You be the judge…are Lawyers Real Estate breaking the law or not?

As a licensed real estate agent within the state of NSW, if I was to open a business as Greg Vincent Lawyers or Greg Vincent Solicitors, etc without the right accreditations in place then how long do you think I could remain conducting a legal practice?

Yet, Peter Mericka of Lawyers Real Estate has either found a loop hole in the Victorian agency licensing legislation or Lawyers Real Estate has simply been placed into the too hard basket and has been allowed to continue to practice under the business name Lawyers Real Estate for the past 4 – 5 years without having undertaken any formal real estate licensing… That’s right! 4 – 5 years without a real estate license.

Either way, judging by Peter Mericka’s statement within his video on Today Tonight below and a letter from Robert Guthrie of the NSW Fair Trading Property Services Licensing posted on the Australian Real Estate Blog it would appear that Lawyers Real Estate may be looking to expand their real estate operation into other areas and possibly interstate.

Now I don’t know if it’s simply because of the name of his business that the industry bodies are too scared to take Peter Mericka on or whether there is in fact a loophole within the current Victorian legislation which entitles him to legally continue to operate in this manner as Lawyers Real Estate?

But if there is a loophole, is this business model what agents can expect to see more of into the future?

As a licensed agent I have invested a lot of time and money to achieve my licence and remain licensed.

I continue to pay annual renewal fees and have to undertake ongoing training to obtain the required CPD points required to continue to hold a real estate licence year after year. After watching the Today Tonight story about Lawyers Real Estate, I’m starting to wonder what on earth I’m paying the fees for.

I have to say that I agree with one thing that Peter says in the Today Tonight interview, “the people who matter are the real estate consumers”.

Which leads me to wondering if something did go sour with a transaction via Lawyers Real Estate would the consumer be protected by the Victorian Property Fund? Or is there a different fund that they can make a compensation claim through?

Listings appearing on realestate.com.au

And then there’s the issue about whether Lawyers Real Estate should be allowed to upload their listings onto realestate.com.au as they currently do.

Under the latest version of the General Terms and Conditions for Residential Subscriptions to www.realestate.com.au it clearly spells out who can upload onto their site…

2.1 You represent and warrant in respect of each property you list on our web site that:

(a) you are the holder of a current real estate agent’s licence in the State(s) or Territory to which your use of the Service relates;

(b) you have a signed authority to sell from the owner or vendor (such as an Agency Agreement or Authority to Sell); and

(c) you are authorised to make available the material uploaded or submitted to use the Service;

(d) you will not allow another real estate office in your real estate group to list the property using your subscription. Where a proprietor of a property authorises multiple real estate offices in your real estate group to list a property you acknowledge that:

(i) this does not entitle you to authorise any other person (including, without limitation, any associated offices in your real estate group) to make use of the one subscription; and
(ii) any such conduct is in breach of these Terms and Conditions; and

(e) you are providing the full range of agent services (as set out in our Private Listing Policy).

Whilst Lawyers Real Estate don’t appear to comply with this section of realestate.com.au’s T & C’s and their ability to continue to upload onto REA is up to the respective legal departments to sort out, one thing I noticed is that Lawyers Real Estate appears to have very little regard for wanting to comply with some of realestate.com.au’s AUP.

Under the realestate.com.au Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) – Residential, it would appear that REA don’t allow other website addresses to be promoted within the copy text of a property being advertised yet Lawyers Real Estate are currently including the URL www.SLOD.com.au within the body of the property text when uploading their listings which appears to be in breach of 4.1.6 the Misuse of fields.

Here’s a screen capture…http://screencast.com/t/YmU2ZTQwNTg

Misuse of fields
4.1.6. Placing irrelevant information in an information, description or picture field. You must only use the information, description or picture fields for inserting information that is intended for those fields. For example, inserting the name or contact details of your business or agency in the description header or property description field is not acceptable. Inserting a business or agency logo as a picture in a property listing is also not acceptable.  For copyright purposes, small watermarks are permissible on images, but only in one corner of the image. Superimposed wording or text is not permissible.

The SLOD.com.au URL provides a link to Lawyers Real Estate online service for bidding, making enquiries and booking inspections, etc. If the URL is allowed to continue to appear on Lawyers Real Estate’s listings under the legal interpretation of Clause 4.1.6 or other parts of the realestate.com.au AUP, it could then open the door for agents to feature website URL’s within the property text field.

What about Privacy Laws?

On top of that, uploading the seller’s contact phone number onto a public site like realestate.com.au is not only in breach of 4.1.24.2 in REA’s AUP but wouldn’t that also breach other Privacy Laws?

Here’s a screen capture…http://screencast.com/t/NTczN2ZiOT

Note: For privacy reasons I have covered the seller’s name & contact number.

Other inappropriate content
4.1.24. Using the Service for any unlawful, illegal, malicious or improper purpose. For example: it is not acceptable to, in your use of the Service, display material that:

4.1.24.1. may defame or discredit another person or business;

4.1.24.2. may disclose private, personal or confidential information;

4.1.24.3. might be considered obscene, offensive, menacing or abusive;

4.1.24.4. might infringe the intellectual property rights of others;

4.1.24.5. may violate any law, regulation, standard, content requirements or code promulgated by any relevant authority or industry body.

I’m sure Peter Mericka of Lawyers Real Estate will be able to shed some light on how this is legally OK?

I’d also be interested to know if clients sign an agency agreement when they list with Lawyers Real Estate and whether the lawyers have signed an inspection report and included opinions of price on the property or do they simply rely on an independent valuer to assess the price for their clients.

And if so, is the registered valuation an added cost or is it included in their flat fee?

If Lawyers Real Estate has indeed found a loophole and they are allowed to continue without the normal licensing that a real estate agent has to have then as I mentioned earlier, it could open a huge can of worms and we could see a lot more lawyers opening up real estate agencies.

If this is allowed to continue then agents should really start to question why we are paying annual licensing fees to the government departments if they won’t police and legislate the licensing of the industry more effectively.

Plus, I’d be really interested to know how Lawyers Real Estate got to be on realestate.com.au in the first place?

Finally, I don’t have an issue with the discount commission model that Lawyers Real Estate are using because discount real estate agencies have been around for years and are now a dime a dozen, but it does concern me that some consumers may feel that going to a Lawyer to sell their property is going to mean that they feel protected and that they are going to get the best deal.

For example, here is a video of what some of Lawyers Real Estate clients have said…

If you’re considering employing a lawyer (either with or without a real estate licence) to sell your property then it’s important to remember that in the end they are in business and they will expect to get paid a commission.

And just because the negotiations are done by a lawyer doesn’t guarantee that it will always turn out to be the best thing for their client. Many legal deals end up being negotiated on the steps of court rooms and it’s not always the case that a Lawyer’s client walks away 100% happy with the end result.

Consumers still need to do their due diligence because in the legal profession, as per the real estate profession, some people get good representation and others get poor representation.

63 Comments »

The Power of a Blog

Earlier I posted an article outlining the Importance of your Real Estate Blog. Here I’m going to provide an example of how powerful a blog can be in increasing traffic to your website.

We are going to use this site www.silkwoodmedical.com.au. Silkwood Medical are a plastic surgery company based in Bondi Junction, Sydney. They built this website around 18 months ago and although the site looks very nice it does not rank well in search engines and therefore does not generate too much organic traffic. The site has no blog associated with it and news articles are posted to the website in pdf format.

Our solution was to create a blog which looked exactly the same as the client’s website and place the blog on a separate url www.silkwoodnews.com.au. The idea of this, is that a user will jump between blog and site or site and blog without realizing they have been redirected to a new url. The client would then post articles through the blog which will build up pages in search engines driving traffic back to the blog which in turn will direct traffic to the original site.

This has worked very well and the blog now rates high in search engines in many key words which the original website does not. Some of these key words included on the first page of Google for the blog are:

• macrolane sydney
• ulthera australia
• breast macrolane injections
• breast injections macrolane
• ultherapy cost
• ultherapy reviews
• cost of face ultherapy
• facial revolution
• macrolane breast enhancement sydney
• macrolane injections sydney
• skin tightening ulthera
• ulthera laser in sydney
• ulthera reviews
• ultherapy costs
• video ulthera

Because users now receive the Newsletter via email and a link back to the website, means traffic is driven to the blog. This is better for their business as readers are likely to view other information about their services and could lead to an increase in new business.

Unfortunately, the General Manager of the company left a few months ago so content has not been updated since then. However, the main Silkwood Website receives between 55% to 65% of its traffic from the blog site and this would spike significantly each time a post was created and an email sent to subscribers.

In summary, by attaching a blog to the website will increases the amount of pages and content in search engines resulting in increased traffic. Also, a great way to encourage users to frequent your website is to post your newsletter through your website, further increasing traffic.

Note: if you do not want to set up the blog on a new url you can cerate a sub-domain for the blog eg news.silkwoodmedical.com.au

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Why Google will win the war – it is not even fighting!

Google will overcome the teething problems with its real estate proposition and disrupt the business models of property portals across the world.

Every single property portal in the world is wary of the Google Real Estate presence over the past few years and every single portal is scared of the effect Google will have on both their visitor numbers and there revenues.

Over the past year I have read a lot of articles (from portals, their newspapers or individual shareholders) demonstrating how Google’s entry into the market place has not or will not effect either their visitor numbers/revenues. Well they would say that wouldn’t they!

Google’s Effect

It is true so far that Google’s effect has been minimal, however Google has never stated it’s intention to kill off or mame any of the leading portals in the world in a time limited period! In fact, Google is focusing on getting as many listings into their systems as possible, forming new partnerships with various entities to help them get their listings into Google and finally continually refining their systems to make it easier for people to find the property they are looking for, then shoot them off to the originators website of that listing for complete property information.

Once Google has these three elements close to perfect, they can then think about a mass marketing campaign through, yes you guessed it, the most powerful online marketing tool on the planet – the Google Search Engine!

The two big differences Google has that others who have failed before them do not – is time and money!

Google’s mantra is to “Don’t be Evil”. Think about this, who are they going to upset with a successful assault on the property market? In the USA MLS providers? Come one, hardly anyone thinks they serve any purpose other than hanging on to a business model that expired in the early 90′s. Fee based real estate portals? Just about every real estate agent in the world rates their fee based real estate portal only slightly north of Saddam Hussein.

The free listing portals may need to adjust their business models, but specialized search engines like www.estately.com would probably welcome the success of Google!

All in all a Google success would mean current successful businesses will have to adjust their business models, evolve into new offerings, improve their practices and innovate – after all, isn’t that what capitalism is all about?

Everyone is in a rush to judge Google on their immediate impact. Real estate is just another business Google is involved in and they will take their time before marketing the product globally. Just don’t expect any of the incumbents real estate portals (many owned by news organisations) to rush out with a headlines promoting their competition, like ‘Google having an impact, revenue and visitor numbers plunge for xxxx.com’ )

The incumbents will always find a light for their own real estate businesses whilst shedding darkness on their competitors. This is the toughest thing for Google in real estate – getting the free headlines they attract in different markets (search, telephony, Internet). With property they are playing against many of the largest media companies in each country, which means fewer free promotions for their real estate services!

Google is a publicly traded company, it is a profit machine and there is no bigger game globally online for revenue than real estate. To be the number one real estate destination worldwide for property listings would be worth anywhere from $3 – 5 billion in additional revenues for Google, they just don’t realize it yet.

This is not to say Google needs to improve what they are doing and needs to form new partnerships to do this – it does! One area they can improve upon is rewarding individual agents for feeding their listings directly to Google by giving them the referral . At the moment it seems a bit of a lottery as to who gets the referral when a user clicks on a listing to see the full information. It should go to the originator of that listing – the person who signed the vendor. Not some portal or directory. This should not be that difficult!

Google also needs to acquire a few tools in the long run. I do believe Google will acquire a listing system/engine and offer it for free for agents and web developers/portals to hook into. In full disclosure, this is the very business I operate (www.zooproperty.com). However the reason I think they need to do this is because it gives them some control over the cycle of a property from listing to sales/rentals to sales/rental history, it also allows for them to know who the listing originates from.

If Google launched an open system that allowed agents to manage their listings and then distribute them across a variety of platforms they would get 90% of independent agents on board within a year. Every single portal in the world would join up to get feeds from that system and web developers globally would rejoice in finally having a system they can play with. Google will also be able to integrate Google Adwords, Adsense and other tools directly to developers and agents.

Also, never underestimate the power of the open web developer, one only has to think of the success of the Firefox browser to showcase how powerful the common web developer has become. If you build something that helps the web developer, the marketing power of that alone is enough to propel a product into the spotlight.

If Google take their time and work with agents, developers, portals and listing systems they will have an impact, it will come down to how much they control as to their next move, however once they start seeing the revenues flow in you can be sure Google will expand their presence.

If you are a real estate agent, you need to get all of your listings to Google, talk to your web developer, for them to build this into their system (if they already haven’t) should only take a few days.

You need to do this anyway, invest the time and you will be rewarded.

Note: A Version of this article first appeared on Global Edge UK.

27 Comments »

The Creative Commons

If applications like iTunes present themselves as the ‘proverbial coffin’ for the music industry, Creative Commons provides the nails to hammer it shut – and change the way we produce content forever – just like Wikipedia re-shaped the encyclopedia.

Creative Commons licenses allows you to publish your work online, while letting others know exactly what they can, and can’t do with your work. You keep your copyright but allow people to copy and distribute your work provided they give you credit.

CC is already having an absolutely enormous impact on the creative production environment, for instead of having to use library music – or processed tracks offered up in Garage Band or Sound Track Pro – video production houses are now be able to access a whole world of talent.

CC applies to almost everything. It strives to provide undiscovered talent with a global stage – via the Internet. How will it apply to your marketing collateral?

The photographs you commission tomorrow; the words you have your copywriters draft; the video content your production companies deliver – is it Creative Commons?

What’s the impact?

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The Race to the Bottom

I was going to call this post ‘Do Quality Marketing Materials Really make a difference?’ It is a question worth discussing. In the US marketplace, there is no such thing as VPA (Vendor Paid Advertising). The sales commissions for Agents are higher (around 4 – 4.6%) and from that, they have to finance all their own marketing.

So, in the United States, Agents ‘doing it themselves’ is common place – assisted by new technology which sees kids in prams texting. Now Americans aren’t exactly what you’d call a camera-shy race. From taking their own photographs to shooting their own video – on an iphone, or a Flip – which you can upload to a site to take care of all the editing and the streaming – all for $29, the US market is flooded with ‘do it yourself’ and ‘host it yourself’ collateral.

Just one example:

Click here to view video. There’s even film-making and script-writing courses at HD Hat. In reviewing these ‘home’ movies, you have to say, they do the job. If you were interested in buying a particular home, I think they certainly show you enough of the property to make a judgement call on whether or not you phone the agent.
Add to this Google Maps and Street View, and buyers do have a vast arrange of free tools at their disposal.

From a Vendor’s perspective, why invest any money in quality marketing materials or even mass media for that matter. Just do it yourself and launch it to YouTube. Which raises another question; if marketing professions are being made redundant by technology, will ‘Agenting’ and negotiating skills follow? But if quality doesn’t really count, why has Google added a High Quality criteria to its searches for video? And why do big Companies spend millions on new creatives if any video describing a product will do?

Guess Jeans goes to awesome lengths, with multi-million dollar campaigns, just to sell a pair of pants yet most home-owners agonize over spending a few thousand to sell a million dollar asset.

The US housing market is a total mess. Making it ‘Cheap and easy’ to not only own a home – but sell one – hasn’t worked. Will Australian Agents ‘Flip’ over doing it themselves?

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