house and land packages, land, land developments, units, townhouses and seniors investment properties – as well as personally handling property management on the Northside of Brisbane. Due to the range of properties I work on, I cover a range of property type contracts and documents and I have to be conversive in all of the areas I am dealing with. This diversity in itself makes for a busy daily schedule but I find it rewarding and like to cover as many facets of real estate as I can.The number of transactions I work on vary, and it has been quieter of late, but I am currently waiting on around 8 sales to settle over the next 2-3 months.

Q. Do you personally like being a suburb agent and how does it compare to being a traditional agent?

A. I love being a suburb agent. Personally, it gives me the independence I need as well as the mobility to list and sell in a wider range of arenas. The main difference is probably not having to drive to and then “walk” into the traditional office each day but – because the Virtual Assistance system is in place – we can operate for the office, away from the office and still have the admin and sales support if and when we need it.The other advantage is that I receive a higher percentage of commission than if I was working out of a traditional office – because I do have the separate associated costs and expenditure from operating the way I do.

Q. Do you feel you lose anything by being suburb-based?

A. I don’t feel that I have lost anything in becoming a suburb agent – only most of the time I work longer hours because it’s only 10 steps to my office – you can’t just lock the office and walk away as easily. I am mobile and take my office with me wherever I go. Being productive is very personal I believe for a suburb agent; self motivation is imperative and you need to be fairly disciplined in your plans and systems. I consider that I am running the office from my home office. I have all the necessary equipment, computers, printers, scanners, copiers etc that a normal office has and have access to the web based systems which aid me to operate autonomously.

Q. Do you get the same number of leads from the office as the other agents?

A. The majority of my enquiries come from the internet. I get the same number of leads if not more than if I was in a traditional office, because they are coming directly to me and the enquiries I get are generally very specific so I am responding to these enquiries usually quicker than normal and on a more personal basis.

Q. Describe a typical day. What technology do you use? How is your job different than that of an office-bound agent?

A. A typical day for me starts around 6.00am, I spend about an hour having breakfast and playing housekeeper. I then spend the next 1-2 hours answering emails and sorting out my plan of attack for the day. If I have no early appointments I spend a couple of hours doing paperwork as in scanning whatever needs to be scanned and emailed to the office, updating the internet information and I try and arrange appointments for mid morning to early afternoon, but this of course depends on what the appointments are for.I have a couple of days each week where I am out and about most of the day, either letterbox dropping, door knocking, or researching properties, photographing what needs to be photographed and calling in to visit past and prospective clients or businesses. What I have had to force myself to do though is make time for lunch and coffee breaks away from my desk, which is not always easy to do, because I’m a bit of a workaholic. But I have realised that it is necessary to have that time out. Back in my office I spend the rest of the time doing phone calls, internet research, answering emails, creating flyers, brochure and letters for advertising, posting and letterbox drops. If I have late appointments, as in anything from 5.30 pm onwards, I generally finish off things after dinner and would normally get back online until later in the evening. Saturdays I am out most of the day organising and doing Open Homes and inspections.

Q. Do you have a boss?

A. I do not see my days as anything different from an “office – bound agent” except that I do not have to “report” to anyone as such. Dave [ MD Of Coldwell Banker Property Direct ] overseas all the suburb agents activities as we operate under his licence as Principal Licensee and are “supervised” in the respect that we regularly make contact with him to keep him updated of what we’re doing. Plus he has full access to my activities via email and our Virtual Assistant program. We regularly attend sales and training meetings in the office as well as teleconferencing between ourselves. We all were then registered salespeople and we now all have completed our full licenses, another concept CBPD has encouraged with their corporate and in-house training.I have no set hours or roster and can arrange my appointments to suit. I have a PDA, access my emails and messages wherever I may be, so am truly mobile in that sense.

Q. What online marketing do you do? How important is it to you?

A. Online marketing is vitally important to me – I need to be able to get my listings out there so I can generate the enquiries, plus they need to be effective and look good. I spend a lot of time researching other sites and listings to see if I can improve on what I have. Plus, I routinely add my URLs to google-add-url to increase visits to my site and my listings on a selection of the real estate sites the office subscribes to. Currently we subscribe to over 15 sites as well as several international sites, so I look for coverage and spread. I ask for Vendor advertising and usually obtain it, by offering a selection of reasonable options and prices including internet Feature Properties and Priority Placement, as well as print media and monthly realtor publications.

Q. How do you see your job changing in future?

A. I see it becoming more and more internet based. More mobile with the laptop and pda and more versatile because of my mobility.I see it increasing with regards to extending the number of sites I subscribe to, as well as offering the full range of real estate related services. I have very good contacts within the finance and building sector and see that aspect pushed further as well, with more and more agents being able to offer these extended services from reputable and trusted businesses. I do believe, however, that the personal contact is important to developing and maintaining a sound referral database.

Q. How do you see technology changing your job?

A. I believe the options for an agent like myself become greater with technological advancements – and because of the increase in advancements – a more viable and mobile economic business system. I am a self-confessed internet geek and love the opportunity it presents to display and market myself and my listings as well as the research and information it provides. With regards to accessing a larger number of people by having to do less, as in bulk emailing and databasing I believe this is more time and cost effective, hoping to work smarter by using technology better. I know principals who have been in the industry for many years who either are disdainful of the advances or fear them because they feel the traditional real estate agent is being lost in the scheme of things. Or maybe they feel they are losing control if the agent is not within their office walls.Not so: real estate will always be the essence of what it is – land and bricks and mortar – but the way we do real estate has to evolve.I also know many agents who embrace these changes for what they really are – improvements to enhance our lives. Real estate is not just a job to me, it’s a lifestyle, a career and an adventure.

Real estate agents in Australia take a lot of flack for the quality of the listings photos they upload to portals like realestate.com.au. And it is probably true that many photos could have been in slightly better focus.

However, today, I think all Australian real estate agents should give themselves a firm pat on the back.

Why? Because I’ve never seen an Australian listing photo as bad as those on the It’s Lovely! I’ll Take It! blog–from the good ol’ US of A and written by “Sara”.

The blog is “a collection of poorly chosen photos from real estate listings”. I’ve pulled out a few here:

What Sara says: “Oh, hi, honey. Nope, just taking some photos. No need to get up. I’m not selling the house or anything. Gotta go!”

What Sara says: Included: oven, fridge, surly teenager. Just what I’m looking for in a house!

What Sara says: Needs TLC: Yes, this is really a photo from a listing… but unfortunately it’s almost incomprehensible, so it’s impossible to tell what’s going on (unless you read an article about it, but that’s no fun).

“Marry a Princess Lost in America / Create the Magic with this Fairy Tale Princess,” it says. “There is also a 1st floor Powder room.”

What Sara says: “I’m done securing the doors and windows.

Have you taken all the photos you need?”

“Yup. Pack it up, and let’s get out of here.”

“So we’ll just walk out through the… $#^@*&!!!”

What Sara says: My first thought is not “I’ll take a refreshing dip!” Eeew.

What Sara says: It’s a golden housing-market. Half a million. HALF A MILLION! Half a million bucks they’re asking, and they can’t be bothered to flush?

Many thanks to my friend Jodi for sending me the link to this blog. I don’t care if it IS an SEO tool for Redfin, it’s hilarious.

How do you know how much to spend marketing real estate?

Some interesting survey data that just became available should be of help. A video marketing company in the US surveyed 1,304 real estate agents to see how much they spent. There isn’t a lot of info here, but what there is is gold.

One thing that jumped out at me: The agents surveyed said a significant portion of their listing budget was spent on newspapers, even though only 20.4 percent said they think this medium is “effective.”

Yet, 49 percent felt that online ads were “very effective.” The reason more agents aren’t putting their money where the results are is that they feel the vendors want print advertising.

Read the press release.

Read the eMarketer story.