Property Management site apmasphere have just announced the launch of aTV, property management’s first ever video channel. “aTV is dedicated to making learning on the job easier and more enjoyable – at any stage of your career.”

“aTV will provide the demonstration of key functions in the property management industry.”

The premise with aTV has been built around 100 questions the legislation and software can not teach or answer for a property manager.

Watch Video

aTV plan to keep the videos very short and intend to present a lot more insights along the way.

Membership to the apmasphere site is free & aTV is the latest in their long list of FREE resources for property managers to help them with their careers.

As a member, I’ve found that apmasphere provide an invaluable resource for Property Managers & Principals, with some of the industries best Property Managers & Property Management trainers providing guidance, thoughts and ideas on how to overcome many of the daily issues Property Management departments & Principals face.

Apmasphere has in excess of 1,000 members & provides some of the most up-to-date information available for Property Managers. Their forum acts like a brains trust for ideas on the ‘How To’ of Property Management and approaches questions on economics, structure and growth.

If you haven’t joined in as yet, you may want to head over to see what you’re missing out on. It’s a great online learning platform.

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Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has scrapped the broadband tender process in favour of forming a public/private company to build and operate a massive broadband fibre to the home network which will cost over AU 40 billion dollars. And I love it! As long as Telstra has absolutely no control over it!

Ivor Ries, an analyst with EL and C Baillieu Stockbroking thinks that few will pay the premium price for this service and that we do not need the kind of speeds (100 megabytes a second) that this proposal provides. He is not alone, many analysts feel the same way. Currently the average Australian home pays around $40 per month for broadband (add line rental etc) with very limited download caps. The new broadband offering will more than likely come in at around $70 per month.

Most of these analysts do not really understand the way these things work. Yes on the surface $70 per month is too way much, but think of no line rental – as this proposal is fibre to the home and business not node. Also think of additional services, no download caps, local and national calls included and you start to see things differently. Many companies will also create their own long range wireless networks (WIMAX) allowing them to offer broadband within a 20km radius of their business to their staff and executives.

The private sector will come to the party with additional offerings and we will no longer be held to ransom by Telstra which costs Australian billions of dollars a year in additional unnecessary charges, just because they can.

Think about a broadband telco and the future offerings – we will call our new company Onetel. Onetel will offer:

• 100 Megabytes per second download speeds
• Unlimited Downloads
• Unlimited Local and National Calls
• No Line Rental
• 50 TV Channels + ability for users to create and share their own local and community TV channels

All of the sudden the price sounds a lot more attractive. The dumping of line rental fees will save Australians billions of dollars per year and innovation will allow us to do so much more at 100 megabytes per second speeds.

Think of real estate video, IPTV (Internet TV) and video streaming becoming common place and portals becoming conduits for a wide range of data and services.

History also tells us that download speeds will continue to rise as innovation squeezes more and more out of fibre broadband, current ADSL2 comes in at 24 megabytes a second, from a start of around 256k.

If the 100 megabytes comes in at a maximum over the same period we could expect at least 1 gigabyte a second out of this fibre within 10 years. It also means companies such as Fairfax, News Ltd, for that matter any company can also get involved.

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On Thursday evening I had a phone hookup with Simon Baker, former Managing Director of Realestate.com.au. We spoke about a range of issues and I will place some excerpts from the interview here. Simon recently departed from Realestate.com.au in the typical pathetic fashion that large organisations feel necessary and from his blog My CEO Life Simon explained his departure. Read the rest of this article »

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Over the last 12 months we have seen many new entrants coming into the market offering cheaper annual plans, different strategies and grandiose claims. But what impact have these new entrants had on the marketplace and what if any will they have in the future? Over the coming weeks I will write about each of the incumbent portals and take a look at some new entrants in the marketplace. I will also look at some overseas developments and see what impact if any they will have an impact on the Australian Market.

Firstly we will take a look at the giant of Real Estate in Australia realestate.com.au.

Overview: Without doubt the leader in most regions of Australia. Will continue sit around the 3.5 – 4 million mark in visitor numbers. REA will struggle to grow this number in Australia because let’s be honest how much more room is there for growth? REA has a number of problems. To begin with REA are the best at what they do and all large media companies love the marketing spend of real estate agents, so they will never be left alone to sit and count the cash.

Another problem is that in the next 12 months we will see large new entrants such as Google, Yahoo and MSN enter with their FREE classifieds websites. REA will continue to be aggressive in international acquisitions and will look to see its revenue base expand as it continues to make purchases in weak competitive markets.

As for the current website it is getting a little long in the tooth and REA will no doubt look to launch a new site soon. They will also need to forge closer ties with agents and make them feel that they are pulling together in the same direction, this sometimes means dropping the tough stance on fees and being a little more flexible. The new site will really need a stronger clearer focus on agents property listings rather than 3rd party advertising. The company will also struggle in the long term to lift revenues from agents as competition will drive down annual fees significantly into the future. The site still performs day in and day out and with more than triple the daily unique browsers of its nearest competitor will see it reign at the top for quite some time.

Threats: Fairfax (Domain.com.au) has now Rural Press in its bed and with the Macquarie Media going top to tail – REA will have its hands full keeping an eye on its local business whilst pushing to grow internationally. Google, Yahoo (maybe partner with News Ltd in talks) and MSN are all looming large with their FREE classifieds offerings and this will have a long term impact on annual agents revenues.

This creates another problem for REA. Once the FREE classifieds sites come online will also have to be very careful about intrusive 3rd party advertising as Google, Yahoo and MSN classifieds websites have a very clean and unobtrusive advertising model that has a strong connection with site users. Google Base will be the main problem once they launch here in Australia because Google will also include its classifieds listings in search results meaning consumers can get this property information from the search engine without having to go to another website. MyHome has had no impact whatsoever on REA and I doubt they have the know how and mettle to make a challenge in the short term. However MyHome cannot be discounted in the long term IF they stay the course and admit to – and fix the current site.

REA recently integrated/added the Home Renovation section to their website and it has an impressive array of articles and hints and tips for home buyers and renovators. This will no doubt bring in more advertising revenues and has been a great addition.

Future: REA will eventually do a deal with MySpace (which will carry REA listings much like Facebook now do) and possibly Yahoo if Rupert gets his way. They will continue international purchases and growth of many of these fledgling companies and I see real potential here for them. They have already seen impressive growth in New Zealand and the UK and will continue to push heavily in these areas. Will still be at the top in 3 years but its lead will dwindle and their agents revenues short term will stagnate and then fall dramatically once the free classifieds sites start to bring agents results. All in all I think the international future is bright, but Simon Baker and his team will have their work cut out for them to stave of competition from rivals even his hip pockets and visitor numbers cannot match. I see a Digital TV station (IPTV) feeding data to lounge rooms and possibly a TV show on a rival network to Nine.

Links:
www.realestate.com.au
www.domain.com.au
www.yahooclassifieds.com
www.liveexpo.com
www.googlebase.com
www.facebook.com
www.myhome.com.au

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Now, I am getting in way over my head. I do not really care for either party in this debate, but I clearly side with Labor that the government must build the network and then allow equal access for any carrier that wants to get involved.

Why?
Having Telstra owning the network has been a disaster for consumers, it slows down the rate of change and has hurt consumers more than any share price drop. Just take a look at some figures:

In the US for $20 USD per month you get all local and national calls, calls to Canada and calls to many European countries, yes that is $20 per month, below $30 AUD . Now we pay more for just a line rental. Now I have been renting a telephone line from my property to the street for 20 years, surely this is just a rip off. I pay $36 per month just for line rental.

256 kb downloads speeds is not broadband but an absolute joke, 512 kb downloads is the same, we will look back and laugh at these speeds in just 5 years.

I switched from Telstra for my broadband 12 months ago, why? Because I could get five times the bandwidth and 15 times the speed from iiNet for less than what it cost me from Telstra.

Telstra only introduced ADSL 2+ once it started losing clients. You can have as many spiffy ads telling us that 256k is lightning fast broadband but consumers will wise up eventually.

To me the term ‘Broadband’ is a minimum of 12 megabytes per second and ADSL 2+ can take us above 20 megabytes per second. Having Telstra build and control access to a national fibre to the node network will just mean slower speeds, weaker service and higher prices and this is why Labor’s promise to build a fibre to the node network is good for consumers.

It will allow all of the other carriers equal access and will bring down prices because that is what competition does. Now some may argue that Telstra will still own the last mile to the home. Who cares? In the next 24 months we will see WiMAX hit the streets and every new PC made with an Intel and AMD chip will have the chip built in. So there goes any need for that last mile from Telstra.

WiMAX allows for wireless broadband up to 50 kilometres from the antenna, it will also allow relaying which means it will be cheaper for rural areas and can reach speeds of up to 100 megabytes a second, although this does drain the further away you get from it, but remember, in the early days of the Internet we used to get 9kb a second, then 14kb, then 36 and now 56kb all from the lousy modem.

Telstra has made it clear it will not build a network if it has to give access to competition at regulated prices, which basically means it wants to dictate to all other providers the price they can get access for – and in turn what we must pay, yeah that will work! We only have to go back a few years and Telstra was charging competitors wholesale prices that were higher than their own retail prices. So again I do not trust them to do the right things by the consumer one little bit.

I would like to see the Liberal Party jump on board and support building our own network, because it will be a good money spinner for the government instead of trying to scare everyone concerning the Labor plan, I watched Peter Costello’s tirade in Parliament about raiding the future fund, it was pretty funny really and I think he thought he had them, unfortunately for him just about every media company in Australia agrees with Labor..

As I have said before, big business in Australia, the current market leaders – are not given a born right to rule our wallets forever, the market should dictate this by the product and services they provide – not because they have always been successful.

Yes we have monopolies everywhere, roads, banks gaming and television (to name but a few) but this is one area that the monopoly must end for the good of all Australians. Next to marketing and rent, telephone and Internet costs are the biggest many small businesses face and it is time we paid a reasonable price for a reasonable product.

Now before you think I am a member of the Labor Party I am not, in fact I don’t think I have voted Labor since Keating, but I can tell you now, I want some changes and I do not want Telstra owning a fibre network that they can dominate.

End of Rant….

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