At Christmas this year it will be 10 years since I penned my first post on a Commodore PET…… well not really, but come January 12th 2012 it will be 10 years since we wrote that first post on a website powered by Movable Type, by 2003 I had a whopping 15 posts and received my first comment, you can only imagine my excitement! By late 2004 things certainly started to roll a certain Real Estate Portal CEO can be thanked for this, he politely took umbrage to a post and this garnered a few comments and from there things started to move along nicely. We have always welcome comments from people inside and out of the industry whose views may oppose our own, in fact the success of our site depends on those views.

Our Mantra

Simply put, we do not really have one, but our focus is and has always been on what is good for real estate agents both in the online world and in everyday business. We do not play favourites and as proof we have approved over 99.9% of all comments. In fact, out of more than 10,000 comments we have only had to hold back less than a handful (some for very obvious legal reasons). We do get quite a few complaints (including multiple threats of legal action) about certain comments but these are usually from pretty thin skinned people, however we always try to keep everything as sensible as possible. Our focus will remain the same… however….. Over the years we have added multiple authors and Ryan, Glenn, Dave, Greg and now Charlie have become regular contributors and are an invaluable asset to business2 and our community. We now have some 32 people who have contributed in one way or another to the site and we would like to see our regulars list continue to build over time.

We want you!

We want content contributors from across the real estate spectrum whether you are an agent specialising in certain areas, a software developer, service provider, portal or just a real estate enthusiast! Remember blogging just isn’t for Christmas, so we are looking for people who have ideas and want to share them with others. Click here to Apply

Note:Business2.com.au is not a chest thumping publicity forum, you and your company will get recognition by the quality of your articles (and your profile), self promotion or product promotion does not work anyway, so the focus can relate to your companies products or services but it cannot be the focus of the article.

Business2.com.au Version 5

We have had a number of iterations of Business2.com.au over the years and we will celebrate our 10th birthday early with a new release in the very near future. The focus of the new release will be on fostering deeper discussions, social integration, cleaner layout, better flow and cleaner typography and a nice little contributors section. We will also be releasing a new version of our supplier directory with a free area and also a premium area for companies that wish to further showcase their brand, products and services on a deeper level to real estate agents and professionals

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!

Property Ad Guru has also “gone on Hiatus” recently as well, and we we only have to guess that this has also been closed permanently as not many companies go on ‘hiatus’ if things are going well.

At the launch Simon Baker the CEO of Classified Ad Ventures, said:

Social Media is an important marketing tool for Australian real estate agents and all agents should have a strong presence on the main sites – Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace. We launched SOBOX to help Australian agents get the most from social media and to reduce their reliance on traditional and other online media when marketing themselves and their listings.

It seems SOBOX found the going a little tough and we received reports detailing how only a few agents had actually signed up for the service over the past 18 months. These customers have apparently since been notified of the closure and have received all of their data to export into a new service.

One of the problems with SOBOX is that agents could actually get most of the same or similar offerings for free or for a nominal monthly fee with little effort, which highlights another problem facing new companies feeding to social media websites. Most providers today actually do the same services as a part of their overall web design service as nearly all new real estate sites also have a blog and social media integrated.

Classified Ad Ventures Pty Ltd has seen a number of projects close over the past 12 months with many of the previous offerings no longer available or merged into a more streamlined service and it seems the company is now focussing on providing a smaller core suite of products to real estate agents, including search, web services, content delivery and also web development.

Another of their offerings List Globally (which I think is a great idea) may also be struggling to get the numbers needed – primarily because I think it is too expensive, I still cannot get my head around their pricing. For such a great idea, I would have thought if List Globally was a completely automated service they could drop the price dramatically and get the volume they needs to have the success it warrants.

No one doubts the talent and reach of the team and particularly Simon Baker, he has proven in the past he has the experience and connections to make things happen, however for every success in online technology we each experience a number of failures along the way and having success in one area doesn’t always guarantee success in another.

Property Portal Watch seems to be still growing strong with regular updates which I follow closely. It is a good website to follow if you are interested in all the happenings of real estate portals worldwide. They seem to have expended this service into directories as well.

Todays economic climate is not easy on new web service companies and hiring the right talent often is the biggest ongoing expense, you add servers, maintenance and traditional business costs you can find yourself needing revenues almost immediately.

Viewproperty.com.au aim to be a new “industry-owned” real estate portal designed to provide agents with an affordable alternative to the current offerings of Domain and Realestate.com.au. Apparently, the site is the result of 14 months planning and preparation by a group of Australian real estate agents and IT developers.

View Property Australia CEO Ross Bulman said:

www.viewproperty.com.au will allow all Australian agents to present their listings direct to the public within hours of them coming to market.

The agent group behind this project have a common focus and purpose, that is to give the industry more control over increasing online costs and providing an affordable, user friendly portal where members of the community can view every Australian listing in one place

This is an exciting initiative where agents may at last have the opportunity to actually own and control their internet presence and future costs.

Although the portal is busily receiving property listings they will not go live until they obtain 50,000 listings. On their site they say they’ve reached 40,000 listings and have now indicated a public launch date of Tuesday 10th November 2011.

It’s unclear who the consortium of agents are behind the portal nor its financial or ownership structure. The site has little information about this only saying that:

Once viewproperty.com.au is launched and has met set KPI’s in regards to listing numbers, traffic and search engine optimisation Industry members will be invited to become shareholders.

The portal has just released a statement indicating its proposed charges, stating there will be a “6 month awareness period” for the industry and public to explore the site. Then in month 7 a levy of $79 per office will be imposed on those members wishing to continue to list with the portal. In year 2 they are looking to increase this fee to $149 and then $199 in year 3 followed by ongoing CPI increases.

The portal must be expecting a large uptake by property seekers within the first 6 months or they’ve revised their revenue plans. As from a previous statement released about when fees will be imposed:

Only after it is attracting the required traffic and search engine presence, a fair monthly service charge is paid. A service charge that is a small fraction of what has come to be expected.

I feel that before the industry as a whole can jump on board and support this portal the following questions will need to be answered:

1. Who is behind the portal?
2. What agents are currently subscribed?
3. What is the exact ownership structure, who is eligible and what are the costs?

There could be reasons for this non disclosure, such as maintaining a competitive advantage or protecting the identity of supporters from competing portals. However, these are questions most agents would naturally have as they need reassurance they’re not simply feeding another Realestate.com.au

What are your thoughts, have you subscribed your listings to Viewproperty.com.au yet?

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.

Charlie Gunningham is in San Francisco for Real Estate Connect and hopefully he will be able to write a great post on what is happening over there when he gets back.

In the meantime he and his team have been very busy little girls & boys and they have just released a new website called West Real Estate, which is a partnership between the REIWA and The West Australian Newspapers Group and will be cross promoted by both on an ongoing basis.

This will probably be the first of a slew of real estate institutes going it alone and by forming a partnership with the Western Australia’s largest newspaper group it will no doubt get off the ground running nicely.

All content is powered by REIWA, so current members and subscribers should see all of their listings on the site immediately.

Will it increase the exposure for members listings over the already popular REIWA? I have been a vocal critic of institutes over the years, but REIWA has probably been the only shining light amongst them. I hope this comes at no extra costs and hopefully Charlie can shed some light on who owns what shares of this site and if there will be any future costs to agent members?

A few years ago I gave a talk to a real estate franchise group in Adelaide and told the audience that I shared Twitter and Linkedin with pretty much anyone, but wanted to keep my Facebook just for family and close friends – I even had a 100 rule, that is I would never go over a hundred family and friends, this made it a culling process as I quickly reached 100, and it also earned me some ire on occasions. Over the past few years has become impossible, I mean, how do you tell a client you like and that spends their hard earned money with you that you have just denied them friendship on Facebook, how do you tell a childhood sweetheart that that ‘pash’ we had behind the gym meant nothing to me (when every single one of them is still indelibly imprinted in my mind) and that after meeting a new friend in a new city that you have strict rules of engagement on your Facebook profile, yes, you see where I am going – put me immediately in the strange “Circle”!

I know Facebook allows you to do some major tweaking to make it limited for certain types of users, but it is very primitive and way too time consuming and definitely a programming afterthought.

Facebook also has some of the most ridiculous algorithms for filling up your profile wall and news feed with junk from books, movies etc and people you like who have a strange tendency to click on anything slightly pornographic!

Don’t get me wrong, Facebook is great, you can share and connect with friends, but to me, something just seems missing from the experience and it is definitely not friends sharing the minutia of their daily life with me or celebrating some dunce unelected peer marrying another dunce. It just seems so 2009!

Google Plus

Enter Google+, Google Plus is Google’s challenge to Facebook and really is the evolution of Facebook for people who want to selectively share/connect their personal information all in very unlike Google beautiful way.

The interface is gorgeous and very intuitive and getting up and running is a breeze, I have added a link here to the demo here so you can have a play for yourself and see what I am talking about.

Here is Google’s Take on the main features, you will see I have added a brief comment in italics below each of Google’s comments and a video guide for each of the major features.

Circles

You share different things with different people. So sharing the right stuff with the right people shouldn’t be a hassle. Circles makes it easy to put your friends from Saturday night in one circle, your parents in another, and your boss in a circle by himself – just like real life.

The Circles tools is easily the most powerful tool and is seriously cool. Just watch Facebook try to emulate this as their groups settings is a major programming and user embarrassment.

Hangouts

With Hangouts, the unplanned meet-up comes to the web for the first time. Let specific buddies (or entire circles) know you’re hanging out and then see who drops by for a face-to-face-to-face chat. Until teleportation arrives, it’s the next best thing.

This is another great feature, adding people is easy and the video chat is of great quality. I can see meetings, catching up with the family on special occasions and sharing old times with friends

Instant Uploads

Taking photos is fun. Sharing photos is fun. Getting photos off your phone is pretty much the opposite of fun. With Instant Upload, your photos and videos upload themselves automatically, to a private album on Google+. All you have to do is decide who to share them with.

This was also a breeze for me, although I have read some threads where some users did not have the same experience.

Sparks

Tell Sparks what you’re into and it will send you stuff it thinks you’ll like, so when you’re free, there’s always something cool to watch, read, or share.

Sparks needs some work, it can be a little overwhelming and you will need to be sure you enter terms carefully or you maybe presented with too much information

Huddle

Texting is great, but not when you’re trying to get six different people to decide on a movie. Huddle turns all those different conversations into one simple group chat, so everyone gets on the same page all at once. Your thumbs will thank you.

I loved this feature, although I currently have limited people to share it with, but I can see this being another great addition to the suite.

Future Support for Business

Google has made is clear it will add support for it’s business clients later in the year, this is a bit of a pain, as I want it now and will have to delete my profile when the business version is added, or have two profiles, not good!

What’s wrong with it so far?

No Google Apps Integration, this seems silly and possibly a sign the product was a little rushed, but this needs to be done ASAP – these are your premium customers Google!

Product Manager Christian Oestlien says that the Google+ is working on creating a unique experience for business customers that includes many of the features business use such as analytics and adwords. “How users communicate with each other is different from how they communicate with brands,” Oestlien argues.

There are still some bugs around and updating sometimes throttled and was slow. This is a limited first release, so I am not going to be too harsh on this at the moment.

Summary

Overall Google Plus is a killer product and one that users with varied interests, privacy concerns will embrace en-masse.I can also see this as being a great education tool for schools and projects.

It is by far the best personal/business social networking tool on offer and you can kiss Linkedin.com goodbye, which wouldn’t be hard to do as it is by far the worst large social site out there (too many chest thumpers).

I am seriously so enthralled by this technology and really, it has come from nowhere. I cannot tell you how cool this is, you will have to experience it for yourself.

Will it top Facebook? Well, firstly I am not sure it needs to, but this will be my destination, primarily because I already use so many of Google’s Apps and so many of their tools already. There is also a small user base compared to Facebook and only when it kicks to the 10′s of millions of users will we see if it explodes in growth from there.

I just wished it came from someone other than Google, I am seriously disappointed with the innovation of Australia’s Largest Media companies who seem to be just stuck in this mentality of “well if someone builds something cool we will just buy it”. The problem is that everything that is super cool surpasses even their budgets and they are left buying companies that are very easy to beat in the long run or they beat them to death until they are a shadow of their former selves.

Google Getting its Groove

Google is learning from Apple here as well, interfaces that are beautiful do work, if they are done in a simplistic stylish manner and this looks like an Apple Product and it works! Google has always been about user interfaces and mainly text based, but this shows you can mix it up a little with nice icons and beautiful font usage.

The button is similar to the facebook Like or Twitter Retweet buttons and is an attempt by Google to increase its presence on the web. The button can be seen on all Business2 posts.

Google Product Manager Nick Radicevic announced:

Adding the +1 button could help your site to stand out by putting personal recommendations right at the moment of decision, on Google search. So if you have users who are fans of your content, encourage them to add their voice with +1!

Google have also indicated that they may use +1 data as a signal for improving search results in the future.

To date I only know of one Australian real estate portal TheHomepage.com.au who have implemented the Google +1 like button across all of their property pages.

homesales.com.au has launched a new free to list service for licensed real estate agents. The no-cost offer is ongoing and is open to real estate agents selling residential properties Australia-wide.

There are no contracts, commissions or hidden costs. Agents simply list their properties free on the website which each month leverages the carsales.com Ltd network of sites’ 15-million-plus user sessions*.

homesales.com.au, the property arm of Australia’s No.1 automotive classifieds group carsales.com Ltd, launched in 2009 as a dedicated residential real estate site. Since then the site has grown to feature Australia-wide inventory, including listings from more than 1000 agents.

The latest evolution of the site makes it quick, easy and free for licensed real estate agents. It provides premium exposure for agents looking to target property listings and marketing campaigns towards a vendor-rich and location specific market.

homesales.com.au’s revenue model does not include hefty agent advertising charges or shared commissions. The site leverages its audience and attracts revenue from sources other than real estate agents.

homesales.com.au was carsales.com Ltd’s first foray outside the automotive marketplace. A listed ASX 200 company with a market capitalisation of over $1 billion, carsales’ network of sites attracts more than 15.2 million sessions * each month.

The company also brings to the real estate marketplace more than 10 years of online experience along with cutting edge technology and development resources.

When contacted by B2 Rhett Dallwitz, homesales.com.au General Manager said:

homesales.com.au has a strong audience that are by definition in the market to buy residential properties. Our free to list service gives real estate agents the ability to target these buyers at no cost.

Agents can signup to list by calling 1300 291 914 or visiting www.homesales.com.au and clicking on ‘Agent Signup’.

About homesales.com.au

homesales.com.au launched in 2009 as a dedicated residential real estate site. Since then the site has grown to feature Australia-wide inventory, including listings from more than 1000 agents providing premium exposure to a vendor-rich and location specific market.

About carsales.com Ltd.
carsales.com Ltd listed on the ASX in 2009 and is the largest online automotive, motorcycle and marine classifieds business in Australia, attracting more Australians interested in buying or selling cars, motorcycles and boats than any other classified group of websites. carsales.com Ltd’s first revenues were reported in the financial year 1998. The company is one of only a few to have made the BRW Fast 100 for five consecutive years. carsales.com.au is Australia’s number one automotive website and in May 2011 attracted 9.2 million user sessions *. The Carsales Network of websites includes CarPoint.com.au, discountnewcars.com.au, quicksales.com.au, Redbook.com.au and motorcycle, boat, truck and machinery websites. The network boasted in excess of 15.2 million user
sessions** in May 2011.

* Source: Nielsen Online Market Intelligence, Automotive Publishers May 2011
**Source: Nielsen Online Site Census, Carsales Network Aggregate, May 2011

After a final mediation with the REA group yesterday, realEstate1 is refusing to be bullied into re-branding and will be fighting in the Federal Court for the right to use the generic term ‘real estate’ as part of their registered trademark.

A court date has not yet been set.

realEstate1 Managing Director Geoff Luff said;

“It is disappointing that the REA Group is continuing with their legal action against realEstate1. However, we look forward to a favorable outcome.“

It is business as usual for realEstate1, who are still offering a FREE to List Membership for agents Australia wide. Agents wanting to list their properties on realEstate1 can register here.