The REINSW are holding their official launch event tonight to mark the first stage of rolling out the National Industry Based Real Estate Portal, RealEstateView.com.au and their National Sales Data platform, PropertyData.com.au into the NSW market.

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.

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The Real Estate Institute of NSW (REINSW) and EAC have launched Realestateworld.com.au today in beta mode. It is my understanding that an official launch is due tomorrow and that the site will be in full mode with listings within 2-4 weeks.

The site is pretty clean and simple to use, but be warned there are not many listings at this stage as they are just beginning the migration of data. First thing I did notice is that you must type in www. before the name ( i really do hate having to quote www. as www. is just not needed if the site is set up correctly) and this should be fixed immediately on the server side. (Update: Fixed)

I also notice that there was no RSS feeds and only a email subscription and alert service at this stage. Any new site should include RSS feeds and they can be pretty simple to set up.

Each property view shows 4 photos with an option for more and includes a decent size map or the area (Google Maps). The site has a few good little Ajax features such as the ability to mouse-over and see your last search. All in all not a bad effort and better than most new sites I have seen recently. I am a little under whelmed by it all but maybe that is because there are just so many sites popping up recently.

The site was designed and developed by EAC/Red Square who are one of the big few companies that have not been gobbled up by a major media player (Portplus as well). I do like the fact that the site is also XHTML valid and the site is clean and user friendly. We should see most of the minor glitches taken care of over the next few weeks.

Only time will tell if it does have any impact and if NSW Agents get on board en masse and although they have a decent site, it is all now down to marketing and agents perception. That my friends is a tougher sell and it will be a slow site to take on and this is where it will be interesting to see the strength of commitment from REINSW over the long haul.

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Rumours are abound that the REINSW will be launching a statewide/national portal in the coming weeks/months alongside partner EAC. Details are pretty scratchy at the moment, but whilst it may seem like a good idea, it does raise more questions than it answers.

I am all for Real Estate Institutes becoming involved heavily in the Internet but I really do think they have left things a little too late, with the only really successful Institute portal at a state level being the Realestateview.com.au website which has been around since 2001, and if you go and have a look at it, really is quite good. ( I did not go too deep)

My questions are not whether EAC can build a portal that matches it with the big boys, but how will it be marketed? How many agents will support it? What benefits will the agents receive from its success?

Expect an announcement shortly on this, I want to know your thoughts across Australia on Industry/Private portals and whether you would support it? Is this what you think an Institute should be concentrating on?

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