With a name like BarCamp it’s no wonder Aussie’s have taken strongly to the concept but an REBarCamp is not really about a bunch of real estate agents hanging out in the bar.

A BarCamp is a user-generated conferences that is full of open participatory workshop-events, the content of which is provided by participants.  A REBarCamp is a barcamp for real estate agents.

One of the most often words to describe a barcamp is an unconference.

A typical real estate conference has a lineup of paid speakers and a strict agenda to follow whereas with an unconference there are no scheduled presentations or paid speakers. The day’s agenda is actually decided during the morning registration period by attendees submitting possible sessions that they’d like to participate in or lead.

The sessions are divided up into different groups, and organized by skill level, relevance and potential popularity. Typical subjects for a REBarCamp might include Blogging, WordPress Plugins, Video Blogging, iPad Presentations, SEO, Cloud Computing, Social Media 101 for Agents and making the most of your Smartphone.

Organising the days agenda

Just as the “social” experience has taken over much of what we do on the internet an unconference is a conference with big injection of social into it.  The attendees not only create the conference and participate it.

I love a quote from Mike Meuller in the states on the REBarCamp concept when he said:-

“In purist terms, a REBarCamp experience should be the single biggest learning event you attend all year (assuming you attend only one).  Yes, there are exceptions to the rule and every REBC is different, but if you attend a REBC and think it wasn’t worth every minute of your time there’s only one person to blame.”

The first BarCamp was created and organized in one week in 2005 in the US and the first REBarCamp was held in San Fransisco just 3 years ago. Since then over 300 events have been held throughout the US and this year the concept moved to Australia. Sydney was the first Australian REBarCamp, followed recently by Perth and on November 30th  the first Queensland event at Brisbane will be held at the Pineapple Hotel.

REBarCamp Sydney held earlier this year

I am one of the organisers for REBarCamp Brisbane so if you are going to be in BrisVegas at the end of November we would love you to join in on the discussion but you better be quick and register.  You can read more information about the Brisbane event on its’s Facebook Page and Peter Brewer’s recent blog post.

Other REBarcamps are in the planning stages so if you did not make it to Sydney or Perth and cant get to Brisbane keep an eye out for the next event in your area at www.rebarcamp.com.au

Did you attend REBarCamp Sydney or REBarCamp Perth??  Let us know your experience!

I was fortunate to be able to attend the Real Estate Connect Conference in San Francisco in July, as well as a RE BarCamp and the Property Portal Workshop the same week … Peter asked if I could give my impressions, so here are my main five takeaways from the week.

1. SOCIAL Engagement

Your real estate market place is conversing, learning, sharing and living on social networks. There’s no debate about having to be there, it is more about how to engage (probably the word I heard most all week).

Some stats:

• 107 trillion e-mails were sent last year, 89% were spam. (Trend: email is dying, the younger gens don’t email anymore, they connect via social networks)
• There are 1.8bn email accounts, but now 3bn social accounts. Social overtook email a year ago.
• By Christmas 2012, Facebook will have 1 billion members.
• 14% of people believe advertising, 90% believe personal recommendations in the social space (Trend: do less advertising, do more work in the social space)
• 75% people share a good recommendation with a friend
• 58% of business discoveries are from friend recommendations

However, be warned – don’t just jump in without thinking. People out there are more confused than ever; you need to give them clarity, brevity and direction.

The local real estate agent should think of themselves more as a media company. Your job is not to be better than another broker, but to be better than the local paper’s journalist.

For the best example of customer service done via social media, Google “Peter Shankman Mortons Steak House”’

2. The World’s gone MOBILE

You need to design your web site (your whole customer experience online) for mobile, not the regular PC.

Mobile is a priority because your clients are using it, and this trend will increase. Within two years, there will be more surfing the Net on a mobile device than a regular PC.

People’s app phones therefore become the device they want them to be – to help them work, play games, contact their friends and make new ones, even to play a musical instrument (see ‘Ocarina’ app). Apps like ‘word lens’ translate anything you point the phone at, even translating in the correct font and colour!

Some stats:

• 82% use Internet to research, 25% include mobile for research
• in the States 1 in 6 real estate queries are now on mobile = 16%.
• however 4 in 5 businesses are not ready on mobile – that’s like only being open on Tuesday!
• consumers love clicking to call. 60% of these searches end up with a call to the business. 60% visit.
• Mobile users are more engaged (that word again), are 1.6 more times to email an agent, 3 times more likely to call agent than PC user (they have a phone in their hand after all)
• Mobile users 2.5 more likely to look at the property page than PC users
• 2 times as likely to visit agent site (yet most don’t have mobile sites set up!)
• 5 times more likely to share on social networks than PC viewer

3. Everything’s Going TOUCH

The PC is dead, we are post PC.

This move to tablet is a big change, it’s like going from DOS to Windows, from silent to talkies, from black & white to colour.

Mobile app phones and tablets (like the iPad) are fundamentally different devices. You can’t design for all 3 screens. The experience and context are different.

The ‘draw’ tool on realtor.com’s iPad app allows the user to touch the screen and draw (with your finger) an area of the map they are interested in. The area shades in and properties fly in. An ‘InBox’ listing the same properties opens on the left and you can interact with either.

The ‘scout’ tool on the same app allows you to drive through a neighbourhood with the information updating in real time as you drive (obviously the passenger has the iPad, you are driving!)

Once you have experienced the tactile nature of the iPad, the keyboard and mouse of a regular PC does not seem so great anymore.

4. LIFESTYLE Search

Property & business searching has been pretty much the same in 15 years – you click for regions and suburbs, price ranges and bed/bath and hit the search button. This is (when you think about it) a very crude database driven result, and is not thinking about things from the customer/user’s point of view.

With property searching for example, few people know the post codes, and people don’t start with bedrooms and suburbs anyway, it’s more commute times, schools, near a park, … Consumers have been going off and seeking this information and then getting back to the portals to search for properties, now the portals and real estate web sites need to have this embedded. These sites will be the ones of the future.

People are looking and thinking about lifestyle 18 months before they move house or change job or buy a business. It’s only in the last few months they actually look at houses or the businesses concerned. So start with lifestyle.

The best site doing this is Nabewise.com – a site set up last year in New York, which has now covered over 18 US cities.

Another site doing this well is Walkscore. They calculate a score (out of 100) on how walkable the local amenities are to it. Unbiassed referrals are more higher praised, and now agents are mentioning the ‘walkscore’ rating in their ads.

5. Your Online REPUTATION

In these days of instant blogging and social networking, anyone can write anything they like whenever they like, to anyone, anytime.

The same way we love Google so we can find the best camera or car, read reviews and such, so the public will use it to find the best real estate agent.

Don’t think you can turn your back on this – people will talk about you anyway. If people are angry they will post. They will vent on Twitter. There are far more people buying and selling their property than there are real estate agents. So there is much more chat ABOUT real estate agents than the chat real estate agents create.

What can you do?
- the most important thing is join in, engage (that word yet again) and not retreat
- use your Facebook community page and Twitter account, and blog local
- monitor: set up google alerts (google.com/alerts) – set them up for your name, your business (with various misspellings);
- Use Tweetdeck or Hootsuite to check on relevant ‘streams’ of chat
- if you get a negative, engage respectfully and see if you can put it right. If you turn them around, they will become your best advocate.
- deliver as many pages that you control as possible so you own the first few pages of Google.

How to do it wrong?
Don’t Streisand yourself. In 2003 she sued a photographer over photos of her house (he had innocently photographed her house in one of 12,000 published photos of the Californian coastline), but this became the story. “Streisanding yourself” then became a term. Freedom of speech is popular on the web, and if there is an attempt to restrain that, it is very unpopular. This really back fires. It ends up Streisanding.

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!

As you may have seen from my previous articles posted here on Business2, I’m very passionate about our industry and am constantly on the look out for changes in technology and what lies ahead for our industry.

Over the past couple of years I’ve been travelling around the country teaching real estate agents about how they can embrace Social Media marketing and tackle some of the many challenges facing agents when it comes to online real estate marketing.

I must say that one of the things that I’ve enjoyed the most is being able to share information not just from my personal experience but moreso the insights that I’ve learned via information and tips that others have openly shared with me across the web.

I’ll never cease to be amazed at how much free information you can get from others over the internet if you look in the right spot or ask the right people the right way.

And it’s this openness of the web and information that has provided a format and the foundations upon which the concept of RE BarCamp was founded over in the US and is also the reason why a group of us are proud to be bringing RE BarCamp to Australia.

RE BarCamp is an open, no agenda format where agents, principals, property managers, admin, suppliers, trainers, etc can meet up for FREE within an environment where debate, questioning, open discussion and sharing of ideas are nurtured and encouraged.

Typically the Re BarCamp ‘unconferences’ are scheduled around other conferences to make it easy for interstate travellers to access the session by sticking around for an extra day and our first RE BarCamp in Australia is no exception.

The first RE BarCamp in Sydney has been scheduled to take place the day after AREC11 on Tuesday the 24^th May 2011 at The Loft, 13 Lime Street, Kings Wharf from 10am to 4pm.

Behind the scenes a group of like-minded people (including myself) have been working voluntarily to bring this great, not-for-profit, learning environment to our Australian shores so that the real estate industry as a whole can benefit from an event (unconference) based upon sharing, collective thinking and openness.

I’m looking forward to sharing industry and topic opinions often talked about on the Business2 blog, in person with others and hopefully meet up with some of the readers/contributors from Business2.

To find out more about RE BarCamp, who is behind it, who is attending, booking your spot and why you should attend, Click Here…

BIG THANK YOU to the team at Business2 for your support of RE BarCamp’s launch into Australia. We really appreciate the opportunity and support.

Note: Whilst RE BarCamp is being held the day after AREC11, it is a separate event which means that you don’t have to be a delegate of AREC11 to attend.

Disclaimer: I am part of the group of people who are passionately volunteering to bring the RE BarCamp sharing environment to the Australasian Real Estate Industry.

Whilst I was there I decided to give my FlipHD video recorder a run and do a few little interviews with some vendors I found that had interesting software that could benefit the real estate industry. Some of these are USA specific, but some also offer services in Australia.

So here are the interviews (please forgive the shoddy camera work)

Go Paperless – Mehrdad Alaei

Go Paperless Solutions provides software for the mobile real estate professional. Real Estate Dashboard and eSignOnline will change the way you work. I caught up with Mehrdad Alaei to talk a little about his software.

Go Paperless – Mehrdad Alaei from Peter Ricci on Vimeo.

More Information: www.gopaperless.com

NabeWise – Ann Baldinucci

Nabewise allows you to search for neighborhoods based on preferences by offering real time rankings and a neighborhood scorecard in key categories such as quality of life, people, things to do, character and schools. I caught up with Ann Baldinucci for a quick chat.

NabeWise – Ann Baldinucci from Peter Ricci on Vimeo.

More information: www.nabewise.com

DIYThemes.com – Chris Pearson

The Thesis Theme for WordPress is a premium template system designed to serve as the rock-solid foundation beneath any kind of website. Simply put, Thesis is powerful. It has a remarkably efficient HTML + CSS + PHP framework and easy-to-use controls that you can use to fine-tune each and every page of your site with a tactical precision that has never been possible before. I caught up with Founder and co speaker Chris Pearson to chat a little about his software.

DIYThemes.com – Chris Pearson from Peter Ricci on Vimeo.

For more information: www.diythemes.com

Qonnect.mobi – Emil Sheth

Qonnect allows real estate agents to efficiently push their listings content to mobile. The software also works with QR Codes. I spoke with Emil Sheth about this software.

Qonnect.mobi – Emil Sheth from Peter Ricci on Vimeo.

More information: www.qonnect.mobi

WordPress – Jane Wells

Jane is the user experience lead for WordPress, and has worked in the web industry for 10 years. Though her apartment is in the East Village, she spends much of her time traveling to WordCamps and meeting WordPress users to incorporate their feedback into each new version. I spoke with Jane about WordPress and her role within the community.

WordPress – Jane Wells from Peter Ricci on Vimeo.

For more information: www.wordpress.org

Street Advisor – Justin Adler

StreetAdvisor.com is an online community where people talk, learn and discover what life is like in millions of streets and cities worldwide. Connecting Real Estate Professionals with local home buyers, renters and sellers. I spoke with Just Adler about the software.

Street Advisor – Justin Adler from Peter Ricci on Vimeo.

More information: www.streetadvisor.com

SmartZip.com – Avi Gupta

SmartZip analytics offers independent investment ratings and analysis on over 70 million homes nationwide,which helps home buyers and investors make better informed, more confident home purchase decisions. I spoke with Avi Gupta about the software and services.

SmartZip.com – Avi Gupta from Peter Ricci on Vimeo.

More information: www.smartzip.com

Well, that’s all from Real Estate Connect San Francisco today. Next week we will be posting an interview with Simon Baker about his new venture!

Earlier this week I posted an article on apmasphere (a popular Australian Property Management online forum) about REINSW forces changes to NSW Government’s Residential Tenancies Bill, but after speaking with Sam Kremer, Legal Counsel from the REINSW earlier today it appears that the bill looks like being pushed through Parliament in its current form.

The NSW Residential Tenancy Bill 2010 is an extremely important piece of legislation for the real estate industry and it seems strange that after so much time and effort has been dedicated to creating the new bill that the Government sees fit to push it through in its current form without providing reasonable time.

The NSW Government have only provided “four or five days to read and understand the many changes in the final bill”, not much time for  stakeholders and industry bodies to review the recent overhaul to the original bill proposed back in Novemebr 2009, which was labelled as “the biggest attack on landlords in NSW’s history” by the Property Owners Association of NSW.

It’s been 23 years since the last NSW Residential Tenancy Bill was passed back in 1987 and now after 5 years in the making, why is there a huge push to pass the newly amended bill through Parliament right now? Especially, after providing very little opportunity for stakeholders to review the amendments and their possible repercussions.

In her speech before passing the motion that the bill be agreed to in principal, Hon. Virginia Judge, the Minister for Fair Trading and Minister for The Arts said ” the primary aim of the Residential Tenancies Bill 2010 is to rewrite and overhaul the current legislation. As I have outlined, the bill will bring the regulation of residential tenancies up to date and in line with modern industry practices. It will remove archaic and redundant provisions. It will also make more than 100 reforms, which have arisen from a review of the existing legislation—laws that have remained largely the same for more than 20 years.

All the amendments contained in the bill have been the subject of extensive consultation with individual landlords, agents and tenants; community groups who have an interest in this area; those who provide assistance and advice at the coalface every day to those with a tenancy problem; the Consumer, Trader and Tenancy Tribunal, which has the difficult job of trying to resolve tenancy disputes when things go wrong; and peak bodies such as the Tenants Union of NSW, the Real Estate Institute and the Property Owners Association.”

In his Parliamentary speech Shadow Minister for Fair Trading Greg Aplin MP said, “The draft of the Residential Tenancies Bill 2009 was a written expression of a philosophical view that tenants can prosper on their own, without considering the impact on their landlords; that the best way to achieve gains for tenants is to bludgeon their landlords into accepting unreasonable and, frankly, humiliating conditions; and that a government can seek to carry on with its plans in ignorance of the warning bells tolling loudly in the rental marketplace.”

It appears that the government have finally decided to sit up and take some notice to their constituents/stakeholders and have done an about-face on the original draft bill but with so many amendments it appears that the new bill is being pushed through Parliament fairly swiftly without allowing time for much consideration from the people who helped the Government get the bill back on track to what it should be.”

Greg Aplin also went on to say, “Despite all 1,600 submissions and many years of review, it still looks like the Government simply went to sleep on the couch and let the process of review roll over the top of it. That is, until the Government was woken up with a bucket of cold water thrown by various stakeholders—and its own members of Parliament who have heard the cries from their own shocked constituents. Unfortunately, this lack of early focus by the Government meant that everyone else had to waste time and emotional energy on a draft bill, which was a practical mess. It is dangerous to create many new rights, which are poorly expressed.

Despite a 23-year wait for reform, stakeholders now have just four or five days to read and understand the many changes in the final bill. This is an impossible task. The number of drafting errors and other faults, as indicated, should be sufficient notice to the Government to let the debate continue until the spring sittings. Several stakeholder committees are struggling with the ridiculous haste, suddenly come upon them, of seeking input from their members and responding with due attention to this complex bill. Until that time, the bell will continue to toll for thee.”

MP Ray Williams said, “I do not believe that this bill is much different from the draft bill. The Government has taken a long time to introduce it and the draft bill certainly sent shock waves through the community. I do not believe there was a fear campaign, although I do believe that many of the mum and dad investors were frightened about what could happen to their properties. It has been recently reported that one in 10 couples in New South Wales has a negatively geared investment property. That is a huge number of people and it represents an enormous percentage of the private rental market. Tenants NSW suggests that they are amateur landlords and that they should be removed from the market. I do not believe that we could provide adequate residential accommodation across this State if it were not for those many hundreds of thousands of mum and dad investors. The New South Wales Government could never provide enough accommodation given reports indicating that there are 27,000 homeless people in this State.”

MP Craig Baumann said,”Like so much of the legislation dreamt up by this struggling Government, the Residential Tenancies Bill 2010, when presented in draft form, was abhorrent. It highlighted once again just how incompetent and out of touch this Government has become. Fortunately, the most hideous elements of the draft bill have been duly dispatched thanks to the New South Wales Opposition, but not before the Government managed to upset, in some way, numerous elements of the real estate industry, terrify landlords, and waste the time of many stakeholders in the rental and tenancy industry as they attempted to grasp this bill. In the first instance, I condemn the Government for this short sightedness. “

MP Michael Richardson said, “One has only to read the statement issued by the Property Owners Association of New South Wales at the time the draft bill was released. The association described the bill as “the biggest attack on landlords in NSW’s history”. The Real Estate Institute of New South Wales was equally scathing in its condemnation of the draft legislation. Therefore, I am pleased that the Minister listened to the concerns expressed and that she amended that dangerous piece of legislation to make it far more reasonable and balanced, as the Minister herself said she had done in her agreement in principle speech.

The Real Estate Institute of New South Wales said in a release dated 4 June 2010 that is was pleased the Government had listened to its concerns and made key changes. However, the institute indicated that it still had some concerns about the legislation. It said that the Government was trying to rush the legislation through without sufficient time for proper consultation. I suspect that that is because the Government has made so many changes to the legislation that the full impact of those changes still needs to be considered. Some of the changes the Real Estate Institute of New South Wales pressured the Government to make include abandoning a proposal to give tenants the right to break a fixed term tenancy agreement during the fixed term in return for payment of a “break fee”.

As the member for Albury said, essentially that would have meant that that overruled the contract law and the tenant could simply tear up the contract, pay the “break fee”, and walk out the door. The institute also pressured the Government to scrap the compulsory proposal to cap a landlord’s damages, including loss of rent, if a tenant abandoned rented premises, and to maintain the current obligation on a landlord to mitigate their loss in such circumstances. That is only sensible. The Real Estate Institute further pressured the Government to provide greater certainty for landlords when terminating periodic tenancies, and to further limit its proposals to allow tenants to make minor changes to the landlord’s property or to sublet the property without the landlord’s consent. However, the institute still opposes these two proposals in principle and will continue to lobby against them. Allowing tenants to make minor changes to landlords’ property was the area of greatest concern in the bill for the Real Institute of New South Wales and the Property Owners’ Association of New South Wales. Having discussed this with some of my colleagues on this side of the House, I remain sceptical that the bill will encourage more people to invest in residential property and ease the rental shortage in this city that is pushing rents to unprecedented levels. Nevertheless, it is significantly better than the draft bill put out last November. “

MP Ms Clover Moore said, “given its length, I believe the bill should sit on the table for at least 28 days to enable members to consult with their communities. I also believe that the scare campaign initiated by the Real Estate Institute of New South Wales is unfounded and unhelpful. Most protections under this bill will help landlords and the modest improvements for tenants, such as making it easier to get a picture hook fixed in a living room, will not drive landlords out of the market.

The Tenants Union refers to data by the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute that shows a very weak link between rental investment and tenancy law reform. Research shows that only 7 per cent of landlords have ever considered tenancy laws and that rental property investment is driven by the ability to negative gear and by potential property value gains. Many people consider property a safer investment than stocks or shares, and this bill will not lead to an exodus of landlords from the rental market.”

If the bill gets passed through the Upper House in its current form it will be interesting to see how many amendments will need to be made & how the new bill and its changes will affect agents and investment within NSW.

I understand that a decision needs to be made sometime but rather than pushing the bill through swiftly, I wish the government understood how changes in legislation (both small or large) impacts agents/property managers not only in the overall management and enforcement of tenancy laws but also in the day to day running of an agency.

It would be a pointless exercise to have all the Property Managers/Agents brought up to speed with the new legislation only to find that the Government have to make lots of amendments to the bill again shortly afterwards.

If you’d like to see more of the Parliamentary discussion around this important issue check out…

http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/prod/parlment/hansart.nsf/8bd91bc90780f150ca256e630010302c/77ee8c5495bba52eca25773c0080fbcb?OpenDocument

and

http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/prod/parlment/hansart.nsf/8bd91bc90780f150ca256e630010302c/4bd8828c7bb26479ca25773d0083c00c?OpenDocument

Prior to the launch a number of the major real estate franchise groups have demonstrated their support for the REI move by agreeing to upload their NSW property listings onto the RealEstateView.com.au portal.

It’s anticipated that other networks and lots of independent agents will also join in and show their support for a National Industry Based Real Estate Portal and National Sales Data System over the coming weeks.

The press release states:-

Partnering with the Real Estate Institute of New South Wales (REINSW), the launch in NSW marks the 5th state in which propertydata.com.au – the industry-owned data product and realestateVIEW.com.au property portal will be operating – making it one step closer to becoming a truly national portal.

Petra Sprekos, General Manager of propertyDATA.com.au & realestateVIEW.com.au says, “This launch marks a significant milestone in our plans to become a truly national data product and portal for our agents. As NSW is the largest property market in Australia, this expansion will allow us to continue to grow our data product and the portal to become one of the leading offerings in Australia.”

In addition Ms Sprekos said “With major agents such as Century 21, Laing & Simmons, LJ Hooker, Raine & Horne, First National and PRDnationwide already publishing to our portal, we are confident that uptake of realestateVIEW.com.au will be strong as agents are looking for more cost effective tools to run their business.”

propertyDATA.com.au & realestateVIEW.com.au are currently offering a $1800 discount off the yearly subscription fee to the first 100 subscribers through the foundation membership package.

For only $385 per month for metro agents and $275 per month for regional agents, foundation membership provides access to;

1)      PropertyDATA.com.au which provides latest sales and auction results collected via the REI call centre, access to the dynamic prospecting tool – known as GoProspecting and on the market data to get a well rounded view of the market.

2)      RealestateVIEW.com.au which provides a low cost advertising solution, free multi-loading to the large portals, free rental archive to benchmark rental values in the market and free website powering .

For more information on how propertyDATA.com.au & realestateVIEW.com.au can benefit your business – visit www.realestateVIEW.com.au/NSWLaunch. (after tonight’s event) or email sales@realestateview.com.au.

I had a brief discussion with Petra Sprekos yesterday and she was pleased to see the level of support that they’ve been receiving both from within the real estate industry and outside of the industry. Petra was also very happy to see that the visitor numbers to the site had already started climbing quite significantly.

Also, earlier today Kevin Turner of REUNCUT posted an “Exclusive interview with Enzo Raimondo of REIV and David Airey of REIA about the National Real Estate Industry Portal ~ http://ow.ly/1Syrl“.

During the interview REIA President, David Airey commented that “RealEstateView.com.au is a very important part of the national fabric of the real estate institutes. The success for example in Western Australia of REIWA.com.au is evidence that Real Estate Institute members will suppoort their industry owned portal and this expansion on the eastern seaboard by RealEstateView.com.au is just a great initiative”

David also went on to say, “I think industry members will support an industry owned portal rather than the commercial alternative and the results that RealEstateView.com.au can deliver will be just as good as anybody else and probably I’d like to think better in time.”

REIV CEO, Enzo Raimondo said “We’ve been doing a lot of work over the past 18 months on putting together a national platform, not jut as a portal for consumers to search for property but more importantly, the tools that agents need for managing those listings, the collection of data right round the country, so we can give it back to the agents to use for CMA’s, valuations or whatever else they’d like to do with it and also a Prospecting Tool.”

He also went on to say that, “We’ve definitely driven the cost of these services down and that’s our intent right around Australia.” (You can hear the rest of the interview here).

During the interview, Enzo also told Kevin that they are currently in talks with one of the data providers with regards to having them come on board as well. At this point in time Enzo couldn’t say who it is but with REINSW and EAC/Red Square recently parting company, I can only assume that the data operator in question would be PriceFinder (PDS Live).

Whilst it’s only speculation at this stage, I hope my hunch is right because, if so, this could exert some real pressure on RP Data’s current stronghold on data throughout the Australian real estate industry.

At tonight’s launch, I’m looking forward to catching up with Wayne Stewart, President of the REINSW to see if he can shed some light on what the REINSW’s proposed launch strategy is.

One thing is for sure, it’s going to be very interesting to see how it all unfolds.

From what Greg Ellis said, part of their future plans for innovation within the new site upgrade means that we can look forward to extra “Product & Consumer Features being released approximately every 90 days”.

The new look site has been “designed to improve consumer experience” Greg said, and that they plan to “continue to be best in class for finding property”.

One of the key points emphasised to agents in attendance was that their site will help agents “Win Listings, Build a Rent Roll and Sell Property” and that REA based their design around 3 value propositions.

1. Valued by Consumers :- Find  -  Discover  -  Share ( ie share – “leverage the networks that consumers trust, their family & friends via Facebook & Twitter“).

2. Valued by Agents :- Win new listings, Build your brand, Agent profile, Sell & Rent Property and Cost Effective.

3. Valued by Vendors :- Predictable & Provable.

Greg Ellis also covered some of the recent changes made that will impact the sites use:-

For all site users there has been a New Home Page, Enhanced Search, Multiple Views (Gallery View, List View & Map View)  Compare Features (pointed out that the agents logo appears in the middle of the browsers computer screen) and MyRealEstate (an improved ability to store information on the site).

The suite of products for agents discussed were:- Suburb Profile Sponsorship, Suburb Sponsorship (IAB size ads), Exclusive Agent Showcase (No longer Guaranteed Top Spot but rather made available on every results page within that search), Feature Agent (a section of the site which has seen a 400% increase in traffic), Feature Property (appears as featured in List View, Gallery View & Map View) and eBrochure ( currently with over 800,000 people registered ).

An Insight Into The Future

Greg Ellis also announced that Realestate.com.au will shortly be releasing ‘Premiere Property’ which looks like it will appear on the top of the search results like the ‘old’ Guaranteed Top Spot but the ‘Premiere Property’ will open to a property page which features both the property & the agents details and branding exclusively (‘No Third Party Advertisers’).

Pricing was not discussed at this stage for ‘Premier Property’ but I can imagine it won’t come cheap when you consider the amount of revenue they could raise by keeping the advertising on these new pages.

Also, he mentioned that their Mobile site has already had 450,000 UB’s and they plan to have a Mobile/Social product which enables sharing via Facebook, Twitter, YouTube & RSS.

Finally, Greg Ellis felt that there was also a great opportunity existing for agents to promote their profile via the Local Voices section of their site.

Richard Freudenstein, Chairman of REA Board then came on to say that he was “pleased that so many customers were involved in the development of the new site” and congratulated the management team of REA because “the site was delivered on time and on budget”.

But as our team sat nervously waiting for our category to be read out and partaking in more than our fair share of the fantastic South Australian wine on offer, there was one thing that was really standing out above everything else for our table and in fact every table in the room.

It seemed that every individual award category was being taken out by a female. They were simply dominating everything that was read out.

Lets take a look at the individual awards taken out by the Women :

• May Dunlop from Dunlop & Wright – NT – Residential Salesperson of the Year
• Karen Seeto from Ray White Surfers Paradise – QLD – Commercial Salesperson of the Year
• Kathryn Massey from Michael Johnson & Co – WA – Property Manager of the Year
• Karli Dunham from Just Business Brokers – VIC – Business Broker of the Year
• Michelle Heffernan of Fitzpatricks Real Estate –  NSW – Achievement Award
• Jo Tremaine  from Place Estate Agents – QLD – Corporate Support Person of the Year

Well done ladies, those results ares simply outstanding.

and the results for the Men :

• Peter Apostolakos from CB Richard Ellis NSW – NSW -Commercial Property Managers of the Year
• Frank Valentic from Advantage Property Consulting – VIC – Buyer’s Agent of the Year

That’s 6 of the 8 awards going to the women.  In fact both May and Karen were the only female finalists in their category. They were literally the roses amongst the thorns with Peter and Frank the only males seemingly holding back the female tide!

In contrast at the 2009 awards there was only 2 individual female winners in the Property Management and Corporate Support Person categories.

Watch out guys if the 2010 national awards are any indicator it seems this year the girls are going to be unstoppable!

The agency based winners on the night were :

• Independent Property Group – ACT – Large Residential Agency of the Year
• Nerang First National – QLD –  Medium Residential Agency of the Year
• Sissons Estate Agents – QLD – Small Residential Agency of the Year
• CB Richard Ellis QLD – QLD – Commercial Agency of the Year
• Independent Property Group – ACT – Communications Award
• Colliers International NSW – Innovation Award
• Nelson Alexander – VIC – Community Service Award

and there were joint winners for the President’s Award

• Colin A Rooke from Dyson & Austen & Co – NSW
• Robyn Waters from Get Robyn – VIC

Congratulations to all the winners and finalists who were already winners at their respective state awards.

Beta

A few years ago, upgrading was a breeze, today however is a different story, we have over 1000 pages on the site, just the XML file runs into the 10′s of megabytes (thats pretty big). So having said that, there will be a few bugs and issues over the next few days. Of course this isn’t perfect, but hey, you can at least see what we go through. This site has taken about a month to build and whilst we have taken care on most things, it is inevitable on a site this size that there will be some issues. In other words – please be patient

Below are some of the new features.

Featured Articles

Yes, we write some rubbish that no one cares to comment on, but every now and then a writer stumbles upon something of note. In the past each new article took over from the previous article. Now we are going to keep our top five in the feature article section, we will refresh these continuously.

Greet Box

We now can write up greetings in our Welcome section depending on where the user came from. Each message now can be customised to a new visitor, whether they come from Google, Yahoo, MSN and other websites. It is a pretty cool little feature, that we will build upon.

Subscriptions

You can now subscribe by email, follow updates on Twitter, RSS news and RSS comments feed.

Link Lists

We have now added a large amount of links to companies and products and services you may find of interest and divided them up into two categories Portal Links and General Links. If you would like your company added to this fill in this form.

Please do not be upset if we reject you, it may be a great product or a great service, but we want relevance on this site and not just a mass of links.

Also, if you are already listed (first link is free) and you want to be in multiple categories then you will have to pay an additional annual fee. History has shown me that most companies think they fit under about 50 free categories, but find once charges are involved they fit perfectly into one or two at the most.

Author Profiles

We have also given authors a little more of a profile on the site and have some exciting new authors beginning next week. If you think you can contribute contact us and we will consider your application along with others. Remember, this is a site for real estate agents and the real estate industry.

Social

We have also added Twitter extensively though out the site. If you would like to follow us on Twitter click here. You can also follow us as individuals – just go to our contributors page.

Polls

We have now added polls to our site. The first one is below, tell us what you think of our new website? Good, bad and the ugly!

[poll id="1"]