It seems that realestateview.com.au wants to play with the big boys and in doing so, will definitely come under the telescope from other industry groups and agents across Australia.

Let me make this clear, I think it is great to see more competition and realestateview.com.au have certainly ramped up efforts in recent times, however there are still a number of questions that they need to address.

As realestateview.com.au are pushing ‘industry owned’, they will need to be open and transparent with the industry.

1. Ownership: As we have seen in the past with REA and the previous owners of MyHome, the issue of ownership is important and realestateview.com.au will need to make it clear who owns what % of this entity.

2. Fees: What are the basic fees and what controls are in place now and what will be these fees in 10 years time? What controls do you have in place on these fees?

3. Competition: As an industry site are you going to have your members compete against each other for the search results positions? Will there be multipler levels of memberships and if so why?

4. Visitors: Costs aside, one thing REA and Domain do very well is bring actual benefits to their members through property inquiries, how are you going to address this?

So should you support Realestateview.com.au? In a nutshell, if you are happy with the terms, cost to benefit and if there are some strict guarantees in place, then yes, however there are still some serious questions that this site needs to answer.

Technology wise, they need to take some big steps, remember, feeding to sites has a cost from most feed suppliers.

In my humble opinion myhome.com.au and homehound.com give around the same return as realestateview.com.au (enquiries are all that matter) and they are free, so I just cannot see how they can justify any costs at all until they can give a return and put some guarantees in place. Otherwise all you are doing is building up another portal who can hurt your wallet later.

We need competition to keep domain and REA in check and being cheaper doesn’t cut it, you have to provide value for money and time!

I am all for competition, but at this stage realestateview.com.au are asking more questions than they are answering.

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It will be very interesting to see how the real estate community reacts to domain.com.au’s decision to allow some 1739 Private Seller listings to be uploaded onto their site by buymyplace.com.au.

Property Portal Watch author Alice Allen announced that “Listings from For Sale By Owner portal buymyplace.com.au have now been added to domain.com.au,”

For years now I’ve wondered why domain.com.au would use an agent subscription based model and position themselves in the marketplace as a real estate industry portal who also allows Private Sellers to upload onto their site for a nominal fee?

They seem to want to have their cake and eat it too. But unfortunately, I think this decision to upload listings from buymyplace.com.au will highlight their strategy to have a foot in both camp. It could easily be interpreted by agents that they are stabbing them in the back or biting the very hand that feeds them.

In my book, in the real estate portal world you’re either one thing or you’re another. And if domain.com.au are going to take further subscription payments from agents then they need to decide.

Domain.com.au you’re either an industry portal or you’re a Private Seller portal. I don’t believe that you can continue to be both and remain relevant into the future.

On top of all this, the timing of this decision couldn’t come at a worse time, especially after the extensive changes that have just been made to the realestate.com.au site.

The new changes to realestate.com.au haven’t been overwhelmingly popular with users and agents.

Without the benefit of statistics, but from reading lots of the feedback via social network sites it appeared that domain.com.au may have actually made up some ground on REA in the past few weeks as many property seekers jumped across to use domain’s site.

I’m not sure whose decision this was but I don’t think it’s going to go over too well within the real estate community.

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Anytime you get a press release from a company touting ‘a revolution’ in anything you can be pretty sure it is going to be a disappointment. For the most part agents have liked it, however I really feel that the majority of consumers I have spoken to have not liked the new site and this is a real problem. Even some of the comments on this site recently have not been too flattering.

Just a quick note to realestate.com.au’s marketing “gurus” if you build up something so much, and you know it isn’t that good, be prepared for a little ridicule and for your marketing to fall very flat. After all, revolutions are usually powered by the masses, not the few!

That is not to say the new website is good, or an improvement – it is, it just isn’t that special and it really hasn’t done any I have not seen done on other sites.

So now that the launch has now settled down in terms of sensationalism, frustration and despair, I think it is time to have a look at what is the bigger play here for Realestate.com.au and to a lesser extent domain.com.au

Both portals realise that the years of increasing basic monthly fees to agents at a good pace is slowly coming to an end, so they are now looking at new ways to get squeeze your marketing budgets (possibly only at their newspaper divisions expense) .

They also know you guys and gals are infatuated with your immediate competition and will look to leverage millions of dollars a year more from this very fact. Real estate agents needs to wise up or you will find most of your marketing being spent on campaigns that do little to benefit your brand or your vendors.

Historically speaking

When I started this blog in 2002, I did it after listening to an executive of a certain real estate portal expound a whole bunch of $#%#%@ on an eager audience at a real estate institute endorsed gathering.

Basically the whole speech was about spending even more of your money on rubbish like banner ads to bring you untold riches. Over the following years these events were held all over the country and real estate institutes were sponsored by the companies giving these speeches.

I was so annoyed at this that my initial speech (which I changed at the last minute) was all about why you shouldn’t do most things the previous speaker was endorsing and to push more of your money into your own future – your website. Suffice to say I was never welcome back again.

Why you need portals

You need the likes of realestate.com.au and domain.com.au, at the basic level they are great value for money, they are popular across the country and they do provide you with a valued service.

Why you don’t need premium, platinum, super platinum and super duper platinum listings

Sure, if the client is paying go for it, but think about this, there is no statistical evidence that these listings sell quicker or for more, nada, none, zero!

Marketers will tell you that premium listings get more visitors and therefore your brand gets more recognition, however don’t you make money when you sell the darn thing, not when anyone clicks on it? So do the math, think about where else you could spend that branding money more effectively.

Why you must be on Google Real Estate

Google real estate will be a slow burn, they will build their systems and you will find more and more people using this service each month, it will almost certainly always be free* and will soon be integrated into Android Mobile Phones.

Supporting this website with your listings will also push visitors back to your current site and also make this offering stronger. The stronger Google is, the less likely you will see large increases in fees in the future from the major portals, in fact at current rates I think within 5 years basic fees on these portals will definitely come down, mainly from pressure from Google and other similar free services.

* Google has built the trust of developers worldwide because they are open, developers in return have made Google what they are today, it would be the beginning of the end for Google to change the game. Incidentally they also make about 8 billion year from this philosophy.

Start your own Groups

I want you to start your own groups on MeetUp, get all of your immediate competitors to meet once per month for lunch at a different location. Maybe invite someone to speak at these events, but generally just open discussion on as many subjects as you please, maybe you can form a local buying group.

Yes, you need to compete and yes their will be a little espionage, but I guarantee it will be of benefit to you in the long run. You never know, it could be great fun as well.

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Simon Baker, the ex-CEO of REA has invested in bringing the Nestoria property portal to Australia. Nestoria.co.uk is the 4th most popular real estate site in the UK.

There are some interesting connections going on here. Firstly Nestoria is an aggregator of property listings. They receive listing data from a range of other companies. Ultimately they are just a listing service for other portals and real estate groups to display their property on. They compete for the eyeballs looking for real estate and then distribute them to other “destination”.

They specialise in creating a better and more simplified user experience. Nestoria also offers a range of widgets and an api for third party webmasters to utilise their data and embed functionality in their website ultimatley driving traffic back to Nestoria.

If this all sounds familiar it is and that’s because it is basically Google’s model to Real Estate although there are of course still some differences. Nestoria’s user interface is far better than Google’s minimalistic mapping approach but Google also brings synergies with its search integration that Nestoria can’t offer. Another difference is that Google’s income stream is through the display of ads on every page whereas I believe Nestoria is charging the data providers for generating traffic.

Now Domain has signed up as one of the foundation partners for Nestoria. That seems a little hypocritical when you consider that Domain has not partnered with Google over their real estate solution. Domain obviously does not have an issue with the aggregation model itself more the fact that Fairfax is a huge user of Google for its advertising products and thus they believe it should not be interfering in their “space”. Clearly they dont have those issues with Nestoria.

So what we have is the ex CEO and still a major shareholder of the Australian number one portal doing a joint venture (or white labelling) with the UK’s 4th largest portal to create a new Australian portal and partnering with Australia’s 2nd largest portal and others to generate them more traffic. Confused yet?

Something has obviously changed in Simon Bakers thinking. As the man behind REA’s stunning success he operated a strictly subscription based portal that now talks about increasing their “share of wallet” from real estate agents. At the end of Simons reign at REA it was a truly corporate beast complete with executive and middle management levels and a huge administration and sales force.

Nestoria on the other hand is a lean mean fighting machine that operates on minimal overheads and uses smart user friendly design and SEO to create substantial traffic.

Only days before Google launched the first stage of their Real Estate solution Simon was publicly stating on his propertyportalwatch.com blog that Google would not be effective and not enter the mix. In contrast we have him behind a remarkably similar portal whose current partnerships are actively working against his previous employer and his substantial investment in REA.

So can Simon Baker make Nestoria.com.au a real contender in the real estate space? Yes I think he can.

Nestoria certainly has a good pedigree and an established and proven site design, user interface combined with widgets and an api. Simon also brings a wealth of experience to the table and the combination should certainly provide some fireworks.

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Slowly but surely Google Real Estate is making inroads into the Australian real estate market with the recent signing of LJ Hooker on top of most of the major players in real estate in Australia. It will take longer for all of the smaller independent agents to come onboard, however it is clear that this is the beginning of a new era and it is time REA and Domain stepped up to the plate and opened themselves up to the Google way of life!

Why? Because not doing so will slowly end their dominance and when the decline occurs it will be so fast that no maneuvering will make a difference.

Some may argue that Google Real Estate has not made a difference as yet, but these people live in complete denial and it will only be a matter of time before visitor numbers begin declining and Google Real Estate begins its upward March.

Remember, Google only has to get comparative data to make a difference. Google also have a far greater capacity to let people know about it than all other real estate portals in the world combined.

Recently a number of videos have been produced that well and truly show how serious Google is about maps and real estate.

Finding a house on Google Real Estate Maps

Here is one to showcase real estate listings throughout Australia

Here is one on how to refine your real estate search on Google Real Estate.

Real Estate API’s
Realestate.com.au and domain.com.au must open their databases up to the general public to create a whole new wave of web and mobile applications.

I have been pushing API’s with these portals for over 2 years and yet we still have nothing. Maybe Realestate.com.au’s big announcement will include an API?

What can an API do?
As an example any website would be able to carry listings through this API, so community websites, industry websites, councils, agents, even business2.com.au would be able to carry listings, sales data etc. Portals do not need agents permission as agents have signed away all rights to the data when they join these sites.

Signing up should be simple and approval rapid and it should be accompanied by rapidly evolving documentation and examples.

Boon for portals
One other thing we will see is innovation across the board, even things we have not even thought of will take us by surprise, but the biggest boon will be for the portals. It will extend their listings and sales data reach and allow that data to be ingrained across 10′s of thousands of websites across Australia and the world.

Versions
There should be two versions of the API, the free version which carries 3rd parties adverts from the portals and is a little limited and then a paid version that carries no advertising and allows the user to do whatever they want with the data!

Flow on
The flow on effect of this will flow across the industries to jobs, cars and classifieds.

Will this happen?
Don’t hold your breath, large organisations are slow at moving on these opportunities, usually waiting until it is too late. We are fast approaching a time where I think realestate.com.au and domain.com.au will start going backwards unless they really innovate with API’s.

One only has to look at the music industry and the movie industry to see how stubborn incumbents completely ruin their own industries by not embracing and innovating.

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