All websites are based around a content management system (CMS) which is the platform that your real estate website is structured/built-on and which allows you to update website content. In real estate, basically all products offered by real estate web development companies are built from the software company’s own in-house CMS. A CMS they have spent years building and one they will not easily change and never hand the IP over to their clients.

From my experience the average real estate website costs around $6,000 to produce and then requires a monthly hosting and support charge of around $150 per month. If you decide you’d like to end your relationship with this company then your $6,000 is a sunk cost. Lets assume you stay 2 years with that software company then the actual cost of your solution is $400 per month. So you’re leasing (at a ridiculous price) a website from the software company indefinitely and at the end of the lease you receive nothing.

It does not stop there, as the web development company will find other ways to bleed money from you. If you require any type of change to the site then the company will quote what ever fee they feel fit (and some of the fees i’ve heard have been outrageous). As a site owner you either pay this fee or go without the site enhancement. As you can imagine this type of arrangement is very counter-productive for your online solution, as you can’t tweak SEO (or have specialist 3rd companies complete this), you can’t install 3rd party software on your site, and your likely to avoid enhancements because of the excessive cost involved.

So what are the alternatives? Unfortunately because of the technology involved in powering a real estate website and also maintaining the data exports means there are not too many solutions. However, there are a few companies in Australia who offer alternatives to an in-house CMS.

One alternative is to have the software development company build your own CMS. This way you own the IP of the CMS and have the ability to move your site if the relationship ever ends. In most cases your site will be build from a popular frameworks (eg .NET, PHP, ColdFusion) so finding another developer will not be an issue. The only downside to this solution is that it will be costly to build your own CMS system, in the proximity of $20,000 to $70,000.

There is one solution which is cost effective and will provide you with freedom and choice. That is to use an open source CMS which is free to use on a General Public License. These open source CMS are usually owned by a not for profit organization of web developers and designers, who’s goal is to share code amongst a worldwide community of developers in an effort to provide a free and powerful CMS for websites. PHP is an open source language and a few CMS build upon PHP include Joomla, WordPress, Drupal, CakePHP and Codeigniter.

Pro’s from using an Open Source CMS over an in-house CMS:

1. It’s FREE – Open source CMS are free so you never have to pay for the core software which your website is built on. You then never need to pay for an upgrade to the open source CMS.
2. You own your site – Because open source CMS are free means your website will work on any server located anywhere. This means once your site is build and you decide to end your relationship with your development company you can easily copy your website and install it on another server.
3. Far Superior – Open source CMS systems have 100’s of developers and designers Worldwide who contribute code and ideas to the system. On a monthly basis the organisation running the CMS will decide on what pieces of code are to be added in the next update. In-house CMS usually have 1 to 2 developers who work full time on improving the software.
4. Open source CMS are upgraded every 2 to 3 months – The best ideas from the 100’s of developers who have contributed code will be added to the CMS core, tested by the organisation and deployed in the next update. This means you can continually update your CMS with a stronger more powerful and feature rich CMS.
5. Less bugs – All of the 100’s developers who have contributed by adding code to the core CMS will then thoroughly test the updated Beta version of the CMS and quickly find any bugs it includes. Once again an in-house CMS might have 1 – 2 people testing it before it goes to market.
6. Endless Supply of Functionality – The way an open-source CMS works is that the CMS provides the core structure for the website. You then install plugins,  add-ons and widgets which provide additional functionality which the core CMS does not include.
7. Endless supply of developers and designers – If you end your relationship with your web developer then you can easily find 1000’s of developers and designers who can take over managing your website.
8. Freedom to Update – You or 3rd parties can have access to update the files for your site, meaning you can source cheap enhancements to your site through your existing developer or other developers.
9. Choices for pre designed Themes – If you have a budget and require a website for less than $100 (with no ongoing fees) then this is possible through an open source CMS. Check out Woo Themes a CMS theme selling site.

My advice for next time you’re looking around for a new real estate website is to make sure you’re first question is…….Do you use an in-house CMS? If they answer yes then hangup, if they answer no ask…..Do I own the IP for our site and if we end our relationship am I free to take our website at no cost?

If they answer yes to the last question then you’re onto a winner and you are truly undertaking an investment when you purchase a new website.

Domain last week released it’s first entry into the realm of iPad apps and it appears to be an awesome app at that!

The app is of course available free and bears no resemblance to the boring, slightly useful but very slow iPhone apps released previously by Domain and REA. This app makes searching for property for sale, rent, sold and share listings intuitive, fast and interesting.

The user interface is map based and you’re immediately greeted with a map of your current surroundings (presuming you allow the use of location services on your iPad) along with the properties around you for sale marked on the map and listed down the right hand side of the screen. Each listing is shown on the map with a location marker and properties not showing an address simply come up in the property summary area. Showing property locations on a map can sometimes be very confusing when you have say 10 units for sale in the one complex. Many systems will simply have 10 place markers and most will become hidden and therefore useless. Fairfax has addressed this by showing on the one place marker how many properties are available at that location and by pressing on the location marker you are given a list of the addresses and prices with a link to each property.

You can change to search for rentals, sold listings or share accommodation at the top of the screen and can refine listings via price range, features, property type, land size or inspection details at the bottom left of the screen. By pressing twice on the property summary a detail page opens up covering the map with all property details much the same as the property detail page on the web and you can save multiple properties as favourites to reference again later. From the property detail page you make an email enquiry and view photo’s and floor plans.

This app will help to make agents uploading listings without addresses a thing of the past. With tools for sorting by inspections and the ability to genuinely follow listings around the streets you like, agents will now; more than ever before need to ensure full listing details are uploaded to guarantee the highest possible exposure to buyers/renters. Possibly for the first time, a buyer/renter could plan their day house hunting directly from mobile technology.

I love the layout of the user interface and if I was having an app designed to showcase our listings today I’d be replicating a lot of what is in this app (there’s a hint for Peter & Ryan). The app seems to be genuinely optimized for displaying results on the iPad; it’s fast, clear and eye catching.

What are you going  to come out with REA? It better be good because Domain has a great head start here!

You can download the app on iTunes or visit it here.

There’s no denying that the Apple iPhone has dominated the mobile telephone market in recent times and tech heads seem to have created apps for pretty much every purpose imaginable. Now an app has been released suitable for Australian real estate agents to perform quick calculations.

Agent Calculator has been developed by Tasmanian real estate agent, Patrick Berry in association with Panotasmania.com

Agent Calculator gives four categories of calculations; Agents Commission, Stamp Duty, Area Conversion and Rental Yield calculator.

When you first start the app you select which State you’re operating in (the app also supports New Zealand) and the state can be changed at any time.

The app is very easy to use and navigate with just four ‘menu’ choices at the bottom of the screen to switch between the four types of calculation.

The Commission calculator is quite basic, providing a total package including commission, GST and advertising costs. The only downside I see to this calculation is that the App assumes that all commission rates you enter are GST exclusive, so adds GST on. I’d suggest a tick box be added where you can select whether the commission percentage you’ve entered is GST inclusive or exclusive, this would be handy for agents charging say three percent including GST. The commission calculator provides different options for different states ie. Allows for a sliding scale commission rate for Queensland for example. There are two commission calculators for New Zealand, fixed percentage and sliding scale.

The Stamp Duty calculator allows different options reflecting the various differences between states. For NSW, the calculator asks whether the purchase is for a ‘first home buyer’ and whether the home is a ‘brand new home’ in order to give a correct total. In Victoria, the app asks whether the property is to be the ‘principal residence’.

The Area Converters are again basic as they should be. Squares to Square Metres and Acres to Hectares. Each calculation can of course be done in reverse.

The Rental Yield calculator is the function I liked best as I, like many agents are hopeless when it comes to anything more difficult than simple arithmatic. Simply enter the property price, the rent and whether the rent is weekly, fortnightly, monthly or yearly and you get the yield. The Rental Yield calculator is simple, clean and completed in a second.

The cost to download Agent Calculator is just $1.99. I think the app would provide value to many agents and let’s face it, you can’t get much for under two dollars that’ll provide any productivity benefit. Clearly, Apple feels the same way, ranking the app as ‘new and noteworthy’ and there have reportedly been plenty of downloads so far with the app being featured as one of the top 5 paid apps within 3 days of its release.

With more and more agents using iPhones and a huge predicted take-up of the iPad amongst agents over the coming year, tools like Agent Calculator could be seen as almost ‘necessary’.

All in all, Agent Calculator is a very useful app that does everything it claims to do!

Agent Calculator can be downloaded at the app store http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/agent-calculator/id443102280?mt=8#

A broad range of real estate industry professionals attended the event including executives from The Professionals, Ray White, Laing & Simmons, RP Data, Fairfax, RE Uncut, real estate portals, software companies, mortgage brokers, real estate trainers and agents from across Australia and New Zealand. To help launch the event Jeff Turner a very popular real estate and social media presenters in the US and a seasoned American RE BarCamp contributor attended the event.

The day started with the attendees getting together and deciding what would be the topics for the morning’s 8 breakout groups. Moderators were then decided and 4 groups ran for 1 hour followed by the next 4 topics for another hour. After lunch the afternoon group topics were set, moderators allocated and the groups ran again for 1 hour each.

Some popular real estate topics included:

• CRM Systems
• Mobile phone technology
• WordPress
• Real estate portals
• Sold data sharing
• Social Media
• Lead Generation
• SEO
• Online marketing

I discussed the event with numerous attendees and the feedback was amazing, most commenting the event was relaxed, informative and they couldn’t wait for the next BarCamp. At this stage the organises are thinking (but are open to any suggestions) it will be a bi-annual event and are hoping to expand it to other Australian cities later in the year. Special thanks is needed to those who put the event together and include:

• Peter Brewer
• Lara Scott
• Tatiana Mijalica
• Peter Fletcher
• Ben Stockdale
• Greg Vincent

What’s important about these BarCamps is that they’re not for profit and community run, meaning anyone is welcome to be involved and help with planing and running BarCamps. If you’d like to help with the next Sydney event or bring RE BarCamp to your city then feel free to contact any of the guys and get involved.

Well done to all and I look forward to the next RE BarCamp!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I’ve recently discussed the merits of the portal with Craig Honeyman owner and Managing Director:

Q. Craig, what were your goals in establishing Realestateguide?

A. Our goal very early on was to develop a system that would deliver quality traffic and leads independently of major portal support. We do not upload to REA and never have.

Q. What are the key performance indicators for Realestateguide?

A. Between 2008-2010 we tested with only 1000 listings and received top traffic results

• Close to 1 million visitors total
• 772,000 Totally unique visitors direct from successful organic placements
• Close to 80% Australian traffic
• 4.3 million page views

With close to 1 million visitors in 3 years (on only 1000 listings) you can see how this platform would increase in traffic and leads exponentially if the data was increased dramatically.

Q. Craig, what differentiates the Realestateguide portal model from existing portals in Australia?

A. Our system should be thought of as one that bridges the SEO gap between the user and agent:

(1) User Search- Search Engine > (2) RealEstateGuide > (3) Agent Listings > (4) Leads to Agent

Our system also allows for unique custom keyword entries for each listing. This can be achieved by the agent logging into their account or by our main administration. As listings are upgraded to Feature or Executive placements, their ranking increases meaning more traffic is achieved.

The unique advantage of this platform is that when data increases, so too will the traffic and leads to advertisers. This is because of successful organic search structure. This system ranks the agents listings independently in Google and other engines as well as our main suburb or state directories.

Q. Does your model work and if so do you have solid figures to back it up?

A. This portal has been under slow development since 1999. We have deliberately kept this model back until we knew that it could deliver quality lead generation.

Since 2005 we invested a considerable amount of time, money and focus into back end structure and SEO for this platform. With 3 years of testing we received 89% of all traffic via (not paid) but organic search engine placements. In other words close to 90% of all visitors found us in a successful organic search. Google topped this at 71%.

The majority of agents who have tested receive quality lead generation above the majority of the larger free portals and some paid subscription based platforms.

Q. How much can someone buy Realestateguide for?

A. We are now requesting major industry funding and support to launch this portal to the next level. A total purchase of this portal model would be considered or part therein.

Is this just another portal beating their chest and pretending they do things better than their competitors? My opinion is no, as in relation to delivering property seeker leads I know for a fact they do achieve this. Only a handful of my clients list on Realestateguide but in discussions with 4 of them they’ve indicated that the enquiries they receive from Realestateguide are in most cases more than what they receive from Myhome or Homehound. This is quite an achievement given they only have 1000 listings on the portal.

I’ll let you be the judge for yourself but Craig is happy to answer any questions through the forum or can be contacted on 0457 080 683. Further details in relation to what’s on offer in the sale can be viewed here.

I have just realised that tomorrow the 17th of Feb (or that could be today, or even yesterday, depending on when you read this!) is my 10th  anniversary of having a presence on the internet. The day I uploaded my first website www.underdownunder.com.au for my business at the time, a backpacker tour company in Tasmania.

What a Pathetic thing to remember ,I hear you say! Does he have it in his diary? Did he get a Tattoo to mark the occasion? No I didn’t.

What I did was to go to the Internet Archive, Wayback Machine! What a fantastic service. The Internet Archive Wayback Machine allows you to enter a Web address and see what the site looked like over the years. You can select dates of major changes to sites over the years, right back to 1996.

Not only is this site a lot of fun, but it can be a very useful tool in analysing web presence history. Of course, besides my own site, the first name I entered was Google. Here we find the first loaded page for The Internet Giant, some might say God. Nov 11th 1998. And a Link page that is very basic, and says…

Welcome To Google

Google Search Engine Prototype

Might-work-some-of-the-time-prototype-that is much more up to date.

And have a look at the first search page…

Everything they are now is there, then. A solid foundation, that has not been compromised. The Logo is instantly recognisable and the function of the site is the same. Basic Principles adhered to and they are number 1. Yahoo, a similar result. From their first page you can see their direction albeit exactly what they are today, a bit of everything for everybody.

Now, try finding Facebook’s earliest incarnations of what we have today. They have blocked it from showing. Does this indicate a fundamental flaw in their character? (or ours?)

It’s interesting also to see the evolution of our largest Real Estate sites as well, RealEstate.com.au and Domain.com.au.

Anyway I won’t go into anymore musings over the many conclusions that could be drawn over timelines and changes we see, you can do that. Have a play around with it, you’ll have fun.

Or maybe you will think I am pathetic!!!

With online solutions its possible for an innovation to rapidly move through each level far quicker than the offline world would allow. Look at the use of Facebook and Twitter in our industry. A little over 18 months ago Twitter and Facebook where only being used by the Innovators and the Early Adopters in our industry. That quickly changed and by the end of 2009 it was being picked up by the Early Majority and today we see the start of the Late Majority joining the party.

So it had me thinking whats going to be the big things of 2011 online for real estate agents and early evidence suggests that three big breakouts to hit the Early Majority for 2011 will be Video, Mobile and Single Property Websites.
To breakout to the majority things generally have to change. There is generally and update or a new technology or something that facilitates the change and for my suggestions there is a change that will facilitate that greater adoption.

Video

Video has been used by real estate agencies for a few years. Online video broke through to the majority with the advancement of broadband internet connections to the home and Youtube is now one of the world’s most popular websites. Despite this video has not reached the same popularity in our industry and has remained a niche product only with the Early Adopters.

So whats going to change? Realestate.com.au is about to launch their video product. Domain were first to the punch last year but realestate.com.au are going to be doing it bigger and better and has gathered the resources and man power from around the country under one banner.

This army of video contractors will provide a consistent product across the country but best of all video will be a main feature of the realestate.com.au portal and will finally come of age in our industry. 2011 will have video written all over it and you can smell it in the air. Every article published on Business 2 so far this year includes something about video.

Mobile

Smartphones and Tablets are becoming hugely popular placing internet access into the palms of the people and they are using it to visit our websites. Over the past couple of years some real estate website providers have offered mobile websites to their clients but till now the concentration has been on making the property pages fit a mobile device and not the whole site.

On our website we are currently receiving an average of over 25 unique visitors every day from mobile devices including ipods, ipads, iphones and android devices. By the end of the year I expect that number to triple or even more as these “smarter” phones and web enabled mobiled devices become more and more popular.
What stood out most though was that the majority of visits were to non-property pages. In fact 75% of visitors came from Google to view a non-property page.

If that is how the public are viewing our websites we as agents need to deliver the best experience to them and start offering mobile friendly versions to those arriving with via mobile devices. More and more agents will create 100% mobile optimised sites.

Single Property Websites

I remember creating a standalone property website from scratch for a client many many years and swearing that I would never do it again. Over the past couple of years templated versions have become popular allow agents to create a standalone website in minutes. They have certainly attracted their fair share of Early Adopters in the industry but have struggled to gain a wider acceptance.

TheHomePage.com.au is one of Australia’s newest free portals and the team is thinking outside of the box with many things they are doing. Along the way the team may have found the magical ingredient that will introduce single property websites to a much wider audience and have called it MyPropertyAddress.com.au. With the previous suppliers there was still a significant investment in time uploading and commissioning the website. Whilst it is no longer measured in hours like my original attempt year ago it is still a significant amount of time especially when you are doing multiple property. When you factor in price changes for all of your property the time invested can still be quite significant.

Because TheHomePage.com.au already receive all of your information as a portal (and if you are not sending your properties to them now, I recommend you should) they can make a single property website with literally a couple of clicks.

The result is a professional website with great SEO benefit back to your main website with very little effort. The site will be constantly updated with absolutely no additional time needed at all.

Here are a couple of examples :- http://84teasdaledrivenerang.com and http://224theesplanadeuminabeach.com.

You can probably expect the current manual style operators scrambling to get hold of an xml feed themselves to replicate the sheer simplicity. You might also see other companies who already receive or send xml property feeds try and tap into this type of product and join the fray. For now though thehomepage’s MyPropertyAddress.com.au is the only one that I know of that has the process as simple as possible

These are for my mind the top 3 solutions that are on the horizon of making the biggest impact for agents online. The real question is though, are you going to be the Early Majority, the Late Majority or one of the Laggards.

The application is designed for an individual agent and allows you to manage contacts (both property seekers and potential vendors) while on the go and out of the office. There are three core sections in the app, these include Contacts, Properties and Tasks. You have the ability to customise the fields in each of these sections allowing you to input the information which you feel is most valuable.

You can add contacts assigning them to open times or events, match buyers with properties and send email alerts to these buyers.  The app also has the ability to allow you to publish content to your social networks. For example, if you’ve added a new property seeker to your Contacts, you could then Tweet their requirements to your Twitter follows.

All data entered through the application can be synced with your computer and with some 3rd party services like Gmail and cloud based mail servers.

Overall, it looks to be a very intuitive yet simple to use CRM application. There are no ongoing fees just a fixed purchase fee of USD199.99. The only drawback I see, is there’s no way to sync the property data in the app with data from a 3rd party server. This would save time as it would mean property data would not need to be double handled. Lets hope they release an API to do this.