Here is a handful of recent stories I thought you’d find of interest:

Real estate is spelled S-E-X in China.

Vodafone to sell the iPhone in Australia.

But, Vodafone might not be the only one (and here).

Suncorp and LJ Hooker launch real estate podcasts.

How to cope when Google dumps you.

First banks in Spain raise mortgage interest rates, then they encourage borrowers to invest in their own stock funds and certificate of deposits–instead of buying a house. Real estate agents are outraged. (in Spanish).

WAN gets realestate.com.au to power its real estate website.

Registering and using multiple domains names was strategy used by many as a great tool for building your business and creating a bigger online presence. Because of the higher costs and strict controls placed on .com.au domain names many agents chose to collect .com domains which are cheap and easy to get.Collecting multiple domains were promoted as a way :

1. Keep your competition from registering a domain name that draws visitors to them instead of you.
2. Increase your exposure in the search engines provide customers more ways to find you when searching the Internet which drives more traffic to your Web sites.
3. Create distinct advertising and promotion strategies that target different markets.
4. Protect your brand and online identity from those who may have unsavoury purpose

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When you only have a couple of people in an office the communication is normally very good. As an office grows it does not take long for the information and resources to be disseminated to a point that effective communication is often lost. To put it simply, everybody spends far too much time trying to find information and resources that somebody else in the office has when it should be right at your fingertips.
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Google is under investigation from the ACCC. It seems the Google Search Results did not clearly identify what was advertising and what was organic and that is the case they are up against. I am pretty sure it is from a past version because it is reasonably clear these days (although not perfectly) what is and is not advertising. It probably makes it harder since everything is just text, but I for one am a big supporter of the ACCC and what they do for consumers in Australia. Many of the real estate portals do not have this problem - in fact I think the problem with sites like REA is trying to find the property content - rather than the advertising from the 3rd parties which is harder! Yes that is a dig!

It amazes me what people will do from time to time with their Google Adwords Marketing. However, this one from Homehound I doubt will endear them to the many agents who are not partners.

It seems that Homehound are targeting non partners and using their business names in Google Adword campaigns. So if you did a search for say First National Palm Beach or Ray White Sydney then a Homehound Advert appears. This much is fair play, what is not fair play is using these companies names in the actual Google Advertisement and then telling them to look at Homehound.com for listings.

Note: Tried this for LJ Hooker and no Google advertisement - a clean slate, seems Mr Hooker is strong on protection (settle E)

It is just another case of being too smart by half.

If a competitor of mine used my business name in search results to bring up their company then I would be fine with that, but if they also used my name in the advertisement I would be furious!

So, it is either an embarrassing gaffe by Homehound or another one of these silly adwords companies that promise the world and deliver litigation costs everywhere. This is not the first time this has happened and the big boys in Australia have been caught out as well in the past, but please, after all of the litigation around the world on this one, you would think companies would learn!