An ex Gold Coast real estate agent and current property developer, Rod Lambert has been broadcasting an interesting email to agents throughout the country today. If you have not got it in your inbox yet, chances are it will arrive soon.

I have a real problem with what Rod has done but first read the email yourself :-

*********************************************

Dear agents, the website hereunder will become one of the greatest listing devices you have ever come across against Ray White.

I am a property developer who was defrauded by Michael Kollosche of Ray White Broadbeach and have complained bitterly to Ray White and provided evidence that he conspired with a three time convicted fraudster and criminal to force us into buying a property that was artificially inflated by $2.74 Million dollars.

I now intend to expose this mercenary company for their ruthless and underhanded tactics which Brian White supports and advocates.

As we all know, we have heard the numerous complaints over the years about Ray White agents and their unscrupulous and underhanded conduct, particularly at auctions.

 The Chairman Brian White does nothing to stop it.

 The case in point is that of the Ray White superstar Michael Kollosche from Ray White Broadbeach who is under major investigation by the OFT and the QPS after multiple complaints were made about his conduct in relation to artificial price hiking on the Gold Coast’s Mermaid Beach beachfront.

There have been complaints including allegations of fraud and misleading and deceptive conduct by several parties.

Ray White still employ him, and  Brian White backs him.

Kollosche was recently named and shamed in the Queensland Parliament by the Member for Rockhampton, The Honorable Robert Schwarten MP.

 He has admitted to The Australian Newspaper of knowing about fraud on the Mermaid beachfront yet Brian White does not make him go to the Police. Why?

The truth is White thinks he is above the law and this web site that has been designed in the public interest and will shed light onto what this company is really about and what some of them get up to.

Have a look in the Austlii search section in the site and type in Ray White and see how much litigation Ray White is involved in.

It is frightening…..your sellers, buyers  and landlords should be made aware of it!

Please get this web site out to as many people around Australia as you can.

Be sure the CEO’s of major Agency groups see this site.

One thing is for sure, if you are up against Ray White for a listing in the future, be sure the seller views this site, once they do the listing will be yours!

www.donttrustraywhite.com

Regards,
Rodwell Lambert

Property Developer

Mobile 0408 780 065
Email rlambert@onthenet.com.au
PO Box 350, Nobby Beach Q 4218

 ********************************************

My problem with Rod’s actions is about how he is attacking the whole Ray White membership with what some individuals have alledgedly done.   I know if  a salesperson in a First National office on the other side of the country  wronged a client I would be disgusted but equally so I would also be disgusted and out for blood if  local agents tried to use it against me in a listing presentation here on the Gold Coast.

You have to give  credit to Rod for one thing, he is standing openly by his claims and not hiding behind anonymous websites.  I have no knowledge if Rod’s claims are true but if they are I hope that the Queensland Police and OFT bring the hammer down.

The issues themselves that are raised on the website have already been featured heavily in the public domain in newspapers and even on Today Tonight.

I think Rod’s choice to concentrate on the whole Ray White network in the domain name itself and by asking agents to show sellers the site is a bad one and will effect on good people throughout the network that have done nothing to him. In my opinion he should have kept the fight to just the Broadbeach office.

Obviously Rod has had problems with Brian White as well which is why he might be justifying the attack on the whole network.  I would like to hope that Brian is waiting until the QPS and OFT investigations are finalised before doing anything drastic but again it does not matter,  the rest of the network are not at fault.  If they individuals are found guilty they will and they should be punished to the full extent of the law.

I believe that agents should refrain from using the site to attack their local Ray White real estate offices. Besides the legal implications of doing so I just dont think its right or fair.

There are many advantages of belonging to a real estate group but one of the disadvantages is in times like these when actions of other members reflects badly and unfairly on you.  If this is used like Rod is asking Brian White and the whole Ray White group are going to find themselves  in need of a fantastic Reputation Management consultant.

Is it fair to attack the whole team if one of the players has done the wrong thing?

What do you think??   Is Rod right or wrong on this one?

*********UPDATE*********

This response from Brian White was received in the comments section of the article :

A comment from Brian White, Chairman, Ray White Group:

You may have received an email pertaining to a commercial dispute between a former practising real estate agent and developer and one of our agents on the Gold Coast.

This dispute has been particularly painful for me and my family. Our business has been in operation for 110 years. It has been built on the hard work and strong ethics of so many people for so long.

When complaints are made we, as trustees of the Group, investigate them diligently. Where there is proper evidence of wrongdoing we do take immediate action. We do however stand by the presumption of innocence and, in the absence of evidence to the contrary, we support our people wherever possible.

This particular issue is complex and has been running for a number of years without any clear findings from any of the external authorities to date. During this time we have also investigated this matter extensively with the full support of the Ray White parties involved. We have also cooperated fully with the Office of Fair Trading in it’s independent investigation.

The Office of Fair Trading has indicated it cannot provide a time frame for its decision. However they understand the urgency of the matter. We hope it will be concluded soon and, of course, we will comply fully with any findings the Department makes.

In the meantime, we appreciate the overwhelming support from members of our network as well as those industry professionals who operate externally from our Group.

You would be forgiven for thinking real estate is all online these days  it dominates the landscape that much and online the search engines are the first port of call for property related traffic.  Just after leaving Simon Baker confirmed that even realestate.com.au received massive traffic, somewhere over 30% from Google which is just one search engine.

Portals and particularly the top two paid portals absolutely saturate the search engine results by investing heavilly in SEO teams. They take the listings data of real estate agents and combine it with questionable tactics to create millions and millions of pages across multiple domains. This tactic effectively blocks real estate agent websites from search engine results thus starving us from direct enquiry.

These tactics by the portals is highly questionable and is evidence of the power they have developed in our industry. We are charged to display our listings on the portals and in return we are restricted to what we can display. We are not allowed to link back to our own website on each listing. We cant put contact details or phone numbers in the body text of the ad. Breach the rules and they will remove the property, do it too many times and they threaten to kick you off.  Any links they do give you and the portals insert ‘no-follow tags’ on the links back to the agent websites which tells the search engines to ignore our websites and that they have no value.

They justify that enquiry by charging higher and higher monthly fees but the problem in this relationships are more than the monthly subscription charges. also a death of thousand cuts it goes further than that with the portals undertaking lead generation schemes whereby they intercept sellers on the site and sell those leads back to agents at inflated rates. The traffic that agents have helped create is being used to promote private listings on Domain and now even realestate.com.au.

I believe that Realestate.com.au would generate more traffic than all the large national real estate groups combined. Agents have effectively given control of their listing enquiries to the portals and now seller leads to two large media companies who have taken every opportunity and they will not give up that control easily.

Real estate groups are also suffering as agents around the country have rather cut their ties with head office rather than their realestate.com.au and/or domain.com.au subscriptions. Joining a large real estate franchise or marketing group once respresented a great differentiator from other agencies in your area. If you listen to the portal sales team the only way to differentiate your agency now is to pay more and more for feature properties, feature all, brochure all and all the other add on products. Real Estate groups are seen to be providing an ever diminishing value to their franchisees and members.

As real estate agents we have given them our listing data and our money willingly for years but the level of antipathy from agents seems to rise year on year at pace equal to the price rise.

With the 2012 realestate.com.au price rise just about to be released rumours are rife that its going to be the biggest one yet. So more and more real estate agents are going to be asking themselves the magical question more than ever – Can I survive without a realestate.com.au subscription?

Cutting the umbilical cord to the subscription based portals is always going to be difficult especially since we have essentially been starved of enquiry on our own websites by the SEO teams at the portals. Cutting that link would be extremely difficult and disasterous without an extremely effective e-marketing strategy in place covering SEO, PPC, Social Media and Email Marketing.

Australian real estate agents are not alone in asking if they can survive without syndicating their content to a national portal. In the USA agents have been cutting that cord from syndicating to their national portals. Edina Realty and Shorewest Realty in Wisconsin were among the first but the one group that has recently got the USA market buzzing is ARG. Abbott Realty Group (ARG) recently announced that they will no longer syndicate listings to third-party aggregators like Trulia, Zillow and Realtor.com.

Watch this video from ARG as they justify their decision to cut the umbilical cord. I think they do a great job in explaining their decision.

Agents, after watching the video ask yourself – Can I survive without a realestate.com.au/Domain subscription? and if the answer is no, what do you have to do to be able to answer yes?

Actually the real question you should be asking yourself is can you afford not to be working towards this goal?

With a name like BarCamp it’s no wonder Aussie’s have taken strongly to the concept but an REBarCamp is not really about a bunch of real estate agents hanging out in the bar.

A BarCamp is a user-generated conferences that is full of open participatory workshop-events, the content of which is provided by participants.  A REBarCamp is a barcamp for real estate agents.

One of the most often words to describe a barcamp is an unconference.

A typical real estate conference has a lineup of paid speakers and a strict agenda to follow whereas with an unconference there are no scheduled presentations or paid speakers. The day’s agenda is actually decided during the morning registration period by attendees submitting possible sessions that they’d like to participate in or lead.

The sessions are divided up into different groups, and organized by skill level, relevance and potential popularity. Typical subjects for a REBarCamp might include Blogging, WordPress Plugins, Video Blogging, iPad Presentations, SEO, Cloud Computing, Social Media 101 for Agents and making the most of your Smartphone.

Organising the days agenda

Just as the “social” experience has taken over much of what we do on the internet an unconference is a conference with big injection of social into it.  The attendees not only create the conference and participate it.

I love a quote from Mike Meuller in the states on the REBarCamp concept when he said:-

“In purist terms, a REBarCamp experience should be the single biggest learning event you attend all year (assuming you attend only one).  Yes, there are exceptions to the rule and every REBC is different, but if you attend a REBC and think it wasn’t worth every minute of your time there’s only one person to blame.”

The first BarCamp was created and organized in one week in 2005 in the US and the first REBarCamp was held in San Fransisco just 3 years ago. Since then over 300 events have been held throughout the US and this year the concept moved to Australia. Sydney was the first Australian REBarCamp, followed recently by Perth and on November 30th  the first Queensland event at Brisbane will be held at the Pineapple Hotel.

REBarCamp Sydney held earlier this year

I am one of the organisers for REBarCamp Brisbane so if you are going to be in BrisVegas at the end of November we would love you to join in on the discussion but you better be quick and register.  You can read more information about the Brisbane event on its’s Facebook Page and Peter Brewer’s recent blog post.

Other REBarcamps are in the planning stages so if you did not make it to Sydney or Perth and cant get to Brisbane keep an eye out for the next event in your area at www.rebarcamp.com.au

Did you attend REBarCamp Sydney or REBarCamp Perth??  Let us know your experience!

RPData have been working on a valuation system similar to US portal Zillow in the USA where they provide a valuation to consumers.  Naturally this has upset real estate agents and valuers alike around the country. There are a couple of differences though but the primary one is that Zillow clearly identifies that the prices they provide are just estimates by calling them “Zestimates”.  Statistical guesses if you will.

It seems that RPData has removed the references to the word valuation since their launch but they still imply it with the claim ”Want to know what a home is really worth?”

This AVM (Automated Valuation Model) application is a feature on the RPData facebook fan page and allows anybody to track 3 properties for 6 months.

Really Worth??  …are they sure??.. because they contradict themselves when you start  using it with this additional information later in the process.

 This estimate is computer generated and is not a professional appraisal. It uses complex modeling which includes property attributes, recent sales information and other data elements to reach an estimate of the property value and possible value range. The model also provides an estimate of how confident the value tracker is likely to be based on the availability of key data elements such as the attributes of the home and depth of recent sales data.

This estimate depends on information relating to the subject property and other properties which may be incomplete or wrong, negatively impacting the accuracy of this estimate. This estimate is based on one or more statistical models and assumptions, which may not capture all relevant factors or features of the subject property. This estimate also does not take into account the potential impact of external factors (such as a change in the economy, future planned infrastructure or environmental contamination on the subject property), which may affect the value of the subject property. Accordingly, this estimate should not be relied upon by you or any other person, including when making any decision in connection with this or any other property.

We at RP Data value your feedback and our Data Integrity Team are on hand to correct any property data. Please send us an email with the property address and its full attributes to Customercare@rpdata.com and we will assist you.

You just have to look at the recent Optus decision to see just how outrageous claims in marketing hype cannot be protected by the fine print. RPData’s competitors, Pricefinder and APM quickly distanced themselves from such tactics.

The AFR article also covers most of the old ground from the previous two articles for those that missed them plus raises a few issues that we have covered on Business2 already such as the success the ACCC has had with realestate.com.au after complaints by the  agent assisted websites.

More interesting though is the reference to the Redfin model that Ben raises in the article.

Just like I did in the last article on the ACCC investigation  Ben draws similarity with how realestate.com.au and Redfin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redfin) both have contact with the seller to sell advertising on their portal.  But Ben takes it a little further and more in line with a persistent rumour doing the rounds though the industry at the moment that states that realestate.com.au is looking more directly at the Redfin model, specifically the whole idea of commission sharing. This is of course countered by the numerous statements by Greg Ellis recently that REA will never claim some of the sales commission, an obvious response to the rumours.

When I called Redfin a Portal in the ACCC article, ex REA CEO Simon Baker responded in te comments with :

Your comparison to Redfin is misleading. Redfin is a real estate brokerage (agency) that primarily uses the internet to source leads.

They are not a portal.

They have a discount model and are attempting to change how agents in the US approach selling and marketing real estate.

Redfin do not fit into any box easily in the USA let alone here in Australia.  Whilst I agree with Simon that Redfin technically are not a portal there is far more to it than that as they are a hybrid solution and their offerings differ on location.

They run a website featuring listings from other agents similar to a potal but they also show property and charge commission…  BUT only in just 16 metro areas only… Outside of those areas, and that does leave a lot of the US, they have partner agencies that they generate leads for on their website. The partner agent only pays 15% to Redfin for that lead if they make a sale.

In areas outside of those 16 metro areas I would argue that they are more like a portal than not.   See for yourself at http://www.redfin.com/neighborhood/10157/CA/San-Diego/Loma-Portal  (the word portal in the URL was not lost on me either!)

Personally I cant see how that could easily fit into the Australian market at all. I believe that the strategists at REA would have considered every possibility including this, because I know I would have if it was my company,  I don’t think it has any legs.

A typical real estate transaction in the USA has a sellers agent and a buyers agent for 3% each, totalling a commission of 6%.  Redfin represents the buyer who effectively gets some of the commission back in savings similar to how Refund Home Loans works here in Australia.

Let’s face it, I believe that the moment they took their first listing authority it would take only a few days for 10,000 agents to remove every listing on the portal.

The article also raises something that an anonymous poster, Deepthroat alluded to in previous articles and that was the meeting of Victorian agents at REIV headquarters about the revolt against REA…

REIV cheif Enzo seemed very quick to add that he has not been a part of the meetings and the REIV only provided the meeting rooms as they often do.  Why was he not involved…  because Enzo is the CEO of RealEstateView.com.au if he was involved in discussions you can bet that REA would be calling in the regulators.

As I have said many times in the past since I started to contribute here in 2007 , real estate agents need to control our data and not let companies like Realestate.com.au, RPData and Onthehouse use it from their own benefits as clearly their monetisation models are at our expense.

With the debates starting to focus on RPData I am more convinced than ever that an REI portal website is not THE solution.  I dont think it will do any harm, and I am sure that it can only place more and more pressure on the top two portals but the key to Project Rebellion is control of the data itself, not just sold data, but all data.   If Realestate.com.au, Domain and the data companies did not have unfettered access and the right to sell and trade it amongst themselves then these problems would simply not exist.

It seems that the campaign in Victoria to withhold sales data might have had an unintended victim as agents are not advising of Auction results according to an article in the Sunday Age.  This issue itself  is not new though as if you compare the various Auction Clearence rates quoted by some companies they never seem to agree. Until the regulators legislate that public auction results be made public this will be an ongoing issue.

We should start to get an indication of what the real estate groups and REI’s ase  planning as a response soon.

In a followup article to the Front Page Project Rebellion article, Ben Hurley from the Australian Financial Review has published a new story on an ongoing investigation by the ACCC into the activities of RealEstate.com.au and to a lesser extent Domain.com.au.

Questions directed at some of Australia’s leading real estate groups have seemed to focus on excessive price rises (see 1,2, 3 and 4) of realestate.com.au and the effectiveness of competition in the real estate online classified space.

Simon Baker, the ex CEO and substantial shareholder in REA has made some interesting comments on this blog recently regarding realestate.com.au prices :

If the franchise groups were serious about competing with realestate.com.au or at least providing a competitive offering, wouldnt they first start internally and attempt to organise group buying of REA subscriptions for their franchisees?

Imagine if all Ray White or LJ Hooker offices got together and negotiated as one for their REA subscriptions (and additional products). I think they would get a better price.

and

the most likely innovation will be suburb based pricing where there is significant differentiation between suburbs in the price paid.

and the most suprising comment from Simon was his take on add on products

The more interesting question is why do people have to buy the premium products? Do they really add value?

Does anybody else find that a little strange?

With all state Real Estate Institutes and the REIA meeting in Perth during the week strategies were again discussed to create a national industry run portal.  David Airey commented on this blog prior to the meeting :

“Sadly the REIA ailed to gain national support from most state institutes to launch or run a national industry owned portal. That’s a sad indictment of the politics that used to exist and allowed the commercial sites to grow around our industry at our expense.”

and

“I’m on the record on many occasions criticising REI’s for this intransigence and for not listening to members.”

But the current momentum in the industry may have changed some minds as all indications are that this roadblock may finally be pulled down and our REI’s finally taking a role that many members thought they would never see and that is the operation of a national industry controlled portal.  But taking on the might of REA would not be easy and one of the strategies being discussed is using the REI’s to feed to the commercial portals with delay of say 3 or 7 days. This would allow REI portals at a state and national level to promote something like “Find it first on  xyz.com.au”.

As this plays out behind closed doors the campaign to withhold sold data from  realestate.com.au is gaining some serious momentum and reports from small and large national real estate groups and portal pushers continue to roll in.

One side effect of withholding sold data from the likes of REA is that data companies like RPData who has paid substantially for this information feed from REA. RPData and other similar companies provide essential data services back to agents but also provide market analysis and review consumed by the nations media. With a strong national portal in place it’s expected that RPData will move to establish arrangements direct with the institutes bypassing REA entirely.

Another thing Ben Hurley has reported on today is the presents and gifts that Realestate.com.au is showering on their biggest spending clients.  With the real estate market slowdown agents have looked to reduce discretionary spending. REA have used things like dinner at high end restaurants, State of Origin games, Business Class flights and even brand new iPads to secure the relationship.  I personally have heard of a sales team being flown interstate to watch the AFL when discussions of reducing their yearly spend was raised.

Realestate.com.au has over 10,000 real estate agents throughout Australia and whilst many agents  spend around $1,000 a month there are offices who spend 10, 20 and even 30  times that amount which is primarily funded by Vendor Paid Advertising (VPA).  Realestate.com.au’s campaign to increase the share of wallet has been right around the country but it has been particularly successful in Melbourne where they have less competition from Domain and high dollar auction campaigns are popular .  As an example the Premier Property option offered by realestate.com.au can cost an owner well over $2,000 per month.

Many in the industry showed increasing concern towards REA’s motives when a video surfaced showing their intention to market direct to buyers and sellers. Check out the video yourself, particularly from 9 min 30sec of this video.

In response Greg Ellis issued a written response which seemed  to contradict itself from paragraph to paragraph. Why his response was not circulated widely by email is unknown but it might have something to do with the fact its easier to watch the video by clicking on the link if it was sent by email. I doubt to many would have typed in that long url.

In the letter he claimed that it was incorrectly reported that he wanted to cut agents out of the loop but then went on to state:

The development of site functionality that allows prospective buyers and sellers to access or claim property information that can be accessed by agents so they can cost effectively identify a new pool of leads.

I am sure I am not the only one that reads this sans spin to be that they are going to escalate their use of agents sold data, listing data and valuer general data to provide additional products to buyers and sellers direct and then sell those leads to agents…. as “cost effectively ” as realestate.com.au can do of course!

In an interesting side note REA reps have now started to sit down with salespeople and sellers in their homes to pitch $2000 a month Premier Property and other options in the marketplace. This appears to be very similar to the Redfin Portal in the US who have a team of salespeople on the ground in capital cities. The primary difference is that Redfin salespeople also present property and take a cut in the commission, something REA have repeatedly claimed they will not do.

REA’s dealings with the ACCC lately has not been good and has seen the scrapping of the Private Listing Policy which finally allows private sellers easy access to list on realestate.com.au.

The drought of sold data would certainly have some sort of effect on future revenue streams and to a certain extent current products but a successful ACCC action and a industry controlled competitor together would provide bad news for Australia’s largest and most successful real estate portal.

It’s going to be a very interesting few months as this all plays out but if it was bad news for REA it’s terrible timing for newcomer Onthehouse. A strong industry portal is not going to be good news for them.  Their original investor document and  subsequent prospectus highlighted the monetisation of client agents data.

The underwriter (and partial owner) took it a step further in their report when they stated :

“Low integration risk, with ongoing data feeds. PortPlus and Console databases are ready to be “plugged in” into OTH’s database. In addition, both businesses do not sell their software – they license it to each customer on a rolling basis. As such, they retain ownership and control over the software and its intellectual property. With the appropriate terms and conditions in place with clients, each business is licensed to access and upload the content that is captured by the software”

Customers of Portplus and Console are already questioning when the terms and conditions are going to change and just where their data is going to end up. I expect their competition will start to raise the issue and use this against them when pitching for business.  Even though the float was over subscribed, in their first month of trading the shares dropped to as low as 60c which must be a huge concern for the original operators of Portplus and Console who are restricted in selling many of their shares for quite some time.

Certainly, the “Noise” is getting louder by the day!   Join in and tell us what you think about the latest developments.

Today on the front page of the Australian Financial Review Ben’s article “Real Estate Agents Revolt” appears.

The article discusses hotly debated topics on this blog and its interesting seeing the discussion raised in more mainstream media.   The article covers some great ground and I expect there is more to this story up his sleeve for followup articles.

Some interesting quotes from the article are  :

The major agencies, such as LJ Hooker, Ray White, Raine & Horne and Century 21, are considering using their combined mightto setup rival information suppliers and advertising portals.

“It’s called Project Rebellion,” said David Airey, president of the Real Estate Institute of Australia

Real estate groups including RE/MAX, Professionals and First National are cutting back on the information they provide to REA.

and Ben was able to get some quotes from Greg Ellis, REA Group CEO

“REA will never take a dollar from the commission of selling and listing property, that is the exclusive domain of the real estate agents,”Mr Ellis said.

He said sold-price information was “absolutely a non critical part of the information we provide”.“People are significantly more interested in what their property is worth, which does not come from the sold information alone,” Mr Ellis said. He would not reveal the information used to calculate property values.

Grab a copy of today’s AFR or download the article by clicking here.

The email includes a comment “The survey questionnaire can be completed by personnel who have contact with realestate.com.au” which seems to infer that you can get anybody in your office to also submit on your survey link.

Here is a copy of the email.. Please note.. I have removed the copy to our survey.  They claim it is anonymous but the survey may still have a unique id.  If you don’t get your copy and you want to let REA know what you think of them get on to your account manager for your survey link.

*************************************

Dear Owner / Principal,

In a continued effort to improve our offerings to customers, we would like to invite you to participate in our 2011 realestate.com.au Customer Satisfaction Survey. Your feedback is important to us and past feedback has resulted in many improvements to the products and services we provide to agents (see below for further details).

WHO SHOULD COMPLETE THIS SURVEY?
The survey questionnaire can be completed by personnel who have contact with realestate.com.au.

HOW LONG DOES IT TAKE?
The survey will take approximately 10-15 minutes to complete, depending on your answers.

WHAT’S IN IT FOR ME?
In appreciation of your time and input, we are offering a reward to those who participate – entry into a prize draw to win one of 2 prizes – either an Apple iPhone 4 or Apple iPad 2.

To start the survey please either click on the relevant link or paste it into your browser window:

<< Link to Survey Removed by Me – see note at the bottom>>

WHEN IS THE SURVEY COMPLETION DEADLINE?
Please ensure the survey is completed no later than Thursday 23 June.

HOW HAVE THE RESULTS OF PAST SURVEYS BEEN USED?
Results obtained from previous Customer Satisfaction research provided us with valuable feedback that enabled us to identify new opportunities to improve our service. Over the past 12 months we have launched a range of new initiatives designed to further enhance your day-to-day involvement and partnership with realestate.com.au. These initiatives include:

Set-up of the Key Accounts and Inside Sales teams to provide more frequent and relevant support to customers
Restructuring of our sales team regions to enable them to increase their local area knowledge
Continued site enhancements with the addition of their properties appearing on the iPhone application and property.com.au
Thank you in advance for your participation.

Regards,
Greg Ellis
CEO / MD
REA Group

ABOUT THIS RESEARCH
All your responses are anonymous and will only be used in an aggregated form for research purposes unless you agree to disclose your individual feedback. Our research agency, Evolve Research, abides by the Market and Social Research Privacy code (for more information please click here)

*****************************

If somebody can confirm the link in their email to me at glennbatten@gmail.com and if it is the same as mine (ie.. not unique links)  I will edit the article to include it.

To counter this requirement many of these websites started to be run or at least associated with licensed real estate agents.  The truth was that many of these solutions were really just a glorified property listing portal that had just one effective tool and that for a private seller they could list your property on realestate.com.au.  They did not act as an agent but they seemed to get around the rules because they simply held a real estate license.

Realestate.com.au responded by creating the Private Listing Policy which effectively listed the minimum requires an agent had to provide to clients before they could list property on realestate.com.au.  These websites now became what was coined Agent Assisted websites that provided a bare minimum of a limited range of real estate services such as negotiation, contract preparation or assitance  and market appraisals. All of this was done from afar and often over the telephone or internet.  The policy was confusing for everyone and left a lot to interpretation because at one point  Hubonline, a subsidiary of RealEstate.com.au was building websites for these digital agents in contravention to their Private Listing Policy.

After plenty of pressure of the subject many of these digital agents in February 2011 had been removed or threatened to be removed from the portal, an issue they did not take too kindly to at all. Complaints were quickly lodged with the regulatory bodies and the fight ensued. A fight that traditional agents thought Realestate.com.au would follow through with.

And there we were waiting for the outcome until an email about 30-40 minutes ago.

Because of the instant delivery of email  its a golden rule to send good news on Monday morning so its at the top of the inbox when the recipient arrives at work and conversely to send bad news late on a Friday so it loses gets lost amongst the clutter. So its not surprising to see that when its really bad news its released on a Friday just prior to a long weekend  so its buried deep!!

Greg Ellis has just notified agents by email that effectively immediately the minimum levels of service have been in the Private Listing Policy are no longer to apply.

The real effect of this for traditional bricks and mortar agencies are that with service criteria totally gone private listings can now effectively engage one of these digital real estate agents to list their property on realestate.com.au. When you combine this with the fact that we have unlimited accounts and can list as many properties as you want any licensed real estate agent can now create a business to list property on realestate.com.au and charge a small fee.  As long as they get enough clients to cover the base subscription its going to be profitable.

I believe that for many the provision of these limited  real estate services will be thrown out the window because they were only added to get around the pesky Private Listing Policy in the first place.

It’s not totally clear yet just what was behind the complete reversal of Realestate.com.au. It could be that BuyMyPlace and others were successful with applying pressure with their complaints to the ACCC.  Similarly it could be financially motivated as the industry suffers across the country discretionary spending on portals like realestate.com.au has plummeted and its a move to get as many accounts as they can get their hands on.

One things for sure, with RealEstate.com.au backing down from this fight Private Sellers are going to have a stack of choices now to get their property listed on the realestate.com.au portal.  How low will they go ?   One guy operating from his bedroom might be able to offer listings on realestate.com.au for just $30 or $40 a pop because he is getting private seller listings form all over Australia.  How will vendors react to paying higher VPA levels for a realestate.com.au listing through a traditional real estate agent?

Here is a copy of the email :-

*************************************************

Dear Customer,

Our business has been providing online marketing services for the real estate industry since 1995, growing to become Australia’s No.1 property site by working with licensed real estate agents such as yourself to help you market properties on behalf of vendors.

From time to time we need to update our policies to keep pace with changing market dynamics and I am writing to update you on changes to the subscription requirements for realestate.com.au.

It’s important to note that our Terms and Conditions are not changing.  realestate.com.au will continue to require subscribers to hold a valid real estate agent licence and comply with the relevant regulations (including entering into agency agreements with vendors in the form required by state regulators). Vendors can only advertise on our site by engaging the services of a licensed real estate agent who is a realestate.com.au customer.

However, we have recognised that the minimum services requirement outlined in our Private Listing Policy – prescribing a required minimum range of ‘usual’ real estate agency services that agents must provide to their vendors – is out of step with the market and industry regulatory practices.

For these reasons, effective immediately, this minimum services requirement will no longer apply.
We wanted to share this decision with you and assure you that realestate.com.au remains committed to delivering innovative advertising solutions to our licensed real estate agent customers.

If you have any questions about these changes, please don’t hesitate to discuss them with your account manager.

Yours sincerely,

Greg Ellis
Chief Executive Officer
REA Group Ltd (realestate.com.au)

**********************

What are your thoughts on Realestate.com.au backflip in just 4 months?

What’s really disappointing for me is that realestate.com.au has been picking fights everywhere recently and the only one they seem to back down from is the one that many agents wanted them to make stand for.

So is it just a sign of the times as realestate.com.au would have you believe in their email.?

Why have they totally reversed their position in the past 4 months?  and has Realestate.com.au sold out the industry by allowing Private Sellers to get onto the portal through the backdoor?

The need to leverage social media for a real estate agency is really a no-brainer these days. In 2011 Facebook is one of the easiest ways to connect with clients, potential clients and the community.

Unfortunately many agencies have failed to setup their business correctly. Businesses really need to be setup as a Business Page, not a personal profile and your choice can hamper its effectiveness.

There are many reasons why your agency should be represented by a Business Page not a personal profile but here are a few..

1/ Facebook Can Delete Your Business Account if its created as a Personal Profile

Facebook states that maintaining a profile for anything other than an individual person is a violation of Facebook’s Statement of Rights and Responsibilities.

They also state that If you don’t convert your profile to a Page, you risk permanently losing access to the profile and all of your content.  You have been warned!

There has been one report of a Victorian agent having their substantial account deleted because they did  not follow this rule.  As that agency found out if your business’ profile gets shut down by Facebook for violating this rule, your friends list will vanish with it. All your hardwork is gone and there is no way back.

2/ Personal Profiles are limited to 5000 pages

Now there are not too many agencies out there with thousands of fans but in a few years time this will become more and more common.  Personal Profiles are hard limited to 5000 friends but Business Pages have have as many fans as you want.

3/ Business Pages get widgets, visitor stats and demographics and adverts.

Facebook Insights allows you to view alot of information about about the  user activity on your page. This is not just visitor analytics but also the demographic break-downs of your visitors, all of which is not available to individual profiles.

Facebook also offers a range of widgets for businesses to integrate into their websites driving more fans business page. The latest Opengraph widgets rolled our recently convert at much higher rates which means that those who use a Personal Profile for their business are missing out on a huge avenue to grow their audience on Facebook.

4/ Better Design and Feature Set for Businesses

Facebook pages have recently undertaken a number of overhauls and more are planned for the future.  You can now navigate and interact with other areas of Facebook as your Page such as like and comment on other Pages as your Page.

Till recently those who used a Personal Profile for their business were stuck  as the conversion process to a business pages was complex involving manually inviting all your friends to become fans.

Facebook has now created a conversion tool to allow you to convert a Personal Profile to a Business Page.

This is great news for people who incorrectly setup a personal page as a business page.  If you don’t convert your profile to a page you will run the risk of permanently losing access to the profile, all friends/fans and all other associated content.

To convert your personal profile first read everything on this help center page http://www.facebook.com/help/?page=18918.

This page also provides you the necessary link to start the migration process.

With online solutions its possible for an innovation to rapidly move through each level far quicker than the offline world would allow. Look at the use of Facebook and Twitter in our industry. A little over 18 months ago Twitter and Facebook where only being used by the Innovators and the Early Adopters in our industry. That quickly changed and by the end of 2009 it was being picked up by the Early Majority and today we see the start of the Late Majority joining the party.

So it had me thinking whats going to be the big things of 2011 online for real estate agents and early evidence suggests that three big breakouts to hit the Early Majority for 2011 will be Video, Mobile and Single Property Websites.
To breakout to the majority things generally have to change. There is generally and update or a new technology or something that facilitates the change and for my suggestions there is a change that will facilitate that greater adoption.

Video

Video has been used by real estate agencies for a few years. Online video broke through to the majority with the advancement of broadband internet connections to the home and Youtube is now one of the world’s most popular websites. Despite this video has not reached the same popularity in our industry and has remained a niche product only with the Early Adopters.

So whats going to change? Realestate.com.au is about to launch their video product. Domain were first to the punch last year but realestate.com.au are going to be doing it bigger and better and has gathered the resources and man power from around the country under one banner.

This army of video contractors will provide a consistent product across the country but best of all video will be a main feature of the realestate.com.au portal and will finally come of age in our industry. 2011 will have video written all over it and you can smell it in the air. Every article published on Business 2 so far this year includes something about video.

Mobile

Smartphones and Tablets are becoming hugely popular placing internet access into the palms of the people and they are using it to visit our websites. Over the past couple of years some real estate website providers have offered mobile websites to their clients but till now the concentration has been on making the property pages fit a mobile device and not the whole site.

On our website we are currently receiving an average of over 25 unique visitors every day from mobile devices including ipods, ipads, iphones and android devices. By the end of the year I expect that number to triple or even more as these “smarter” phones and web enabled mobiled devices become more and more popular.
What stood out most though was that the majority of visits were to non-property pages. In fact 75% of visitors came from Google to view a non-property page.

If that is how the public are viewing our websites we as agents need to deliver the best experience to them and start offering mobile friendly versions to those arriving with via mobile devices. More and more agents will create 100% mobile optimised sites.

Single Property Websites

I remember creating a standalone property website from scratch for a client many many years and swearing that I would never do it again. Over the past couple of years templated versions have become popular allow agents to create a standalone website in minutes. They have certainly attracted their fair share of Early Adopters in the industry but have struggled to gain a wider acceptance.

TheHomePage.com.au is one of Australia’s newest free portals and the team is thinking outside of the box with many things they are doing. Along the way the team may have found the magical ingredient that will introduce single property websites to a much wider audience and have called it MyPropertyAddress.com.au. With the previous suppliers there was still a significant investment in time uploading and commissioning the website. Whilst it is no longer measured in hours like my original attempt year ago it is still a significant amount of time especially when you are doing multiple property. When you factor in price changes for all of your property the time invested can still be quite significant.

Because TheHomePage.com.au already receive all of your information as a portal (and if you are not sending your properties to them now, I recommend you should) they can make a single property website with literally a couple of clicks.

The result is a professional website with great SEO benefit back to your main website with very little effort. The site will be constantly updated with absolutely no additional time needed at all.

Here are a couple of examples :- http://84teasdaledrivenerang.com and http://224theesplanadeuminabeach.com.

You can probably expect the current manual style operators scrambling to get hold of an xml feed themselves to replicate the sheer simplicity. You might also see other companies who already receive or send xml property feeds try and tap into this type of product and join the fray. For now though thehomepage’s MyPropertyAddress.com.au is the only one that I know of that has the process as simple as possible

These are for my mind the top 3 solutions that are on the horizon of making the biggest impact for agents online. The real question is though, are you going to be the Early Majority, the Late Majority or one of the Laggards.