Yesterday, I read this message from Chris Smith about Facebook’s plans to roll out one-to-one email capability for Facebook Fan Pages.

“Just Announced via Mari Smith: Facebook will begin to allow one to one messages to be sent from a Facebook Business Page to anyone who Likes the page. So for example, if you have 1,000 fans you could technically now email them via Facebook. This is monumental in my opinion as most people did not Like Pages knowing they would get messages from them, even one to one messages. Will this cause a mass unliking of Pages that suck? You betcha! Could even cause anyone on the fence to completely leave Facebook all together. I know their are Pages I liked years ago that if I now started getting emails from them I would be very upset. How do you all feel about this it literally just broke?”

So what this means is that you will soon be able to connect with your Fans via email, which is great news for Facebook Page Admins who are also good at marketing because it provides another way to connect with your fans.

But, WARNING: it’s also a Kamakazi (Crash & Burn) Marketing Tool for admins who think it’s a great idea to start spamming fans with poorly thought out email notifications.

Personally, I really like the idea that it will enable my FB fans to email me if they want to ask me a question privately rather than posting a comment publicly on my wall.

Plus, maybe (just maybe) send a Thank You message to each new fan for joining in individually (BUT even the message within that email would need to be very carefully constructed because it’s normally so early within the relationship).

This new functionality could also provide an opportunity for FB Fan Page admins to individually notify competition winners and/or notify existing fans that they are in the running to win any new competitions (as a Value-Add) that the Page administrator may be conducting from time to time in an effort to entice more NEW fans to join their page.

Beyond that, at this stage I can’t see any other instance where I’d use this functionality personally…BUT I know for sure that some Facebook Fan Page Admins are going to misuse this new function and stuff up big time.

I think this is great for individuals or businesses using Facebook Fan Pages but be warned…if placed into the wrong hands or misused, it could dissolve your Facebook fan base very quickly.

Interested to hear what the B2 community thinks about this latest update on Facebook?

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.

I’m not really sure how to say this.

There’s something I think you need to know, but it involves a marketing client of mine — and I don’t want to seem like I am just spruiking my clients.

So, if you don’t want to hear about a new portal that helps Australian agents and developers reach buyers from China, just stop reading right now. If you read on, and still feel like I put my interests ahead of your interests as a reader, please abuse me in the comments section.

I’ll just talk about the four things that I think are most important for readers of Business2.com.au:

1. First, this news is not relevant to everyone. Advertising to buyers from China is not for every agent. The reason Juwai.com thinks that plenty of Australian agents will want to advertise on their portal is that Chinese buyers make up the fastest-growing buyer group in Australia at the moment. They spent more than $1 billion dollars in 2010 on Australia homes, and probably about $2.9 billion in 2011 — according to the best estimates Juwai.com has been able to make. (This data is not easily to track.)
2. Second, how much does it cost? For now it is free, if you go to juwai.com/advertise. Later, for a single property it will be $50 per month, for 10 properties it’s $100 per month, for up to 250 properties it’s $250 per month. (These are US dollar amounts, which amounts to nearly the same thing in Australian dollars.) Through deals with Thehomepage.com.au and Millionplus.com.au there already tens of thousands of Australian listings on Juwai.com. (In addition to more than a million listings from the US, UK and other countries.)
3. Third, how does it work? Like any portal, this new one has 2 heads: one that talks to the customer and one that talks to the agent. In this case, however, the two heads speak two different languages. The head facing the customer speaks Chinese and is full of all the best portal stuff for the Chinese buyer, like buying guides, news and data, social media tools, etc.
   The other head, facing the agent, speaks English. It works just like the agent admin section on just about any real estate portal you have ever used. And it also translates leads for you, and if you want can translate documents, emails, offers, etc. into English or Chinese.
4. The fourth thing is that this portal operates a call centre for Chinese customers. I found it interesting that the Chinese language is so difficult to type that — instead of sending an e-mail inquiry — people can be more likely to pick up the phone and dial a handful of digits. The call centre answers their questions, and also pre-qualifies leads for agents.

I’ll leave you with a few links to stories that I found in the media about Chinese buyers in Australia. Also, I’ll leave you with my apologies that this post is not in rhyme. (If you have no idea why I just said that, see the World’s First Rhyming Social Media Blog Post.)

• PropetyObserver.com.au: Asian buyers vital to Australian property market: Morry Schwartz
• Real Estate Business:  Mandarin listings a must to reach lucrative Chinese
• The Australian: Chinese buyers underpin housing prices
• Sydney Morning Herald: Chinese millions – and a loophole – keep luxury home market buoyant
• China Daily: Australia is now a hot real estate market for Chinese investors

I firmly believe that niche real estate portals can be successful and fill a gap which the major players Domain.com.au and Realestate.com.au don’t cater for. There is no better example than Farmbuy.com which targets a niche very relevant in Australia…rural properties.

Farmbuy.com launched in October 2009, it has grown from approx 4,000 unique browsers in the early days to now consistently achieve around 30,000-31,000 unique browsers per month (their stats). Currently they have approx 450 offices uploading – they include major franchises like First National, Ray White, Elders, PRD Nationwide and also a number of smaller independent rural agents.

I asked founder Philip Sondhu what he sees Farmbuy’s strategic advantage being:

• Farmbuy.com’s key focus is complimenting and enhancing our agents rural property marketing (something which appears that nobody else is doing well)
• Our site also incorporates a number “rural specific” tools, the main ones being the ability to search by weather district & land size, but more importantly once the buyer has found a property the user can run a number of farm income / production calculations to help work out the production and income capability of the property.
• By focusing on a niche we provide agents a qualified audience to market their rural properties to buyers solely interested in rural property. They’ve also found that by adding farmbuy.com to their suite of marketing tools it also helps them to win over vendors who like the fact that there is a dedicated / specialised online service in Australia.
• Lastly, this qualified audience has helped us gain 3rd party banner advertising from the likes of Commonwealth Bank, Rabobank, Suncorp Bank and John Deere who can leverage our site to reach the Agribusiness market. Farmbuy.com would now be one of the bigger online Agribusiness websites in Australia.

Philip also indicated that through the demand from the site audience another niche has emerged.

It is also of note that we now allow lifestyle properties to be listed on the site which was largely due to the demand coming out of metro areas.

A further example highlighting that web browsers are looking to begin their searches at content which is already relevant to their needs. What are your thoughts?

Late last month Realestateview undertook a small makeover to the residential section of their portal. What they’ve done is enhanced the usability of the site, provided extra content, improved the styling and overall, offer site browsers a better experience.

The key homepage improvements include:

1. Search – is now the main priority on the homepage allowing users to search for listings or agents. REV have also launched a search via map feature which can be selected from the homepage search.
2. Local Data – this is now a key part of the homepage and showcases a few graphs with medium prices. I’m surprised this does not link through to their property data section.
3. Expert View – useful information for vendors, property seekers and investors, links through to this section where site users can engage in forums.
4. My Searchers, My Shortlist and My Last Viewed – here REV have attempt to personalise the portal by providing information specific to site users.

Other changes within the site include removing the right sidebar for search results and on the property page they have added recent sales and suburb profile information which is sensible given the sold data they have access to. They’ve also moved away from the sidebar navigation and placed a secondary navigation across the top below the header. This provides a much cleaner and less cluttered experience for the user.

I think Realestateview has done a reasonable job with this upgrade and they’ll find users become a lot more engaged with the portal.

What are your thoughts?

Following on from the upgrade your listing feature launched by Thehomepage a few months ago, Realestate.com.au have added a similar feature to their listings. If you view any property on Realestate.com.au and click on the Show Page Visits link above the property images you will notice a lightbox popup, highlighting the Listing Performance for the property along with the Upgrade options available.

Users (most likely property vendors) are provided with bar graphs showing the increased views, engagement, sharing and enquiries generated from upgrading your listing. They can then view examples of  the various upgrade options with a call to action opening a lightbox popup to contact your agent.

Its this call to action which I find very alarming. REA know they can’t leave the agent out of this process so they maintain its the agents responsibility to upgrade the property. But unlike the Thehomepage, REA are capturing vendor details when the vendor fills in the form to contact the agent and by default the form has this checkbox ticked:

Send me my weekly campaign report on the performance of my property

This is very sneaky, as Realestate.com.au are capturing property vendor details against an agent’s authority and in most cases without the agent knowing.  It is anyone’s guess what Realestate.com.au will use these vendor details for or what product(s) they will push on them next.

Many agents are not aware of this upgrade section on REA and I’ve heard reports from agents being blasted by vendors after they’ve seen it, accusing the agent of not providing them with the best marketing solution. If REA had made agents aware of this section, then agents could have the opportunity to direct vendors here at the beginning of a marketing campaign.

Note: this agent has been randomly selected for illustrative purposes and was not contacted about this article.

League tables for suburb performance based on medians can make for popular reading. However the results should often be challenged, especially where sample sizes are small, property sales not representative or where the price ‘distribution curve’ is skewed.

For an agent working in one of these ‘worst’ suburbs, it is always good to know the ‘true’ growth figure, especially when questions or concerns are raised by vendors or purchasers. Sometimes the truth may be that one of your local suburbs is performing poorly, however if it is the result of some statistical anomaly, you certainly do not want to be troubled by it when already facing tough market conditions.

Let’s look at two recently published ‘worst’ suburbs:

Bellara 4507 QLD Units

The published figure states a ‘minus 65%’ growth rate. The suburb has around 10 sales per quarter currently, giving us a median of around $116,000. Back in Q2, 2010 we saw just 4 sales, which returned a median of $360k.

Neither the current samples of 10 or the prior sample of 4 are large enough to rely upon. If we changed our sample time period from 3 months to 6 months, we see an entirely different result. Using 6 months to October 2011 gives us a median of $115k and a sample size of 15. The same period 12 months earlier returns a median of $110k and a sample of 15 as well. The growth rate using this approach returns a plus 5% result. This result is very different from the minus 65%.

Whilst the sample size of 15 is much more reliable than the quarterly sample size, the reliability of the data should probably be questioned due to the ‘distribution’. Using a ‘price segmentation graph’ we would prefer to see something that looks a little bit like a bell-shaped curve in the current sample and also the prior year sample. Without both periods offering us an approximately normal distribution of values, we can’t rely on the plus 5% result.

East Melbourne Houses

The league table states this suburb has fallen in value by 43% in the last 12 months. When we look at the total number of sales in the last 6 months (to October 2011) we count just 2 sales! It is hardly a representative sample size. Even if we expand the sample period to 12 months till Oct’ 2011 we still only have 8 sales.

Using the full 12 month sample period returns an entirely different result. The median for the last 12 months was $1.88m. Compared to the year prior (median of $1.67m) we can arrive at a positive growth rate of nearly +13%.

As per our Bellara sample, the price distribution hardly resembles a bell shaped curve and indicates that the result may be unreliable.

Tips:

Whilst by no means an exhaustive list, here are a few tips for agents when reviewing median prices.

• As a general rule, try and work with sample sizes of around 20
• If comparing time periods, ensure you maintain apples with apples (e.g. 6 month sample periods)
• Look at the price segmentation graph – it ideally should a little like a bell-curve
• Watch out for new unit developments or new house and land releases. They will boost medians short-term and can often have the reverse effect long term.
• Expand your sample from suburb to postcode if required. If sales volumes still too low, you may have to expand to LGA.

Kent Lardner

www.pricefinder.com.au

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?

If you have a Google Apps Account and you understand how to administer this account you can now enable Google Plus for Google Apps for each of the users in your organisation and they in turn can now finally have a Google Plus Profile.

Note: If you are logged into your Google Apps GMail click on Manage Account (should be top right)

A Note on Facebook Pages
Facebook Pages are terrible, admittedly they are getting better. As a company we have invested a considerable sum in building applications for pages with some success, but it is a hard road and the rules governing these developments can be quite limited, with changes looming, it may get better for developers, but for business without integrated apps it can still be a very manual – time consuming affair.

Google Plus for Business

Yes, you will need to be on this site and yes Google Plus for Business (pages, brands) will be rolled out in the coming weeks. Here are some things you will need to know.

Google Apps Users will get Special Treatment
If you are a power user or you want to be a power user you should already be using Google Places, Google Reader (you site must have rss feeds), Google Webmaster, Google Analytics, Google Calendar and possibly even Feedburner. If you have a Google Account you can sign into that account to get access to all of these services (after sign-in)

The above have little to do with what you can accomplish with Google Plus but they definitely will make life easier once Google Business Pages rolls out.

Google Plus Company Pages

Looking through the Google Plus source we can definitely see what is on the horizon and most of this is pretty cool indeed and will have Facebook rolling out updates (finally) for Facebook pages.

Google Meeting
Like Hangouts, but for business, Google Meeting will allow you to organise, record and store, phone, text and video meetings with groups of up to 10 people. Attendees will be able to be invited via Google Calendar, GMail and Google Chat. The possibilities with this will be pretty cool for people to collaborate and share information on projects and the like.

Google Screencasts
You will be able to record screens and share them with people within this meeting, you will possibly be able to create notes whilst you record your screen on the screen and archive all of these within a screencast.

Google WhiteBoard
Google Whiteboard is a document style process where users can collaborate on documents, share them amongst users and then post them via email.

Google Location
This one is a wild guess, but looking at the code, it seems that you can also track people within an organisation (users must opt in) to see where they are currently located on a map.

My feeling is business pages will take over Google Sites, which is very underwhelming, this would mean users can create multiple business pages and create circles for those pages.

All in all Google Plus is building into a substantial success for Google and my belief with Google Company Pages being released shortly it is going to cause some headaches for Facebook. Better yet, we will all benefit from the competition as more and more features are rolled out. Competition – don’t you just love it.

How to get Shortcut (Vanity URL)

www.Gplus.to allows this. This nifty little app lets you create a short URL for your Google+ page, making it easier to share with your friends. As an example, is Gplus.to/peterricci , is much easier to remember instead of digits e.g http://plus.google.com/117489371829741156604

Updated

Google Plus for Business is now released in a basic form, so you can now create pages for Google+ Brands

Here is the official Google Blog Post
People + pages, better together
Google+ has always been a place for real-life sharing, and Google+ Pages is no exception. After all: behind every page (or storefront, or four-door sedan) is a passionate group of individuals, and we think you should able to connect with them too.

For you and me, this means we can now hang out live with the local bike shop, or discuss our wardrobe with a favorite clothing line, or follow a band on tour. Google+ pages give life to everything we find in the real world. And by adding them to circles, we can create lasting bonds with the pages (and people) that matter most.

For businesses and brands, Google+ pages help you connect with the customers and fans who love you. Not only can they recommend you with a +1, or add you to a circle to listen long-term. They can actually spend time with your team, face-to-face-to-face. All you need to do is start sharing, and you’ll soon find the super fans and loyal customers that want to say hello.

A number of pages are already available (see below), but any organization will soon be able to join the community at plus.google.com/pages/create.

• Anderson Cooper 360
• H&M
• Pepsi
• Business2

Direct Connect from Google search
People search on Google billions of times a day, and very often, they’re looking for businesses and brands. Today’s launch of Google+ Pages can help people transform their queries into meaningful connections, so we’re rolling out two ways to add pages to circles from Google search. The first is by including Google+ pages in search results, and the second is a new feature called Direct Connect.

Maybe you’re watching a movie trailer, or you just heard that your favorite band is coming to town. In both cases you want to connect with them right now, and Direct Connect makes it easy—even automatic. Just go to Google and search for [+], followed by the page you’re interested in (like +Angry Birds). We’ll take you to their Google+ page, and if you want, we’ll add them to your circles.

Direct Connect works for a limited number of pages today (like +Google, +Pepsi, and +Toyota), but many more are coming. In the meantime, organizations can learn more about Direct Connect in our Help Center.

I have just created my Google Apps Plus Account. You can add me here