Today, Homehound launched “Home Style” which is an interactive gallery displaying images of ideas for home renovations. They have 10,000 + photographs which they believe will provide inspiration for key room makeovers and renovations within the home.

James Hannan, General Manager of Independent Digital Media says:

Home Style’s galleries of interiors and exteriors will help users decide what to do next with their homes. “Home Style is a fantastic new offering from Homehound, created to assist with generating ideas for designing the dream home on any budget.”

“It offers home hunters the opportunity to visualise what they might do when it comes to decorating, updating or renovating the home they’re about to purchase. This new section will inspire our audience and help drive engagement throughout our site. The increased engagement we will add value for our member agents – keeping our audience on the site longer, looking at more pages and in turn more properties.”

I found the “Home Style” section very visually appealing and the search functionality is also quite interactive. What they have done is tag each image with a number of search variables which allow you to select tags/criteria and the results will filter out images which are not within your criteria.

If you were looking to complete a renovation or makeover, then I think you would certainly spend some time drawing inspiration from this section of Homehound.

2 Comments »

One of the big complaints by real estate agents when the Google Real Estate service started up was that the 2nd and 3rd tier real estate portals were actively pushing the agents properties to Google as well. Agents where uploading property portals like Homehound, Myhome and Onthehouse who were then turning around and re-uploading the same properties to Google

When several sources upload the same property to Google they apparently use the Pagerank system to work out who is the default page to display. Whilst all options are available when you press the “more info” option the majority of the traffic would be to the default link and in most cases the default link is not back to the agent, but to one of these portals. Ideally an agent wants this traffic to come back to their own website.

Many agents found the only way to guarantee their own link was seen on Google Real Estate was to stop uploading to these free portals. This was a little bit like cutting your nose off to spite your face. The free portals might not bring you the same enquiry levels as the top 2 subscription portals but as a value proposition it’s hard not to use them. It really became an either/or situation and unfortunately for the Free portals the power of Google’s reputation won out and they were shut off by an increasing number of agents.

We currently use Portplus and it’s as easy as unticking a box to shut off a feed to one of these portals.

There has been enough agents switching them off that Homehound now offers the option not to re-upload your properties to Google if you ask them and Myhome should have the option in place by next week.

If your considering canceling the free portals to improve your own results on Google Real Estate then I would suggest you give them a call first. Now you might be able to have your cake and eat it too!

24 Comments »

There’s been a lot of speculation about why REA & Domain haven’t uploaded listings onto Google Maps real estate search as yet & I believe the main reason why is Money.

Reading between the lines Google, REA & Domain could stand to make a lot of money out of this deal. My theory is that a deal could be happening based around an Adsense style commission paid to REA & Domain.

Google makes most of its money through Pay Per Click advertising.

As PPC advertising became more & more popular Google ended up with more ads than ad impressions simply because people rarely searched past the first page on Google.

To solve this problem Google came up with Adsense. This enabled Google’s ads to appear on external websites by paying the website owner a percentage of the advertising revenue generated from their site.

Since launching real estate search on Google Maps, Google have been able to expand their potential online advertising space at the mind blowing rate of approx. 1 million pages.

For example, when you click on any one of the listings on Google Maps & then click the More Info link you’ll see 4 tabs – Overview, Details, Photos & Web Pages.

On each of these pages there is a vacant area to the right or at the bottom that is just screaming out for the Sponsored Links to appear.

If you look closely on the Web Pages page you’ll notice that as more sites feed their listings on, more Web Pages links like Homehound, MyHome, the agents website, etc appear down the page. This automatically expands the currently vacant area on the right hand side of this page. Just waiting for Google to turn on the Sponsored Links switch.

At first I couldn’t understand why Google would display numerous feeds for the one listing but now I get it.

The whole thing is a brilliantly devised concept by Google to expand their PPC advertising space. They’ve even designed it in such a way that they get 4 or 5 pages of advertising per property listing.

With Google reporting hundreds of thousands of listings being uploaded since the launch that adds up to approx. 1 million pages that they can now advertise on, with a lot more on their way as they roll this concept out globally.

And with total control over where they place their sponsored links Google will want every listing they can get. That’s why Google won’t charge agents to upload their listings & it’s also the reason why they will allow private sellers.

When you think about it REA & Domain have virtually all the online listings in Australia & getting a feed from them would be extremely lucrative to Google & will add millions of extra pages to their site, so it makes sense that Google will probably pay an Adsense style of commission to REA & Domain to have their listings feed.

So all I’m wondering now is what’s the deal? And how much more money do REA & Domain stand to make out of real estate agents’ listings?

44 Comments »

At 3.00pm today Google launched their new real estate search mapping tool which allows real estate agents to publish their listings for free and the public to browse listings.

The site has a number of new features. Users of the site can search for listings in a particular suburb and then refine the listings down using the various option, the map reloads and only the listings appear with your search (as little icons on the map). Users can then review property information via map pop ups and then go directly to the agents listing from there.

Currently there are a number of listings driven from Homehound, Harcourts and other groups, however Domain and Realestate.com.au have yet to send their listings through the free service from Google.

You can send feeds via the API or from a variety of Feed types and research this by clicking here. Talk to your feed provider about getting your listings on Google, its free and it should bring your business some pretty good leads as Google Maps has some pretty good research tools already built in.

Business2.com.au will write a review in next few days. Below is the press release from Google Australia.

Google today announced the addition of a real estate search feature to Google Maps in Australia. The new feature allows real estate agents, franchise groups and portals alike to upload their listings directly to Google Maps at no cost, making them more easily discoverable by the millions of Google Maps users in Australia.

Increasingly, people are starting their search for a new home online – Nielsen research shows that 87% of Australian home buyers use the internet to research properties*. Google saw more than 35% growth in real estate-related searches from Jan/Feb 2008 to Jan/Feb 2009**.

“We know that many Australian home buyers already use Google Maps to help their house-buying and renting decisions, especially driving directions and Street View, and by making real estate listings available right in Google Maps we can drive qualified buyers directly to listings,” says Andrew Foster, product manager, Google.

“It’s a simple and free way for real estate companies to make their listings even more discoverable, and have them seen on an easy-to-navigate map.”

Real estate agents can visit http://maps.google.com.au/realestate to find out more information about how to work with Google to have their listings appear on Google Maps.

The new feature lets potential home buyers enter a city or suburb and see available listings represented by markers or small circles on the map. They can then refine their search by price, type of property, bedrooms, bathrooms, and parking. The map will automatically update with relevant listings when panned or zoomed to another suburb, and when the search criteria is changed. Clicking on a marker or a small circle will provide more information about the listing, as well as the contact details of the listing agent and a link to their website.

President of the Real Estate Institute of Western Australia, Rob Druitt, said agents and property managers in WA would welcome the opportunity to have their listings searchable on Google Maps.

“The real estate profession, perhaps more than many others, has become strongly focused around IT and the use of websites over the last decade. The evolution of the internet has transformed the sector, such that buyers, sellers and renters are much better informed and have easy and quick access to images and contacts. Indeed, this is now the high expectation with property consumers.

“Agents are keen to embrace this, as they are always looking for new and different ways to increase exposure of their listings without runaway expenditure. The opportunity presented by Google can only help in this regard,” Mr Druitt said.

The original Google Maps prototype was invented by four engineers in Sydney: Lars Rasmussen, Jens Rasmussen, Noel Gordon and Stephen Ma, all of whom still work in Google’s Sydney engineering centre. All over the country, Australians use Google Maps to find addresses and local businesses, see satellite imagery, obtain driving directions, and create and share personalised maps, making it the most popular online maps site in Australia according to Nielsen NetRatings (May 2009).

Note: Google Australia will answer all reasonably related questions if you clearly include them in comments below.

97 Comments »

This afternoon I was lucky enough to receive a press release from Homehound highlighting the recent updates they’ve made to their website. I don’t often use Homehound (as the map search irritates me) but after seeing what they’ve done I must say I was impressed! From their press release:

Finance Centre – Where users can search for providers of credit cards, home loans, compare loans and obtain other information about borrowing. Let me say, this Finance Section brings to shame the websites and their functionality of most mortgage providers in this country.

Share Accommodation – Other major portals allow users to post free ads and Homehound has followed suit. But what’s different is, Homehound appear to have done a deal with a 3rd party company Easy Roommate to share their data in return for Homehound users entering their ads through the Easy Roommate website.

Walk Score – We all know what this is but for those who don’t, users can search the neighbourhood around a listing and receive a WalkScore regarding the properties location.

SMS Property info for FREE – Great if you don’t have internet access on your phone but want property details at a future date. Receive an sms with the property details to your phone.

Apply for Rental Properties – My favourite, rental seekers can now apply for a property through the Homehound website. Once again, Homehound have chosen to use a 3rd party company 1Form to allow users to submit rental applications. 1Form has been around for a few years but over the past 12 months has really begun to penetrate agencies and finally portals in Australia.

1Form allows rental seekers to submit an online rental application for a property which is then emailed to the property manager. If the rental seeker applies for another property (as long as 1Form is featured) the rental seeker can submit their same rental application for that property. A great idea isn’t it, no more messy paper applications for property managers and the rental seeker completes one online application for all properties.

It’s terrific to see a portal improve their interface and the experience they offer their users. It’s even better when they do this by embracing 3rd party technology supplied by market leading companies. This proves you don’t need to spend thousands on developing technology which already exists nor purchasing companies which have created it!

19 Comments »