This morning it was reported to me by one of our staff members that enquiries that were made by buyers weeks ago on www.realestate.com.au have just been turning up in the mail.

Now in many offices it is not unusual for salespeople to be handling enquries days and even weeks later but that is not a problem we normally have. At first nobody noticed and we went about handling the enquiries as they came in. Then a couple of buyers complained that it had taken us to long to get back to them, but the problem was we had only had the enquiry turn up in some cases minutes before hand.

Checking the email and in the top left hand corner REA places the date of that enquiry and for the example of this I am going to use, the enquiry was made on  the 8th of May yet was only delivered this morning at 8:01am on the 20th of June.

When this was brought to my attention I checked the email headers (which I will paste in full at the end) which reveals  that the delay appears to be happening inside REA servers. Read more »

Perhaps we were all a little hasty with the demise of MyHome. It was announced today that Shane Dale has taken over MyHome and is now the sole proprietor.

MyHome now will become a free listing website, although whether this is short term or long term I am not sure. It seems that Mr Dale has done quite nicely out of this deal, pocketing a good deal of $millions from the initial transaction and then buying it back later for a fraction of the price.

I do wish Shane all of the best with this new venture, it will not be easy, but now they can concentrate on actually making this site a worthy competitor. Time will surely tell us, if this will be the case.

Below is the contents of the letter sent to agencies across Australia
“We would like to advise you that myhome portal is still functioning perfectly as before. There has been a change of ownership of myhome, Shane Dale is the new sole owner of the assets of myhome.com.au and surroundpix businesses.

Regards,
The new MyHome team. ”

I’ve written about the iPhone on this blog before, but the thing just keeps getting better.

The new model released this week–a faster 3G model at about half the price of the original model–makes me even more clear that this device will transform real estate.

What has to happen for the iPhone to bring workable real estate onto a mobile device for the first time?

A smart developer just has to create the applications. KCPB is funding promising application developers, and all applications will be for sale or free in the “Ap(plication) Store” for instant download and installation.

Watch the Apple WWDC keynote video to see some examples of iPhone applications that were created in just a couple of weeks. Once you see the examples in the video–from companies like eBay, Loopt and Major League Baseball–I’m sure you’ll be blown away.

Despite Blackberry’s, Palm’s and Nokia’s best efforts, I don’t see them catching up any time soon. Just imagine a Blackberry product launch in which new features are greated not just with polite applause, but with outright surprise, laughter and joy. But, if they do catch up, all the better for the real estate industry.

In the comments to my 30 May 2008 post on the rise of the American virtual real estate agent, there was plenty of confusion about what exactly a virtual agent is. The details of the settlement of the lawsuit against the National Association of Realtors also created lots of confusion.

A friend just pointed me to an article about how the Realtors lawsuit empowers virtual agents on MarketWatch.

Online Real Estate Agents Get Advantage

It’s the best written description of what’s going on that I’ve seen. Here’s the essence of it. For anyone wed to the traditional business model, it’s scary stuff.

“The Justice Department reached a tentative settlement with the National Association of Realtors that essentially forced traditional real estate brokers to give Internet-based agents access to home-listing information that they had previously been denied.

“Online real estate agents often charge discounted commission fees and let buyers review listings at their own pace, but for years those Internet-based brokers in many parts of the country could not access more than 800 Multiple Listing Services nationwide affiliated with the national Realtors group. An MLS is a database of regional properties for sale.

“The traditional argument against opening the MLS system to online brokers was that it would result in a significant cut in commissions for traditional real estate agents. Indeed, that’s precisely what government officials wanted.”

Cloud Computing is a trendy name for when you use your internet connection to connect to applications running on the web that would traditionally be installed and run on each of your computers. One of the best and most popular cloud computing solutions is Google Apps although technically web based real estate solutions also fit into the definition as well.

Google Apps provides email, instant messaging, spreadsheets, word processing, presentation and collaborative team websites in an online cloud solution. Since its release it has been fairly US centric however I can remember reading somewhere a little while back that over 5000 small business in Australia have signed up for Google Apps. That might be set to increase now. Read more »