Recently at the Real Estate Connect San Francisco show I had the pleasure of catching up with Simon Baker from www.listglobally.com (amongst other ventures) and had a chat with him about his new global listing service. Simon seemed very upbeat about www.listglobally.com which allows real estate agents to list properties for sale across the leading websites gloabally – hence the name list globally.

The Video

ListGlobally.com Simon Baker from Peter Ricci on Vimeo.

Overview

There is a little more to this product that warrants more than just a first glance. The software allows any agency to list properties for sale on www.listglobally.com for a fee of $90 per listing for 90 days  Listglobally.com then feeds (pushes) those listings to many of the most popular real estate websites in the world automatically including Canada, Germany, Great Britain, Japan, Russia, South Africa, Spain, United Arab Emirates, with many more in the pipeline.

Here are some of the websites that www.listglobally.com pushes to:

• rightmove.co.uk (United Kingdom)
• immobilienscout24.de (German)
• enormo.com (World)
• realestate.co.jp (Japan)
• iproperty.com.my (Malaysia)
• iproperty.com.sg (Singapore)
• propertyfinder.ae (United Arab Emirates)
• canadahomeguide.tv (Canada)
• gohome.com.hk (Hong Kong)
• 99acres.com (India)

The software looks to be very clean and efficient, the website looks the same, only information needed is presented and I like this approach. if you wish to join you have two options for adding your listings, you can join for free and then add each listing manually or you can feed your listings (talk to your IT people) to listglobally.com and then login and select which listings you want to activate for a fee of $90 per listing for 90 days. Most of these sites are the most popular in their country and the global ones like Enormo.com (which is really the only international portal available) should give your listings some decent exposure.

Listglobally.com have a number of country specific sites that have actually added on an “International section” for your listings to appear on and I understand in some cases listglobally.com have actually built in some of these international sections for portals.

If there is an inherent weakness in the product, it is this – I have real doubts that anyone would go to a site like realestate.com.au to search for listings in Japan , UK, India etc. If  you were a serious buyer, you would seek out sites that had all the listings for that country. So just keep in mind that the figures quoted (around 40 million eyeballs) are actually not very accurate as far as the sections of the portals we are talking about with Enormo being the only true global website. Realestate.com.au may get 5 million visitors per month, however the International section may only get a few hundred thousand –  so just keep this in mind.

As for the cost, $90 per listing for 90 days does sound pretty cheap but if you are going to market your whole portfolio, this can get quite expensive (10 x = $900, 100 times = $9,000), I am never a fan of time-limited fees, I would hate to see a realestate.com.au or domain.com.au do this in Australia although it will only be a matter of time before agents are charged per listing as more and more agents become mobile and offices begin declining in numbers (and they will).

All in all Listglobally.com should be a decent offering, but it will take time a few years to mature. At the moment the offering is fairly limited and probably will only be used by agents to attract more vendors,as with anything, the longevity of products like this does come down to the value it provides real estate agents.

I suggest you give it a go with one or two listings, you can jump right in now and give it a run with a property or three!

Simon is a pretty astute fellow and his reputation alone will get him off to a decent start in the market, long term – if they stick at it – I expect Listglobally.com to be a winner!

As a note for disclosure I am a shareholder in www.zooproperty.com which in some small way competes with Listglobally.com, although on a different level.

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Yesterday, Greg Ellis, CEO/Managing Director presented an inside look of some of the features of the new site to a large group of agents at the realestate.com.au ‘Open For Inspection’ event in Sydney.

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”.

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On Thursday evening I had a phone hookup with Simon Baker, former Managing Director of Realestate.com.au. We spoke about a range of issues and I will place some excerpts from the interview here. Simon recently departed from Realestate.com.au in the typical pathetic fashion that large organisations feel necessary and from his blog My CEO Life Simon explained his departure. Read the rest of this article »

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One of the comments on my recent post about virtual agents was from Teena Andrews, an agent with Coldwell Banker Property Direct in Brisbane. Teena is a Road Warrior who almost never sets foot into her agency’s actual office. In this interview, she tells us more about being an agent who has dispensed with the storefront office.

There are some fascinating things in here, so it’s well worth a read. For example, Teena feels she gets more leads than the office-based agents.Read on to find out why.

NOTE: Because Teena is a guest on this blog, I would like to ask the more aggressive commentators on business2.com.au to be gentle to Teena and grateful that she has been willing to share a bit of herself with us.

Read the rest of this article »

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