Twitter
Twitter is a little on the nose to me and I am going to predict a sharp decline in 2011. Sure, Twitter will exist in some form or another well into the future but to me it is finished as a mass marketing tool and will eventually be relegated to some important niche communications. Twitter’s revenue making announcement early last year completely lacked any corporate imagination and signalled to me to be the beginning of the end for the company (and a multi billion dollar entity) and unless they innovate well I cannot see the service lasting in its current format for too many years. It is great for cross communication and breaking news alerts and it should play on those strengths.

Google
Google has made a great move in move with Eric Schmidt stepping down at Google and being replaced with Larry Page. Schmidt has made just about every web developer nervous (including me) as some of his comments were against every moral grain the company had built over the years and some of his recent comments were just idiocy! Hopefully Larry Page can get the company back on track, his communication is poor, but hopefully he has worked on this over the years.

Eric Schmidt did an amazing job in his initial years of organizing the company and building revenues and profitability, but he has shown he struggles with communication and needed to be replaced.

Facebook
Facebook goes from strength to strength and has now reached a valuation of around 50 billion. It does however make you wonder how they are going to satisfy the demand from all investors for revenues, especially in the light of them recently raising another billion of dollars. This places pressure on the company to massively increase revenues when they already should be very profitable.

There are many opportunities for Facebook and it will be interesting to see if they show a little more imagination than the Twitter crowd. I think adding personal related services that are paid for makes just as much sense as the boring old advertising model favored by investors.

I prefer to use Facebook for just family and friends, however I now see some really good opportunities there for our business and Facebook give developers the tools to build out some pretty cool applications. Here are some of our recent Agent additions from my company. You should talk to your developers to get them to build out some apps for you just to test the water. All you need is your own page (not your personal account)

RWM Mosman Facebook Page
Raine and Horne Facebook Page
Ristic Real Estate Facebook Page
Graham Lynham Facebook Page

Will Facebook continue it’s amazing growth? Maybe, however, I see a more local version of my personal life, something that is open source and that I have 100% control over who has access to what. I havent seen it yet, and really do not know what it is – but it definitely is not one company controlling my whole digital personal life.

Groupon
How many companies are offered a buyout of billions of dollars only to reject it and see their valuation plummet in the ensuing years?  Yes, many we have already forgotten about. Groupon rejected Google’s billions and now have to compete with that very same company as Google has just announced they will be launching a competing service. There is a moral to this story – sell your bloody company when you get a decent offer. There are many businesses/ideas you can build with a few million/billion dollars.

Linkedin
I will stay on this site as long as it is free, but to me it is just a chest thumping load of junk. Currently it ranks below my own company site as far as referring traffic (all of the articles on this site are linked to my linkedin.com profile) and from what I can tell this is useless fro business to consumer. For business to business we might see something, but not for the real estate industry.

MySpace
Rupert got his money back on this investment early. But in the ensuing years MySpace has cost him big big money and he can kiss it goodbye as it is currently burning through 100′s of millions of dollars a year. It was a lame duck from the beginning (disorganized, spam) and is a perfect example of why you sell early! Listening to Rupert speak about technology is excruciating. He simply doesn’t have a clue, quotes like Facebook being a fad, Google struggling once it matures and then his continual assault on free news (BBC< AC etc) is childish and gets him nowhere.

Your own blog
If you have a real estate website and you are not blogging about local market, local news, local events then you are missing out the the biggest opportunities for personal and business growth. If you want to start on the ground floor, get a FREE WordPress.com blog and start playing. If you want a professional blog under your own domain name speak to your developer.

Wikileaks
Isn’t it wonderful that we have one news organization in the world that actually operates like all major news organizations once did? I hope there are many more years to come of people leaking information we should already know to organizations such as Wikileaks. Stand up for these freedoms we enjoy at all times and never be a hostage to your own motives!

All sounds very similar to YouTube right? It is, except you can purchase a VidCall number (USD29 per annum) that you advertise and provide to your audience. With this number your audience can dial it into either of the phone applications and your content will appear. There’s no cost to your audience because the number is not dialed, its simply used as a search tool to pull your content through the internet.

It’s always great to see innovation, especially in the online video segment as this is one of the most popular and fastest growing. However, VidCall are basically competing with Youtube and trying to charge a fee for this. Can they successfully do this? Perhaps, but you need to remember that users can market their  YouTube channel @DoubleBayProperty for free.

Also, there should be a mobile phone website so any phone browser with internet access can view content eg m.youtube.com not just those with an iPhone or Android phone.

During the recent UK general election (American friends of mine were amazed at how quickly it was over, English friends bemoaned how it dragged on for weeks), I read a Guardian blog post which berated parties of all hues (“tribes”). The writer loathed one tribe, but was saddened how his own tribe had left him, and he wasn’t really interested in the third one either. Hence the inconclusive result I suppose.

And so it got me pondering the state of how we get our information these days, and how quickly media has changed. The blog itself is something I would never had read without the advent of the internet (itself only a 20 year old invention). By the time I read it, it had already attracted 50 comments.

On election night (morning in Australia), I found myself searching #ukelection and #ge2010 twitter themes to read what people were saying as the results came pouring in. Most of them were watching the same telecast I was half a world away (I found the BBC player online somewhere which had been blocked on the official BBC web site). They were reacting to the same commentators and politicians pontificating in front of us, which we were all viewing in real time. Yet, it was these live twitter comments and reactions which drew me in. They had far more validity and were much more entertaining and “real” somehow. They were from people who I did not know and would never meet, but whose opinion had more power and meaning than the pollie spruikers set up in adversarial mode by an aggressive media front man bating them into actually saying something.

Opinions poured forth over the twittersphere – every minute I could refresh the screen to read dozens more updated “tweets” (those 140 character short messages served up by twitter users).

I turned to an ex school friend of mine (a passionate Liberal Democrat and someone I’d not physically met in 30 years and only recently got back in touch with thanks to Facebook) and discussed the outcome with him and his ‘friends’ (we have only one in common, another ex school friend I’ve not seen in 3 decades).

As we collate information (on anything) directly from the sources of individuals whose opinions are as good as anyone else’s ‘in the media’, so we are simply returning to our tribal roots. It’s where we all came from (and still are really) – learning, teaching and sharing.

Of course, this is devastating news for traditional media who have much invested in their print presses, TV and radio stations. Over the past 100 years (a miniscule time frame in the grand scheme of things) they have informed us on what they believe we want to hear, read and view, and when we can get that information too. Our grand children (and maybe our children) will think it quite twee that we all once sat down together with our families at the predetermined time to watch TV programmes (I remember what an ‘event’ the 6pm nightly news was every night in our household in the 1970s). Those days are over.

If someone wants real information on property, who better to tell you than your knowledgeable local ‘tribe’ member? The person selling real estate who lives around the corner from you, the property manager who’s seen everything a thousand times and in a patient manner organizes the leaky gutters to be fixed for the hundredth time. They are the experts, and they ‘know local’ like no one else. 20% of those looking for rental properties in Australia search rentals on twitter. Of the 7 million Australians on Facebook, half tune in every day, and more are aged over 40 than under 20.

If you’re not there, you cannot be noticed or listened to. In this way, twitter, facebook, blogs and the like are merely tools of communication. No silver bullets. No one can give you the scripts and dialogues, but if you view this all in the right manner, you’ll know what to say when the time comes. You’ll make mistakes. You’ll learn it by doing (and listening). Join the conversation. We like to pass on interesting snippets, we like to help, we are good people. It’s tribal, it’s in our nature, it’s who we are.

Photo Credit: Maasai Tribal Dance

Firstly, I have to confess that I’m in love with the Apple brand. The iPod is one of the best consumer inventions in memory and, from a person that used to feel pretty cool in my teens using a yellow, waterproof Sony Walkman (yes, I pre-date the Sony “Disc”man) it’s amazing how quickly I became reliant on my iPod. I took it everywhere and looked forward to a morning run so I could use it.

As you can imagine, the iPhone blew my mind, and continues to amaze me almost every day. I break into a cold sweat if I forget my iPhone. The iPod and BlackBerry are now gathering dust in the spare room, waiting until I get around to putting them on eBay.

I’m now seriously considering buying a MAC for home. Why? I have no idea. As a marketer I’ve just been sucked into the vortex, and I just want one. Every time I switch on my PC at home I’m secretly hoping that it’s broken so I can justify the new purchase to my fiancée (who I know secretly wants one as well).

So, to the eagerly awaited Australian launch of the iPad. Apple’s website is positioning this product as “A magical and revolutionary product at an unbelievable price.” I’m a little sceptical.

Really good marketers are masters at finding a gap in a market and creating a product or a service that exploits that gap and fills the void. Exceptional marketers take that one step further and develop a product or service to fill a void that doesn’t even exist, and then create the gap via clever marketing. Before you know it, nobody can understand how they lived without what you’ve invented.

However, in launching the iPad I wonder if Apple has just got a little carried away. As one of the most powerful brands on the planet are they forcing a product onto us that we just don’t need at all?
Apple is telling us that you can conveniently; surf the web, watch videos, download and use apps, flick through photos, manage your diary and emails. All of these things you can do on your MacBook and iPhone. I struggle to see why you would buy this product if you already have the iPhone, and particularly if you also own a MacBook (Apple speak for a laptop).

Will this product revolutionise the way that we consume information and, in turn, how we do business in the real estate sector?

Here are some ideas on how the product “could” be used:

1. Listing Presentations. Laptops can be a little intimidating in the lounge room, some agents suggest that they can create a barrier between the prospective vendor and the agent. Maybe a touch screen tablet will soften that a little.

2. Property Searches. Some of our offices have MACS in reception, enabling the public to drop in and browse our website. The novelty of using iPads could work well.

3. Capturing Information at Open Homes. With the right software (that plugs directly into you database) it would be pretty handy to record not just buyer details, but buyer feedback on an iPad during open homes.

I’m still a sceptic, but I’ll let you know when I’ve bought one (which will probably be early May by the way).

“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.

I have been spending the last few weeks researching my second article on ‘newspapers and the online world‘ but will not release this until next week now, as this issue deserves an article on its own. Lets have a little look at what this is all about.

The Murdoch Aproach
On a cool August night at the Edinburgh TV festival James Murdoch launched a blistering attack on the BBC, describing their ambitions as “chilling” and accused them of mounting a “land grab” in a media market that has been decimated by the US recession and downturn in classifieds and revenue.

James basically thinks that the BBC should be scrapped, or at least held to account and its role diminished. In the UK the BBC is huge and is probably the most popular network in the country as it spews out Television, Radio classics with gay abandon. It also is the voice of the news across the country. Each taxpayer in the UK pays about 180 pounds a year to fund the BBC and from facts and figures it very patriotic about the BBC, much as we would be here in Australia.

Rupert on the other hand wants Google to pay a fee for any pages of content indexed not only on its news site but also on its news.google.com.au website and has also sounded a warning to Yahoo, MSN and other news aggregators. Maybe MSN and Yahoo will come running as they are being left behind by Google, but for the majority of users on the Internet and the majority of articles and Tweets, News Ltd has few friends.

This attack actually shows how little Rupert actually understands about the Internet and is quite embarrassing for him.

“The philistine phase of the digital age is almost over,” he said. “The aggregators and plagiarists will soon have to pay a price for the co-opting of our content. But if we do not take advantage of the current movement toward paid-for content, it will be the content creators, the people in this hall, who will pay the ultimate price, and the content kleptomaniacs will triumph.” Rupert Murdoch said.

Fast Company’s Kit Eaton has a great little article that throws a pretty decent punch into the loins of Ruperts argument.

Despite Murdoch’s rants about paid content, it’s widely known that the subscription pay walls at his own Wall Street Journal site are easily circumvented if you search for the headline…using Google.

And Google broadcasts (for all to see) methods by which you can prevent its crawler bots indexing your page–hence keeping its link off Google’s indexed searches, and (in Murdoch’s mind) keeping Google’s thieving hands off his lovely expensively-created news content.

Murdoch’s newspaper’s Web page code doesn’t block Google’s robot.

Rupert hopes that every newspaper will follow his lead and start charging for content – in effect making it harder for the public to get to the news unless they pay for it, but it cannot do this if the BBC and ABC spit it out for free.

Rupert’s problem is – he has not got too many friends in his own market and one thing is for sure – if there is a new way, they will not be jumping on a New Ltd owned solution anytime soon.

Senate Hearings
How strange that the Liberal Party are already moving into the commercial corner with Senator Ian McDonald (LNP) questioning Mark Scott on remuneration for ABC TV personalities. Basically Ian McDonald thinks that all ABC should be public, after all, the public do find it!

I can tell you my position on this and that is I agree 100% with Senator McDonald. I am of the opinion that anytime a single cent of the public’s money is spent it should be available online and we should know exactly where it is being spent. If you want to make money from the public, this is the price you pay for the generosity of the public purse.

However Senator McDonald and other politicians should take notice, how about we extend this to local, state and federal government deals? Yes, no more commercial in confidence, secret public/private deals behind close doors. If you use our money or profit from it in any way, by law, we should know where every last cent of it goes, at the time a deal is inked!

Videos

James Murdoch Speech

Lateline
ABC news

Articles

Rupert Murdoch Says Google Is Stealing His Content. So Why Doesn’t He Stop Them?
Scott to hit back on criticism of ABC’s internet space
Google News Search
List of News Aggregator Websites and Software

Over to you

How many of us would give up the ABC News, Radio or Television to let the commercial networks run the show? Would we see the same level of quality?

RE/MAX claims:

“While many of the real estate industry’s biggest players are scaling back their TV buys due to economic realities, the RE/MAX share of voice for national TV advertising jumped from 50% in 2008 to 99.9% in the first quarter of 2009.”

RE/MAX have done a good job with their new straight talking  TV ads, but I can’t help but think that they could increase their audience by leveraging their video content across the internet via their huge network of agents/staff, databases of clients and via social media.

Whilst it was great to see that RE/MAX have taken the initiative & leveraged their video content by uploading the commercials onto YouTube, unfortunately that’s where their effective use of the internet for these videos seems to grind to a halt.

The collective online marketing power of a franchise like RE/MAX is enormous.

They have something like 100,000 Associates working within their company & their LeadStreet campaign successfully created a database of a Million More Leads in Six Months for US Agents, yet upon writing this post the Kick – 2009 RE/MAX Commercial is the video that appears to be their most popular out of their 2009 commercials uploaded onto YouTube so far, but it’s had less than 10,000 views over the past 4 months.

How to Promote Your Real Estate Videos Online

Here’s just a few ways that real estate franchises & independent offices could use the power of their existing network to help promote their brand, generate lots of Free traffic to their videos & enhance their online marketing presence.

• Share the videos on Facebook, MySpace, forums, etc.

• Embed the YouTube video within a short blog post.

• Include a link to the video within email marketing campaigns.

• Tweet about the video on Twitter.

Imagine the power of marketing that 100,000 RE/MAX Associates could have if they used some of these strategies to promote these professionally created TV Commercials out to their network of clients & associates via the internet.

If each Associate only got 10 people in a month to view the commercial, that would equate to approx. 1 million viewers per month for FREE.

In fact, if RE/MAX franchise really wanted to, they could get 10′s of millions of viewers to their videos each month at almost no cost. Now that’s what I’d call a powerful message.

Finally, there are over 100 alternative video sites other than YouTube. Real estate franchises should be uploading their videos/TV commercials onto some of these other sites as well to help generate even more FREE traffic & exposure of their brand.

So it got me thinking, what is an expert? Well to me, an expert is someone who tells you something you should already know. There are no experts that can actually predict the future accurately.

After spending a few weeks in my Hawaiian shirt and cabana shorts I decided to put some pen to paper and fax this off to Peter to type out, with some instructions on how to actually copy word for word what I write – alongside some hints from Julie Bishop on how to do this.

Here is some advice from the old man for 2009

Sportspeople flogging property developments:

You can always tell when a person who has recently retired will do almost anything for money, especially when it is flogging off ‘amazing’ investment opportunities. Glenn McGrath – the best way to muddy your name after decades building it up is to get on board for some quick cash and flog real estate, yes, this maybe a great investment, but history has shown us that these developments can be dubious at best – after all just ask Craig McDermott how well this works out in the long term Glenn and stick to the charities and flogging caravans. 

Executive Salaries:

Well we thought these guys were gurus, turns out they just heard someone else made a killing on something so they just all followed the pied piper until it all came tumbling down. At least we no longer have to listen that old chestnut – that you need to spend money to get the ‘best talent’! So my hats off to the best of the best around the globe who have made middle income earners across the worlds bail out about 10 trillion of their debt. 

Everything I have: 

Every time I hear the heart wrenching story of a person or family sinking their last dollar into a financial services company or property development my heart bleeds – for about 5 seconds –  then I think, hang on why did you put EVERYTHING you had into it? You deserve to be burnt. The only things anyone should ever put all their money into is their principal place of residence and/or your business.

George Bush:

Most of you might be happy to see George Bush go – unless you are in the richest 1% of Americans, who will miss him dearly. NY Times reports that when Georgie Boy took over from ‘The Cuban’ Clinton – the richest 1% of America only took home 9% of the weekly American income and when Gorgeous George left office it was up to 23%!. Not only that, average US wages dropped by $2000USD per annum over the 8 years George was at the helm. Ouch! History does not look too kindly on those figures George, no matter how many memos you send to the press corps

Savings?

The recent Foxtel campaign is amusing! I am at a loss to understand how joining Foxtel saves me money? If they take $30 per month out of my already dwindling account, how does that save me money? That’s $30 less than what I would have if I didn’t join Foxtel. 

Insurance:

As bushfires raged across Australia, we now get set for some technicalities that allow insurance companies to deny payouts. I always wonder why insurance companies can worm their way out of payouts.

I have an idea, it is quite a simple one. I think insurance companies should have to list what you are not covered for, in relation to the type of insurance you have taken out. I bet you a monthly terrorism surcharge that would be a long list!

Mortgage Stress?

When I purchased my first home in the 60′s, I owned my television (His Masters Voice) and my radio, I only called family and friends when I needed something/to go somewhere and I paid cash for my car! In fact my only monthly debts were for my house, phone, wife and electricity bills. Today the majority of Australians make payments monthly on the house, car, televisions, stereos, mobile phones, phones, Internet, cosmetic surgery and of course Foxtel. See where I am heading with this?

My Pet Hate:

About the only time I ever curse is when a politician speaks these words “Australians are smart enough” followed by their opinion on some subject. I think we should have a big wet fish come across the screen and slap any politician who utters those words. 

President Obama

: Yes, I must admit, I kinda like the guy who speaks a little funny. One thing about him though, he is probably the best speaker I have ever come across. I remember the night he won the election and he gave one of the greatest speeches I have ever heard. Now, cast your mind back to Kevin Rudd on election night, I am a swinging voter and went to a little gathering at a local farm, most of the people there were supporters of Kevin Rudd, by the end of the speech they were booing and hissing, it was just so darn boring. I hope he reealises it is not only his words but his delivery. From now on Kevin, just give us the facts as you see them and shut up. Also Kevin, don’t get your speechwriters to use swear words as we know it is just not you and you end up spending all night saying rosaries instead of fixing the economy.

Finally…..

We have the worst wage to mortgage ratio in the western world, but we have bigger problems, it is just too easy to get credit. This is the root of all of our problems. Hopefully no more!

So I am now sitting here eating breakfast and spitting my muesli all over the television as I hear our Prime Minister speak. That Barack fella spoke and had the cats ears perking, the finches shrieking and my wife going all gaga, then Kevin comes speaks and everyone has lost the will to live.

Over and out!

1. Housing Recovery
Depending on who you want to believe determines what you will believe. There will likely be no recovery and you should be happy about this. Don’t listen to your real estate institute, they will come out with “there are very healthy signs” about 10 times this year.

The truth is there will be no housing recovery for at least 10 years. Why?  Wages!  If you look at the cost of living and wages growth over the past decade (yes Mr Howard the true indicator of how your people are living) you will notice that costs have skyrocketed whilst wages have remained steady. For a housing recovery we need real wages growth and the opposite to occur with cost of living expenses.

With the current global economy and climate change you will not see this happen for many years. So why should you be happy?  Believe me, you do not want housing prices going up, this will just mean less and less of a market to sell to.  What you want is a bottom and therefore a steady market.

2. REA Price Freeze
This will be a great test to see how much the REA understands about the current market and how many of their real estate agents are feeling the pinch. You know that they are going to put your subscription fees up, maybe they will only increase them by 5% to show you just how much they care!  I am sure there will be a positive spin somewhere.

3. First Home Buyers
Tasmania has led the way with albeit a limited scheme, but one that is a little different. The state government provides a $50,000 loan to first home buyers. This must be paid back in 15 years, this incentive is on top of the first home buyers grants.

This was of course limited to 7 million on a first come first served basis, but it showed a little bit of innovation can go a long way.  For those of us who live in NSW, don’t hold your breath – there is no chance that this government or the liberals have any idea how to run a canteen, let alone a state, it really is that bad. Embarrassing!

4. Newspaper Recovery
When some of the biggest and historically the most profitable newspapers in the world need bailouts (Chicago Tribune,  New York Times) you know that there are troubles ahead for the industry as a whole. My guess is that this will be the worst year on record for newspapers/print advertising and many will go to the wall.

5. Television Revival
So Channel 9 has a new look, looks the same to me!  In Sydney they are talking up Peter Overton as some kind of ‘saviour’ and promoting him across the network as a renegade.  The interview that they promoted with Tom Cruise does not work, Peter looks petrified when Tom tells him off.

Old TV is near finished, lets see how long they try to keep it going. Oh and forget about Free TV being anything revolutionary in the short term, they count the same shows on digital and analogue as two different channels. Too funny!

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.

“I was summonded to a hotel room in town, asked for my access pass and told not to go back to the office and that my desk would be packed up and couriered to me – 7.5 years over in a flash. I was not to say goodbye to the team.”

Since that date Simon has been inundated with offers and judging by the response was very popular amongst his team. Simon is still a large shareholder of realestate.com.au so I am sure he will want to see continued growth from this company. You have got to give credit where it is due, the company now has a market capitalisation of over 500 million and employs some 750 people.

Realestate.com.au has a number of challenges ahead of them, not only trying to keep growth running along nicely, but also making its international businesses profitable (nearly all the profit comes from Australia).

There was no malice in this interview towards REA and he answered all questions openly.

So here is the interview.

It has been a dramatic few weeks, can you share with us some of your thoughts over the past few weeks, what have you been up to?

“Well I have had over 20 opportunities present themselves over the since the announcement. Anything from board positions, investment opportunities and of course some serious offers which I am taking my time mulling over, it has to fit.” Simon is also involved in a number of early stage companies and has investments in a number of these, from real estate to arts. Simon is currently Chairman and CEO of Artshub, a Director of Redbubble and a Director of 3eep. Simon seems to have a passion for the arts and you can see this from his investments, ArtsBub looks like a little ripper.

Where do you see yourself working, do you think you will remain in the online space in real estate or just general technology?

“Well it will have to be on the Internet, I am not interested in anything non internet related, I couldn’t cope with it.” So I am weighing up some opportunities and will make a decision in due course, but I have had a plethora of interest both in and around the real estate space.”

Realestate.com.au saw incredible growth over the past few years. Is this going to continue, or do you think it will be tough to continue at around 40% growth? We all have been waiting for Google Classifieds (Google Real Estate) to come to Australia. Do you see this as a threat to current revenue models?

“No”. Simon recently had a chat with Abe Murray Product Manager at Google and pointed out that Google are not in the business of taking down markets, more so complimenting them.

“Only around 30% of traffic comes from Google, Realestate.com.au is now part of everyday life for consumers, the real challenge is for off-line print media, realestate.com.au drives leads for agents, this is what we do, currently in Australia around 15% of marketing is spent online compared with 85% in newspapers, yet newspapers struggle with around 20% of leads. Naturally agents will just get smarter where they spend there money.”

Will the Portals embrace Google?

“Portals will embrace Google, they will be crazy not to”. Simon also spoke of the challenge for Google if realestate.com.au, domain.com.au, realestateview.com.au, myhome.com.au all send the same properties and perhaps also agents sent feeds to Google as well. We did disagree on some aspects of this, as I did point out that Google will be smart enough to filter these or link to all sources. Simon does however feel that Google will not be a threat, he thinks they will compliment the portals.

Newspapers have been struggling with print property guides, seeing revenues fall over the past few years. Can you ever see them give up, like the LA Times has done recently?

“I don’t think they will give up, agents will use newspapers more for branding and perhaps only high quality properties will be featured in papers – maybe 1.5 million dollar properties.” I agreed with Simon on this. I mentioned that it may well start at around $600,000 but more and more consumers will not want advertising in newspapers and each year the benchmark will increase, lower priced properties, especially in times where many may be getting less than what they paid for properties and will not want to spend money in print.

Do you think print and online departments should merge?

“No”. Many have speculated that this is where Simon and the Board had the base of their disagreement. I think the ‘no’ was a great answer, short and sweet. It is also speculated that Fairfax Digital and Print are also having the same bunfight.

Where do you see real estate in 5 years? Do you think Mobile is the answer or do you think digital television is the next big area?

“I think it will be via the browser, whether it is video or not, the mobile market here in Australia is different to some countries where there are so many more options and everyday uses for mobile phones – maybe an integrated TV browser”.

If you had to name one thing you could be proud of in your time at REA what would it be?

“Created a household name”. Simon struggled to name just one. He also spoke of his time coming into a company on its knees and systematically building it up with a great passionate team and taking it international.

Simon was leaving on a flight overseas tomorrow, so I thanked him for his time and wished him luck. I think we will see him somewhere building a smallish company up, more than likely in the real estate space. He does have a passion outside of real estate, but real estate is where he has all of the connections and a great reputation, he understands the market internationally, so I think that will be where we see his more prominent roles.

If you get a chance take a look at his MyCEO Blog it has some great articles and insights into his life as a CEO and also some good commentary on his departure.