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.

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!

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?

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.

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!

Currently realestate.com.au charges a flat fee and domain.com.au charges fees dependant on your area (city or country) and their so called ‘popularity’ in these areas.

So why would they be doing this? Because they want to make it fairer? Guess again muchumbo, this is all about making more money for their companies/shareholders. You can argue that this is fair enough, as this is what they exist to do. Howeve, they have this opportunity only becuase agents support them and without these agents, they would not attract visitors and therefore 3rd party advertisers like banks and those pathetic what price my house websites.There are some valid arguments for maybe one of these models, but they have to tread very carefully.

So lets look at some current models and possible models or fees.

Area Pricing
Well put simple they charge you a certain fee based on population or region, such as city or country and in some cases their popularity within a region. The reason for this is the thought that city agents turn over much more stock than their country counterparts and therefore make more money. Well, of course this is true, but think a little about it. John and Jill in a country town, also pay a lot less for renting or buying their offices, they pay a lot less for staff, they pay a lot less for advertising and have many cases have much less competition.So that throws that thinking out the window! The only reason Domain do this – is because they can where they have strengths. I do know of many agents that can play a little game with domain against realestate.com.au and get pretty good discounts, so get them to sharpen their pencils. You could tell them that you are thinking of only going with only one portal (tougher times) and get the price down. Yes, Domain.com.au do deals!

Set Monthly Fees
Realestate.com.au currently use this system and it has served them well, everyone pays the same basic rate per month and can list as many properties as they like (obviously franchises get better deals). Prices have increased by around 15% per annum since they started ($150 per month) up to around $400 per month today.

After the debacle of the email problems from a few months ago, realestate.com.au have lost a fair bot of faith from their agents and really have to work hard to gain their trust. The revelation that they wish to gain another 30-40% increase in revenues from agents over the next year will do nothing to help help them win the trust again. I simply cannot see agents accepting en-masse an increase of 30-40% per month without some serious extra benefits. However if they did, I doubt too many agents could do anything about it. My guess is that they will drop the base subscription and try to move everyone up to the next level and introduce another higher level of membership. This will mean all agents will get a logo next to their listings (WOW) and some extra benefits.

I received an email yesterday that told me that they considering a similar model to domain.com.au because they believed it was “fairer”. My guess is whatever they do, it will be to increase revenues, so do not be fooled into thinking you will be any better off under a new subscription offer. Again it will be all about extra $$.

Per Listing Fee
This one is a simpler approach, you pay certain amount of money per listing whether you are in the country or city. The only difference is whether it is a basic listing or a premium listing and the price per property listing will be different depending on your subscription level. I do hate all these different levels of membership, but they are a fact of life – even the free sites are trying to work this in to make some money. This model actually gets rid of problems like agents listing the same property in multiple suburbs and also re-listing properties multiple times. It also creates a more level playing field going forward as many agents are closing multiple offices to lower overheads and doing more from a central office and this must effect REA’s bottom line in some way going forward.

Currently no major portal does this, although I think that this is a better option. It will be a reasonably high price per listing, and agents would have to get their calculators out to make sure it was worth their while. The one problem for a portal choosing this method is that they will be at the mercy of the market and how many listings that come on during different cycles, but with nearly 10 years of data, I am sure they would work it out in their favour.

Free with paid features.
Currently MyHome and Homehound offer free listing website with an option to upgrade your listings to feature listings. I am never a fan of this type of thing, but I do think Agents need to be on these sites at a basic level. Most of these get a fraction of the visitors of the big portals, but by supporting sites like these they will slowly build their visitor numbers as the sites. There are a few more of these around and some have some quite interesting models.

Completely Free
With Properazzi, Google Base, Dothomes coming so Australia sooner rather than later and of course MyHome (now free and gaining quite a few listings) it is not the time to be getting agents offside, so it will have to be a very measured approach to charging more or changing pricing models.

Whichever way portals do go, I think that agents would like to know what effect that it will have on their business and to be able to easily calculate that effect. Many agents across Australia are struggling in these times and whilst some pockets are still strong it is not gong to get any better in the short term being in the middle of the world-wide financial crisis.

Note: Simon Baker (Ex REA) has launched a new website called Property Portal Watch

I needed to find an old article recently in the archives recently and came across some articles that I thought would be worth a revisit. I started around 18 months ago and looked forward about a year and came up with the following little gems:-
Realestate.com.au release REA Labs
This technology sandpit as REA call it is as Peter pointed out at the time, a complete rip off Google Labs and appears to have dont nothing since the day it was launched. Not even a vista sidebar gadget. The lack of action appears to make a mockery of the original “Global Innovator” tag they put on themselves at the time. My browser tells me this page has not been updated for around 9 months or so.
Google to Launch Real Estate Beta in 2007?
2007 looked as though it was going to be Google Real Estate’s year but not only did it not arrive, but we are on the back half of 2008 and there seems no solution in sight. Will it still happen?
Private selling sites – growing up!
Zero Agents produced a private selling site with a bit of style however in hindsight the anti agent rhetoric has proven to be full of hot air, at least in our neck of the woods. I seen my first zeroagents sign the other day. Has anybody seen zeroagents make an impact in their marketplace?

Domain Simply Adorable!
Domain launched Adore to hot discussion. Even Simon Baker joined in on the comments but what’s happened to Adore since then?
The Times they are a Changin!
Fairfax released the online newspaper in Brisbane the www.brisbanetimes.com.au which has consistently held a daily audience of around 40,000 unique visitors per day since launch. The good news is that they have not gone backwards one step… however the bad news is that it is not significantly improved either. So is this a success or failure or a little bit of both??
News Ltd Newspapers Property Sections Rebranded as realestate.com.au
A bunch of real estate sections in bunch of newspapers changed there logo…. so what? I doubt this increased readership or visitor counts to either but it made somebody somewhere feel warm and fuzzy.  Can anybody say they actually felt an impact from this?
Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the water!
Another topic that erupted in the comments, REA in a huge touch of arrogance decided to launch the “Peak Industry Body” – The REAIAC which stands for REA Industry Advisory Council. How anybody could call this an industry body is beyond me, but has anybody heard anything that has come out of this Adivsory Council all was it all hot air as so many claimed?
Google Buys REA
Peter was taken hook line and sinker, if you have never read this, take a minute and put a smile on your dial.
Now this is what you call a Property Video!
Propvid really started caputuring everyone attention and video started to look as though it has promise but even today there are few of the 10,000 or so agents in this country who are using video. Professional photography seems to have gained greater penetration for 2008 however video’s day appears to be a lot closer. We were given the opportunity to experience a propvid recently and was very impressed. We are hoping to do a lot more and have added it as a standard part of our marketing plans. 2009 for video maybe??
First National Conference by Glenn
Andrew Taylor from REA advised that REA felt their biggest threat came from Truelocal. Andrew must have been looking way into the future because Truelocal has lost visitor numbers since that time and hardly looks as though it will light the world on fire. In fact despite all the whizz bang features, it is HotFrog that has set the business directory world on fire their visitor traffic coming from nowhere to twice that of Truelocal. So who is REA’s biggest threat?? Anybody?
Homehound re- launch

and
Whats Dumb? Homehound Google campaign!
Ho hum. Homehound is still a pretender on the scene and only a sneaky and dirty tricks adwords campaign seemed to get them any traffic. Using the registered business names of real estate agents to imitate the agent and steal their traffic was a way to ensure they did not pay the high adwords for the typical “<suburb> real estate” keywords that everyone else competes over.. Is anybody still being targetted by this tactic??

I hope they do to be honest and I hope MyHome use the Homehound developers, who I must say have done a pretty nifty job of their website. Homehound is now more popular than MyHome (ouch) in terms of users, but it is their website I like the most. It really is a nice little site.

The only downside of all of this is the ownership issue. I just cannot see any portal working that is owned in full or in part by real estate agencies (franchises or not) unless everyone has a fair and equal share. If these two companies do merge, I hope (fingers crossed) they use the Homehound website and systems, as it still hurts for me to look at MyHome (although it has improved a little).

Other news:
My associate writer on business2.com.au, Dave Platter, has just welcomed a new child into his family, so congratulations to Dave and his lovely wife. Lets just hope the child and mother never hear the words “he looks just like his father”.

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!

Quick Peek:
Type in an address, suburb or postcode and the server returns results from the database to do some more searching. Nothing really new, but the way it is done deserves a pat on the back. You can then select either sales or rentals and receive your search results. Maybe they should tell the user what to do next as you have to then click either sales or rentals.

Search results come to the left hand side and a map appear to the right – well sometimes, I tried a few searches and the map did not appear. The results are clean and you can view very small thumbnails of listings before jumping to the actual property page. The map unfortunately does not scale as you increase the size of the page.

I would really like someone to do this as many Internet users have large screens and this is where portals can take advantage as it is my belief that most people with larger monitors are more than likely more Internet aware and have more money.

Ok, so we go further and click on an icon on the map and get a little pop up, again you can scroll through images (tiny) which is a great little innovation. You can also save your favourites and view them later (but I cannot find where I click to see these.)

You can also view full details in a new window or by clicking on and going to another page and then going back. I would like to see view listing in new window as default and more prominent because it makes more sense to users rather than having to go back and forth.

Advertising on the site is at a minimum but it must be said this may well be because not many companies want to advertise on the site. Will be interesting to see if advertising increases with popularity.

All in all a lovely little development, clean and crisp, fast enough with only a few minor quibbles to begin with.

These Web 2.0 sites are in their early stages and this site has shown you do not need to overload the site with cool stuff. Just give the user what they want and quickly and no users do not go to real estate sites to get quotes on home loans or to view pop overs/unders of ads crawling across the page.

The site is no blow away winner but I know they have a small budget and credits must go where credits are due…But they must get more agents and then tell Australia about the site.

I think homehound.com will only ever be a fringe player as it is owned and operated by major franchise groups and PPL and that pretty much means most (not all) private agencies will not get involved. The site also makes no mention whether it is FREE forever and has no policies on competition for listing placements in their terms and conditions.

Please Note: homehound.com.au is a partnership between Property Page Pty Ltd (PPL) and the Independent Print Media Group.

PPL is a company owned by the real estate industry’s major franchise groups. The shareholders are Century 21, L.J. Hooker, Ray White and Raine and Horne – all members of the National Real Estate Franchise Association (NREFA).

Please Note 2: I only spent around one hour on the site and I am sure their will be a few more issues. But have a look for yourselves and let me know what you think.