Rent.com.au is consolidating its position as Australia’s #1 rental property website, indicating in a December press release they have achieved 300% growth in the number of agency listings on their website since February 2011. They also indicate their portal has over 40,000 residential and holiday rentals now being listed by agencies across the country.

In the press release Mark Woschnak (CEO Rent.com.au) goes on to say some of their growth can be attributed to principals paying more attention to their rent rolls in these trying times, but other key factors include:

1. The unique traffic audience rent.com.au gets whereby over 40% have not been to REA and over 50% have not been to Domain. This provides an effective and genuine additional and growing target market to what most agencies get via REA alone.
2. The rent.com.au listing package offers excellent value for all agents, providing genuine rental enquiry and strong branding.
3. The specific range of services on rent.com.au that is purposely designed for property managers, including the unique property management lead generation services.
4. The high organic and natural online benefits of the domain name and branding that exists amongst the younger 18-39 year old renter community. Most importantly the brand that rent.com.au has developed as a rental solution stands proudly and clearly apart from all home purchaser focused sites.
5. The extensive national coverage of listings which continues to grow.

In mid December, Rent.com.au underwent a long overdue makeover. The site has a very fresh and almost fun feel, appearing as though they borrowed ideas from US based portals and social networking sites. Mark Woschnak on the recent upgrade:

Our recent site upgrade in early December, provides a much smarter and faster search engine, more flexible and detailed search options, improved tools for renters to keep track of their properties of interest, enhanced social media communication options and the largest photo display of any major portal, all of which provide an excellent user experience.

Rent.com.au has been around for a long time and its great to see them start receiving some reward for their hard work and persistence. We look forward to their continued success!

The Weekly Review is a free weekly lifestyle magazine that competes against Fairfax’s existing magazine The Melbourne Weekly. It’s an important purchase for Fairfax as it means they will now retain the lucrative advertising contracts the The Melbourne Weekly lost last year when The Weekly Review was launched.

This is the second time Fairfax has had to buy a Melbourne based magazine in order to secure real estate print contracts, having previously paid $67 million to purchase The Melbourne Weekly from “Text Media” in 2003. What’s very interesting, is that on both occasions ex Fairfax employees were behind the creation of the magazines.

Commenting on the transaction, Fairfax Media’s CEO of Marketplaces Nic Cola said

“We are delighted to be partnering with Antony Catalano and MMP to provide a more integrated and improved suite of products to real estate agents and their clients across the combined network. The real estate industry has been a great supporter of Fairfax Media for many decades, and we are committed to ensuring that our product offering evolves in accordance with the needs of both our advertisers and our readers.”

Antony Catalano, Managing Director of MMP said

“We are pleased with the success that MMP has achieved since we identified the opportunity to work with leading real estate agents on the launch of The Weekly Review in April 2010. I look forward to a close relationship with Fairfax Media as we set out to embed the MMP ethos across the combined business.

The merger is a smarter move than buying the magazine outright, as it means the existing owners still have an interest in the magazine and an incentive to make sure these real estate advertising contracts continue.

Since the death of one Steve Jobs and release of the Steve Jobs book by Walter Isaacson rumors have been spreading like wildfire about a new television to be released by Apple sometime in 2012.

In this book, Isaacson quotes Steve Jobs: ‘I’d like to create an integrated television set that is completely easy to use,’ he told Isaacson. ‘It would be seamlessly synced with all of your devices and with iCloud.’ No longer would users have to fiddle with complex remotes for DVD players and cable channels. ‘It will have the simplest user interface you could imagine. I finally cracked it.’

So what will this be?
Personally I think you only have to look at the iPad or iPhone to understand where this may go and I think I might have some ideas on this. If you look at televisions today they are the slave to the incumbent lazy broadcasters and cable providers, basically every TV has a receiver that scans for channels and if you have cable it works a little the same albeit with a set top box. Nothing has changed for decades and TV manufacturers are stuck in loop of releasing the same tired systems and upgrading them with silly things like hacked on 3D (does anyone seriously think the whole family wearing 3D glasses would catch on?)

I think when Apple releases the new television it will revolutionize the industry and force TV networks, cable suppliers and television manufacturers to change the way we receive our channels, much like music producers were forced kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

Channels as Apps
I think it will work like this, you buy the Apple television and it comes with all the free to air TV apps (think channels as Apps), you download an app (channel) and that is included in your lineup, each app (ABC as an example) has a list of shows that are regularly updated that you can subscribe to and add to your list of shows to watch when you want to watch them. You simply ignore the ones you do not want and they do not appear in your lineup. Newly released (upcoming) shows are showcased on your TV Dashboard.

Accounts
A family may have multiple accounts for different family members (restrictions included) and each login displays a different lineup on the TV Dashboard. This will allow owners to filter access for different users within their family.

Subscription Style Apps
Just like you pay for subscriptions to your favorite magazine and now some apps, you pay for subscriptions for TV/cable style channels, as an example Fox Sports may cost $4.95 per month and you will receive notifications of any Pay per View events from that channel.

iTunes
I think everything will be in iTunes and you will be able to sync watch this across multiple devices such as your iPad, iPhone, iMac, Laptop etc.

The Cloud
Everything will be stored in the cloud, so you take your TV with you on the road or in your hotel, by having everything stored in the cloud access is just a few clicks away.

Location Based Advertising
I have written about this multiple times in the past, but location based advertising is the only thing that will save free to air TV networks and will be a worldwide trillion dollar industry. This will mean if you live in Queens/New York you will not only see national chains advertising on your channels, but also local pizza stores, cafeterias, nightlife and local tourism operators, finally giving the networks access to small business again (watch TV now and advertising is almost entirely from the big boys).

Advertisers
Advertisers will be able to login and see what space is available to advertise their products and services in there own area or areas, they will be able to create ads using web based systems and ad templates and book spots, pay for commercials by credit card and Apple takes a chunk and distributes the rest back to the networks. It would almost make an ad agency/ buying group cry.

Open
I also think this will create a wave of new Tv shows, basically anyone can create a channel and obviously the success of these will depend on subscribers and social word of mouth, but how exciting would this be? Local realtors could create a channel on their local market, local tourism operators could create channels on local areas and attract their own advertisers, you create a channel that becomes popular and advertisers will follow.

Summary
I know this is fairly well departed from anything I have seen written on the web, but I truly think that this model would work if it had the power of Apple, then perhaps Google as a competitor behind it. Current free to air TV networks would get a lifeline – even though I think they are the last ones to deserve this and it would open up a world of opportunities for the little guys.

Then the only thing left for Apple to conquer would be the car stereo and you would easily see how they could change this tomorrow.

Your thoughts?

For the first time in Australia, onthehouse.com.au has just released their automated valuation estimate solution on almost every property within Australia called ‘Guesstimates’.

‘Guesstimates’ are calculated using the Residex valuation technology, and are provided to consumers for free, along with other detailed and analytic information about properties in Australia.

CEO and Managing Director, Michael Fredericks states;

‘The provision of this powerful tool is another step in assisting Australians make informed decisions about property.’

But ‘Guesstimates’ are not just for the public, Michael further states;

‘The referral of inevitable queries by the public surrounding this content to local experts, our real estate agency clients, supports our mission to establish a more efficient and engaged marketplace for the consumption of traditional and innovative digital real estate products and services’

Located within the property values section on the website, onthehouse.com.au also encourages members to interact with ‘Guesstimates’ and adjust the values by providing additional information about their property.

Product Manager, Melissa D’Alonzo suggests that the onthehouse.com.au model of supplying the ‘Guesstimates’ solution and other free real estate content to the public is consistent with the leading online consumer portal in the United States, Zillow.com, which recently listed on the NASDAQ.

Zillow has recently overtaken previous market leading real estate portals, Realtor.com (online classifieds only), as the most visited real estate site within the US market.

The ‘Guesstimates’ are generated using the Residex valuation technology which is utilised and relied on by some of Australia’s leading banks.

Having said this, Melissa is keen to point out that the estimated valuations have been called ‘Guesstimates’ for a reason.

‘The point of “Guesstimates” is to provide useful content and tools to the consumer. The valuation technology behind the “Guesstimates” is traditionally used for bank valuation purposes, which is different to how a home is valued for sale. To meaningfully price a property for sale, more in-depth information and local knowledge is required – this is where real estate agents and professionals, as local experts, have skill sets that are invaluable.’

And ‘Guesstimates’ is just the first step. Melissa went on to say that the goal at onthehouse.com.au is to continue to provide real estate agents, property professionals and the general public with as much information about individual properties across the nation as possible.

‘We also want to keep growing this information resource (onthehouse.com.au) as the biggest and most vast source of information for Australian property’

And growing it is, with onthehouse.com.au recently reporting aggressive growth in web traffic over the past 12 months. They indicated there were almost 600,000 users on the online consumer platform (excluding agent sites) and over 1.2 million users on the Online Consumer Division.

It’s fantastic to see innovation and enhancements by Onthehouse as these widgets will provide a greater user experience for property seekers. But could this create headache for agents if vendors are unhappy with their Guesstimate?

North Bondi – crap place. Great location and view

Ludicrously overpriced, with carpet stained like an infant’s undies and a truly appealing paint job…. no, I meant a peeling paint job…… this 2 bedroom top floor North Bondi flat is perfect for the blind and/or less discriminating flatmate. Your potential bedroom is unfurnished although it does have the requisite four walls and ceiling so that’s a plus.

The bathroom has a bath which manages to retain water so it’s fulfilled its destiny. The kitchen has all the essentials but not a bit more and the place is furnished and decorated in a style best described as “junkie minimalism.”

So why move in? I’m glad you asked. The view and location is about as good as you’ll get as you’ll see from the photos. That is the view from the room. Impressive huh? And there’s a small balcony too. Plus, the hovel is within easy walking distance to shops and right at the start of the 333 bus route so getting in to the city is a piece of p1ss! You get a seat every time and you can laugh at the losers having to stand (it’s the small, petty things that keep me happy). And it’s got internet, washing machine and all the essential stuff.

If you have a designer’s eye and wish to play down the trailer trash aesthetic, please feel free to make the changes. I have absolutely zero attachment to the current furnishings and would welcome someone with the ability and desire to polish this turd.

As for me, I work (as little as humanly possible) in media/marketing ergo, I’m a complete tosser. On a positive note, I am house broken and have no criminal record. The rest – 33 years old, male (as if you couldn’t tell), likes boy stuff such as televised sport, the consumption of take away food and I’ve recently discovered the joys of adding fabric softener to my washing. What a day that was!

I don’t mind who I live with but I would prefer not to live with a couple. Nothing personal against the loved up but you people make me sick. To live with that is.

If you happen to be a girl, believe it or not, my past two flatmates were girls and I dare say that we got along quite well. Hell, I’ll even put you in touch with them if ya wanna check my bonafides.

Standing up for truth in real estate ads, I humbly hand it over to you.

I thought this ad was an absolute cracker and wouldn’t be surprised if it resulted in a higher level of enquiry than an ad written in a more traditional way. We’ve all been in the position where you’ve inspected a property and found the agent has been a little creative with their property advertisement. This is proof it is possible to market flawed properties through the truth.

As reported by the Courier, Geoff Doyle CEO and founder resigned ahead of the Administrators being appointed. The article also hints that the administration, resignation and office closures have come as a surprise to the franchisees who were concerned the corporation were putting growth ahead of welfare of each agent.

Some supporters of these low cost real estate models believe they are immune to slumps in the real estate industry, because vendors tighten their belts and look for selling options which are more cost efficient than a traditional agent. But as these closures have demonstrated, this is not always the case and very few real estate business models are totally resilient to property slumps.

Lets hope the Administrators can salvage the situation so the remaining franchisees aren’t significantly affected.

Here is what Jonathan has to say about this week’s launch of Property Observer “I have been writing about property for more than 25 years, and I’ve learnt that getting passionate about property is easy. Getting it right is trickier. I intend for Property Observer to be property central, providing the essential news and analysis on the ins and outs of property. We will cover the capital cities, up and down the coast, and inland to the regional towns and the bush.

We will offer plenty of authoritative coverage about the homes we live in and the investments that top up our incomes.

Property Observer will showcase the best houses and apartments and all the big-name buyers and sellers. We will also keep a watchful eye on new developments, and the plush over-55 developments that seek out the growing band of empty nesters.

Property Observer will capture the changing seasons – we will write about snow homes, vineyards, fishing lodges, marinas and even the occasional beach bathing box. We aim to be of interest to the owner-occupier and the investor, given that population and investment funds are more fluid than ever.

I intend for commercial investment property to be a key component, especially the opportunities on high street – retail neighbourhood shops, small strata offices, pubs and industrial strata. All are suitable for the self-managed super fund investor.

The website will offer wisdom on winning ways with property commentary from key economic and industry practitioners. We won’t overlook the property fundamentals, conveyancing clues, legal rulings and tax advice.

We want input from readers on market prices in their local patches, facilitating shared knowledge through dialogue, so let us know about your stories, insights and properties.”

It’s not just about bricks and mortar, as Property Observer will personalise property with interviews of the movers and shakers.

We want our readers to get wisdom, not clichés. And that way we’ll all be the wealthier.”

The content is excellent and a great assistance for real estate agents writing blogs as it is full of relevant data, analysis and commentaries.

You can also follow Property Observer on Twitter – @Propertyobs Make sure you subscribe to the email alerts too.

I use Skype regularly and it has become a replacement for the home phone (and business phone) for me and my team.

Skype to me is a great success story and its business model is perfect for exponential growth – getting users to reach out to all of their friends to become members and contacts and saving everyone time and money to connect from almost any location.

Skype also reaches out on just about any platform including Mac, iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and the like, even set top boxes and DVD players and some televisions.

Yes, this is a big price and Skype does compete with a few of Microsofts products such as Windows Live Messenger, but very few people use this software for making calls.

The Skype software is continually evolving with group conferencing and other additional features, you can call anyone, create group chats, share screens and with add ons even record calls. Skype still has a way to go to be the perfect solution for larger businesses, but all in all I think it is a good deal that only the likes of large unwieldy companies like Microsoft could screw up. (Telstra could too, but thats a whole other story)

What will this mean for the current Skype users and software? I doubt Microsoft would be foolish to make any large changes immediately, they could expand the API for users to connect to other services and could also create advanced screen capturing for giving demos or lessons and publishing those on the web, much like Screenr.com

If Microsoft continue to integrate, innovate and grow the software it could mean the end for many a fixed line Telco worldwide. Microsoft will no doubt expand its integration into many of its products including office but the deal to me is all about stopping Google.

Google Voice
Google Voice operates in the US only at this stage, but this deal should see Google get off its backside and introduce other countries and to Australia and New Zealand sooner rather than later.

With Google Voice you simply create a new phone number and match it with your Mobile Phone number (from a large range of providers). All calls are routed to your existing mobile phone.

The power of Google Voice lies in its messaging and translation. If you miss the call it then translates the voice message into text and SMS’s and/or emails you the translated text, you can also play the message from your phone or through a browser on your connected device/desktop.

The transcription is not always accurate, but you get the gist of most messages by just the reading the translated text.

In the US I use Google Voice for all of my SMS messaging and it plays beautifully with Email, SMS, Browsers and is supported on all iPhone, iPad and Android Devices.

All in all a good fit and smart move by Microsoft, let’s just see if they stuff it up!

Facebook currently has over 500,000,000 users, yes that’s 500 million! An almost unbelievable statistic, coupled with the fact that most users are active it is an Internet behemoth and will almost certainly be a very profitable machine.

Twitter has fewer active users but their figures are also very impressive with a user base of around 200 million.

Both of these platforms outshine even online newspapers for breaking news and events to family and friends, so much so that online newspapers are actually becoming slightly less relevant than they were just a few years ago. You only have to take the recent Osama Bin Laden death to know that most of us get a lot of our news directly from our online networks on both of these platforms.

Creativity Vacuum

Where I think Twitter and Facebook fail is in their business models. The current thinking (or lack thereof) is that build up users and then start displaying advertising from 3rd parties amongst the content on various pages.

Google was the first large Internet player to do this successfully and have reaped billions and billions of dollars in advertising revenue on this model and will continue to do so. Why this is successful is very simple, users search for information and Google displays as close to relevant information back to the user as their algorithms allow.

Newspapers do the same thing, they attract visitors to their websites and then display advertising amongst and over (annoying their users) content and generate most of their online revenue from doing so.

This model is a problem for Twitter and Facebook and Online Newspapers because users do not use or behave the same way on these sites as they do on Google and other search and retrieve related entities. We use Twitter and Facebook to inform others on what we are thinking, what we are doing and where we are going, we gather news from Online Newspapers to share ones that interest us to our networks or to keep ourselves up to date. In short we generally have conversations on Facebook and Twitter and we use newspapers to gather information on the days events.

What is needed from these entities is a creativity revolution, one that value adds the offerings to those of us that want to become power users.

Online Newspapers

I am going to use the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age Newspapers as these are clearly the best newspapers in Australia. Each day I visit both of these websites to read up on news and events and each day I try to avoid any annoying ads across these sites.

What if I became a member of either of these websites? I really get nothing in return, making the added value proposition worthless. However what if the hierarchy thought a little differently about their business model.

What if for say $100 per annum, I could get an enhanced mobile version for both my smartphone and my Android or iPad tablet? What if my membership included the ability to sell my unwanted sofa quickly and easily? What if I could sell my car, engage a real estate agent, advertise open positions at my company? What if all of this was included in one simple interface and for one simple price? I don’t know about you, but I would pay this money without a second thought. Why? Because I trust the company, I know they have the biggest user base and I know I have one place to go to do all of these if and when I choose!

Facebook

If you read the above with interest, could you imagine if Facebook did the same? This would send shivers up the spine of any newspaper across the globe, simply because newspapers have lost control of their users and have been slow to innovate. Facebook could very easily do the same thing and to be honest, I think they would win this battle. Facebook currently has the dumbest advertising platform of all of these entities combined.

As an example if you ever had the miserable pleasure of adding some of your favourite movies, books or music to your profile you will immediately notice your Facebook wall being filled up with junk advertising from related advertisers. They must have been up all night thinking about that one – pathetic!

Facebook is so bad with their business model that it only serves to annoy their base and this is a true crime in the online world and may someday open themselves up to competitors. It also will cost them billions in the long term as users will simply change their behavior.

Facebook should also offer an enhanced version one with stronger privacy cooler profiles and a tranche of new offerings including the above, classifieds, cars, jobs and houses. I should also want to store with the options to share HD Videos, HD Photography and enhanced mobile versions all for a simple annual fee.

Twitter

Twitter worries me, it is no longer a must-be destination for the average Joe consumer or small business. It is slowing down dramatically and may only useful in the future for disseminating news and events. Sure it is still relevant but it maybe just a niche player in a few years.

For the power user it still offers some great insights and I do get great information, but more so from a select group of people I follow.

Summary

In summary I think the advertising model is flawed across Online Newspapers, Facebook and Twitter and needs some real creativity. I am convinced the model of the future for sites that have massive user bases is enhanced offerings all paid for with one simple annual fee.

1. As a follow up to BuyMyPlace.com.au being kicked off REA other agent assisted and private selling sites including Forsaleforlease, Myhomeisforsale and PropertyNow had also had their listings removed or threatened to be. I’ve heard from one of these companies that their listings have been reinstated to REA. They will remain there for a few months, during that time they will be closely scrutinised by REA and will have to prove they follow their Private Listing Policy
2. I was chatting to Geoff Luff – Director of realestate1 who provided an update on the legal proceedings against them:
   “Further to the proceedings issued against realEstate1 by the REA Group, we can report that Discovery is well under-way and mediation is scheduled for the 6th May 2011 at the offices of the REA Group’s Solicitors, Mallesons Stephen Jaques.”
   This hasn’t restricted their growth as since launching Australia wide in December 2010, realEstate1 has gained momentum and is now able to report that the site has increased their agent numbers by 30%. The agent database is now above 700 + agents and their traffic is between 45,000 to 50,000 per month.
3. American company CoreLogic Group who is currently a 40.22% shareholder in RPData (RPX) has launched a friendly takeover of RPData. The Board has approved the takeover on 20/4/2011 and it appears that yesterday shareholders have voted in favour of the move.
4. It’s rumoured that this week REA has sent a termination letter to RPData ending their data sharing relationship agreement. It’s thought that REA now believe they have enough sold data to go alone. They’re responsible for the online brands Homeguru.com.au and Ozhomevalue.com.au
5. A new look at Thehomepage with an overhaul of their interface. It’s very crisp, clean and fast which I believe are key factors for a real estate portal. Well done to Ben Stockdale and the team at Thehomepage as they’re definitely moving in the right direction.
6. Domain and REA both launched Android apps in the past two weeks offering android mobile phone browsers with the same enhanced experience which iPhone owners receive.
7. Last but by no means least important, is the planned $80m IPO by Onthehouse and the integration with real estate software and services companies PortPlus and Console.