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!

On a slow news day late last month an eagle eye reporter of the Dominion Post newspaper in New Zealand reported on the shocking crime of turning the sky blue! The local Open2View real estate photographer had the temerity to use the same cloud formation on different photos and the Dominion Post caught them in this despicable crime.

Showing there is not much bigger than a politicians ego local MP Clayton Cosgrove chimed in on the issue when approached by the paper for comment that agents should show the property in “its ordinary environment” and “I just think it’s a bit on the nose. The more straight up you are, the better you are.”

Showing what a hypocrite he was, the MP who apparently proposed the recent real industry reform bill to parliament seemed to have no problem when he said that photoshopping photographs  ”could make me look slimmer and give me more hair”. Seems this kiwi pollie thinks misrepresenting his own looks is fine, but changing a sky blue is a little smelly!

Nobody suggested that the house was changed in anyway nor its surroundings. Nobody removed power lines, blotted out a bus stop at the front of the property,  added a garden that wasn’t there or anything else that misrepresented the property in anyway. They turned the sky blue, thats all.

The whole sordid affair started doing the rounds here in Australia after a local blog picked up on the story and it was retweeted on twitter.

Lets all put this in perspective shall we.  Nobody seems to want to hold Domain to task for altering photos that clearly misrepresent the property but everyone gets up in arms over a blue sky.

Domain does not display photos in the same aspect ratio that they are provided in and will warp the images.  Now when the photo is in landscape the differences are only minor and unless you see the original image side by side it is often difficult to tell. It is a little like when you go to your friends place and they have a fancy widescreen tv displaying a 4:3 or letterbox picture. It looks pretty close but everybody seems to have put on a little weight. So a small house appears bigger and a crowded room appears a little more spacious.

It’s when photos are provided in portrait orientation  things really start going astray.  Lets look at the same property on three different portals.

Domain's display of 352 Edgeware Road, Newtown

Realestate.com.au's version. Not quite so spacious as Domain's is it

Myhome - Again, it is tiny compared to Domain's offering

Domain need to clean up their code and stop distorting photos because its a dangerous game to be misrepresenting properties these days with some government departments looking for scalps… even big ones that can afford to pay big fines.

Unlike other updates which Google has completed a preview of these new search results can be found at www2.sandbox.google.com and the new change has been nicknamed Caffeine

The results are for the US but you can manually add &gl=au to the end of the query string to get Australian specific results. Now it goes without saying that this is obviously not the final version as they would have released it if it was ready.

I ran through some major real estate searches just to see what the overall effect will be among the major portals and real estate groups. I have only checked the first page for each keyword and if there are no more changes to Caffeine before its launched it appears on a national level at least that Myhome will be the biggest winner and Domain the biggest loser.

If you want to know how your website will be effected for your choice keywords check out http://www.sembience.com/labs/google-caffeine-ranking and don’t forget to change it to Australia.

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?

Well what a year it has been, with just about every major company in the real estate and classifieds market vying for entry into this years awards.

So how do you make our dumb and dumber awards? Well quite simply, you make a schoolboy mistake, try to cover something up or worse still knowingly do something that is so obviously dumb to everyone else aside from your inner sanctum.

So here is our list for this year, enjoy!

1. WINNER – REA Group – Realestate.com.au

What do you do when one of your email servers have hundred’s of thousands’s of property email enquiries stuck and not delivered for months and months on end to real estate agents battling through tough times? Well for starters some bright spark decided we will just deliver them to agents who had no clue of the age of the emails! Once the story broke here on business2.com.au REA then went into damage control and placed a note in agent admin and then later sent out an email explaining the situation to unsuspecting agents. This left agents embarrassed – their reputations tarnished and having to apologise to ten’s of thousand’s of enquirers.

REA offered a heartfelt apology, discussed compensation, but decided to just weather the storm and continue business as usual. REA’s reputation for care has never been worse and will take a hell of a lot of work to win back agents trust. More price rises to come will not help their cause. Fluffy promotional emails will not do anything either, hard work, improved customer service and some humility will help.

2. RUNNER UP – PBL & Microsoft

Get a photo op with a bunch of Steve Jobs wannabes on launch, spend ten’s of millions of dollars marketing a website with out-of-date and sold listings, less than 30% of your rivals listings (and the same data), do buddy deals with a handful of the major franchise groups along with the worst real estate interface to come out of the 21st century and what do you get? Well you get them running scared and selling it off in 12 months for less than 3% of what they put into it. Still it has to be one of his better deals since he took over from daddy. If you want to know how NOT to build and launch a real estate portal, note the myhome.com.au debacle. The new owners are trying their best and have really got back to basics. May be worth the try now!

3. Major Telcos

Put together pathetic customers service, disgraceful data plans, slow networks and you have yourself a major Telco. Telstra may have the best wireless Internet in Australia, but it has the most expensive – restrictive plans around and Optus is not much better. It pays big time to look around. Maybe Telstra should spend some time and money on the people that make them money rather than trying to protect their monopoly. Optus does not fare much better and you only have to look into the Whirpool forums to see how many people loath their Telcos.

4. The Financial Meltdown

Oh, how we were once impressed by our finance market friends driving their Maserati’s and Porsches, how we listened to their amazing insights into how the money markets worked, how impressed we were about how they speculate and how their models make everyone rich and successful. Turns out they were all pretty much clueless, having fancy degrees on a wall means nothing if you don’t have real world smarts. If making money is your only goal then you will eventually fail, problem is – this time around everyone suffered.

It is ok to strive for an open market economy, but should mum and dads around the world have to bail them out when it all goes pear-shaped?

5. Get it ‘FREE’ Mobile Domain

SMS property alerts on your mobile, great idea and absolutely free – well free as in 0.55 cents an SMS. Ooops sorry forgot to mention that! ACCC noted this and slapped Fairfax over the knuckles.

6. REA’s Peak Industry Body

Way way back in March 2007 (nearly 2 years ago, REA setup ‘The Peak Industry Body’, this was no doubt an effort to ‘connect’ with you, ‘Joe the Plumber’, meeting ‘at least’ 6 times a year would equate to around 24 meetings so far. I think each meeting ended with a Hollowmen ‘steady as she goes approach’ because unless I am mistaken nothing has ever come out of this – except continual price rises

7. Internet Explorer

To every single software/website or so called IT expert that only works in Internet Explorer or in the latter case only only allows you to use IE6, hang your heads in shame. Every time I use Internet Explorer I am frustrated, whether it is testing sites in IE6 or 7 and now IE8.

The latest debacle for Internet Explorer came just a few days ago.

The vulnerability could allow remote code execution if a user views a specially crafted Web page using Internet Explorer. Users whose accounts are configured to have fewer user rights on the system could be less impacted than users who operate with administrative user rights. This security update is rated Critical for Internet Explorer 5.01, Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1, and Internet Explorer 7.

Basically anyone could access your PC and take anything they liked. Microsoft stated that it is always looking at ways to improve their product, no, they are always looking at ways to get it to at least work. One friend of mine lost $4,800 just yesterday and is scrambling to get it back because someone hacked their PC.

So free yourself from the train wreck of a browser which is Internet Explorer and jump with Firefox, Opera, Safari or Google Chrome and leave, buggy, slow, insecure software behind. If your software provider can’t cut it, then leave them behind as well.

Note: Also read some reviews on anti virus software and get it installed on all pc’s.

8. Why are we waiting?

Google needs to get its act together and release a solution that the whole market is waiting for. Every day I am asked the question and each day I have no answer. I know they are working on it – but come on guys and girls. Worldwide the advertisers market for a stand-alone real estate website from Google would be worth billions and billions of dollars of new advertising revenue.

9. Yellow Pages

Time to get a new advertising campaign, no one really cares about you any more and the campaigns warning us of impending financial gloom if we do not advertise with you just don’t cut it any more. Rising costs, hundreds of thousands of books dumped in rubbish bins or left rotting in the rain – and a business model that just plain sucks. And don’t get me started on Yellow Pages Online.

10. Newspapers

I love newspapers, I really do, they serve a great part of discussion in our community, but if you think articles about Nicole Kidman’s lips or Brad and Angelina are going to lift your readership think again. Newspapers need to rebuild their classifieds to suit a new market. Once upon a time agents pushed newspaper advertising for them, only a few do now and the market is getting smaller by the day. Keep this up and classified newspapers are finished. Simple test, get two people, one in a newspaper and one online to find a 3 bedroom 2 bathroom property in Wagga Wagga.

Solution?
1. Rebuild your classifieds for ease of use.
2. Offer annual subscriptions at a loss to build base readership – $10.
3. Get into real property journalism that gets people talking. (not paid for fluff promos)

11. New Real Estate Portals

So you want to help agents get away from REA and Domain? No you don’t, you want to make money and sell out to one or the other once you have some success. Oh and $10,000 you have committed does not build you a national portal – not even built off shore. So, stop telling me you care and how exciting your product is and do the hard yards, start local and build out, and your systems had better be good!

12. Kevin Rudd

Oh Kevin you had us all, you promised so much, you work long hours and impress us with grandiose words like ‘education revolution’. Here’s the thing, deep down inside you know you are boring, we do too, but we knew that already, we just want you to make a difference, we want some bold initiatives – not only for this industry but for Australia. In 2009 there is to be no more buck passing, no more ‘we are not immune’.

We didn’t know what cards you had, we thought it must have been good, 3 deuces in the hand? A straight? A full house? A flush? A straight flush? If we find out all you had was a piddly small pair – you will be out with the bathwater. So get down and dirty, make some bold reforms and get this country back on track.

13. Printed Local Property Guides

Every week about 24 local newspapers are dumped on our doorstep (we only have 12 apartments) and every week about 23 of them end up in the trash. You all thought it was a great idea to launch a property guide. How wrong it has all turned out to be. I will give you all less than 12 months. When vendors clearly say no to agents about advertising in local newspapers you know you are in trouble, my bet is that you will keep thinking you can turn it around.

14. Agent Websites

I spent a day trawling through agent websites randomly a few days ago. I looked at over 500 sites. Ouch, apart from seeing about 100 websites that are exactly the same (template sites), so many do not work in all major browsers. Here is a hint, if newspapers are no longer viable in this climate for marketing, where is your differentiator? Yes its your website! If you have a good one, then let every vendor know about it and ask them to compare. If you don’t – then you only have yourself to blame.

15. Vanity Blogging

Everyone is getting into blogging and you should be too. However steer clear of chest thumping and telling everyone how wonderful you and your company are – because no one is listening. Write about what you know and your opinions on the market, promote local businesses and get everyone involved. Welcome dissent, as long as it is not abusive or profane – promote it.

16. Vanity Boards

If agents need a pointer as to why some people think sign boards at the front of homes for sale and rent are more about the promoting real estate agents than the properties they are promoting then look no further than those ‘look at me boards’ promoting massive pictures of agents and in most cases nothing about the property. Ok, we get it, you absolutely love yourselves and it is cheaper than billboards but just let it go, the will to want to do it, should be enough of a sign that you have lost the plot.

17. Channels 7, 9,10

So you have your own little ratings system which bears no semblance to actual figures (good to keep that ad revenue coming in) however you are all finished unless you adapt. Showing old series just doesn’t cut it (a lot of people download the new series anyway), blatant chest thumping is so 1980′s and no innovation means a slow grinding death. Think about digital, get together, innovate with set top boxes supported by all and create a new market for direct localisation of ad serving.

18. Advertising Agencies

If you want to know who NOT to listen to when it comes to marketing your products or services just look at advertising agencies. I had a taste of them in the late 90′s and thought I would go through the process again, hoping they had learnt something about the Internet since then. I am not going to name the agencies, but if the group I met are any indication, stay well away, save your money and do it yourself!

19. James Packer

James oh James, what a business you inherited, tv networks, magazines, prime Internet locations, casinos and the list goes on. Here’s an idea, lets build a business our family empire will be proud of, lets dump just about everything we have built over the years and just get into gambling. What a noble business to be in and what a time to do it? We never cared to much about how rich you were, we liked Kerry, he was like one of us, we loved his stories (even if they were myths) and we liked you. If all you want to do is make money – then good luck to you – but you only have a few billion left buddy!

20. Mobile Agents Angst

So you have a local competitor that does not have an office (road warrior) – get over it. This is the 21st century and mobile agents working from home or on the road are going to be a lot more common over the coming years. If you use your office as a springboard to connect with vendors and buyers then you have nothing to worry about.

21. Real Estate Institutes

Can someone tell me what these organisations actually do?

A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to all of our readers, see you all again in 2009!

Bully Boys
Bullies are out, if you are told that you must sign for 12 months to a certain amount of space in printed guides, then tell them no thanks. Your vendors are not really looking for expensive short term marketing plans, in fact if you sat down with your vendors, you will find that they want aggressive marketing online. So these long term deals with newspapers are out! Print will survive but they must adapt and the current models are just so out of touch with the current markets.

If you are advertising in newspapers, push it all to your website, big website links and even better still provide ID numbers for each listing directly back to your website. Work with your newspapers and tell them your vision. If they can’t help, move on!

Understand the difference
Understand the difference between advertising a property in a paid for newspaper and a free delivered property guide. I can tell you nearly all of the free weekly property guides/newspapers that get delivered to our apartment complex each week end up in the bin. So whatever they quote you in deliveries/readers, divide it by 10/100. Salespeople are great at quoting figures, but you now want results. Understand what works and direct your marketing dollars there. Do your research and ask the questions and if you are not happy with the answers, then move on!

Online Marketing
Get involved in some free websites, MyHome now is an option, don’t worry about premium listings, they really don’t work any better than regular listings. Look for local business websites and see if you can get your listings on there. Work on your copy, your photography and link back to your website, always!

Work your community
Look around online for community guides, popular blogs and websites and get involved, negotiate some deals and get some banner advertising running. Get your banner ads designed by one of the web banner makers, like Right Banners. You will find that it will only cost a small amount per month for advertising and a few hundred dollars for the banners. Get the message across on the banners and create something that catches the eye. Do not overdo it!

Get your staff blogging
Get them to create their own blogs, who cares what they write about! Sailing, fishing, walking, yoga it doesn’t matter, then carry your advertising on their websites, as a sponsor! If they are passionate about something, help them get set-up (you own the blog) and you will find their passion will improve your business. These will eventually be connectors to other people in your community and long term they will be so much more useful than the ridiculous amount of junk mail littering the streets and lining rubbish bins with useless information.

Be different!
Okay your website listings will pretty much be the same in content as most other sites, however you can create some differences. Thinking is easy, don’t worry about what you want, think about what is important for your vendors and visitors to your site. If you must use flash, use it for photos and tours and connectors within the site. The needs of potential tenants are different to the needs of potential buyers, if you can make your property pages full of information that a potential customer wants, like suburb guides, local business information, maps and the like, then you will create a point of difference and excite your audience.

Get local business advertising, create revenues
Your real estate site should be popular, so why wouldn’t local plumbers, builders, bricklayers, cleaners, removals etc.want to be advertising on your site, create a revenue model for yourself and make your site profitable.

Get serious about your website
Sure cousin Johnny did a great job 5 years ago, but the Internet has grown up, if you still think $1,000 will cut it, then I have a wake up call for you, the best agencies are spending big and they are spending smart. Create a site that you can build on, evolve and be proud of takes time and money. Sit down and map out your needs, talk to past vendors/tenants and buyers and find out what is important to them.

Test your current website in Safari, Firefox, IE7, Opera and Google browsers and you will soon see how much is involved in creating a standards based feature rich website. There are a number of good web developers out there that can do a great job for you, so get started now! Your website will soon be the ONLY point of difference once all marketing is done online.

One Basket = Basketcase
If you rely on one company for everything, well, you deserve to get burnt. Spread your marketing across different markets and companies! Most only really specialise in one area but nearly all of them want more of your money, so they keep whacking on features hoping you will upgrade. So think about where you spend your money and create some competition.

Other things

Dump Internet Explorer 6
If your company still uses Internet Explorer 6 for web browsing then I am sorry but you deserve to get hacked, phished and burnt. IE6 was superseded years ago and is a dangerous program. If your systems do not support the latest browsers then get your software company to wise up or dump them altogether and find a software provider who has spent at least some money on R&D in the last few years. My personal favourite is Firefox.

Broadband
Get broadband. Understand broadband. Just because Bigpond still has vans driving around with “Superfast Broadband” and offering 256k downloads speeds doesn’t mean you have broadband. Broadband now starts at 20+ megabytes downloads speeds (that’s about 90x faster than 256k), so upgrade your plans (make sure you get a massive download quota).

If you have 256k and 5 office staff sharing this connection you are actually worse than 1 user on a 56k dial-up modem.

Note: Make sure you get a large download cap – Telecoms love charging for excess usage. I would suggest about 8 GIG per month for each staff member. I get 120 GIG at 24 Megs for $129.00 per month.

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

If you have not seen the article you can read the online version (whilst Issue 2 is still on display) at www.areb.com.au/emag.php.

I think myhome has huge potential but it just has a couple of big hairy monkeys on its back that it has to shake off.

The first is the reputation of the dismal failure of its previous owners and that’s exactly what that article was about. It’s funny that Shane states in the article that he does not believe PBL tarnished the myHome name but then spends the rest of the article distancing himself from the previous owners and claiming the new site will be fundamentally different. It did nothing else but scream “It Wasn’t Me!!”.

How big this particular monkey is only time will tell but the article does a good job of spreading the right news for him. The other big hairy thing weighing myhome down is the whole data issue that Robert often refers to. There database has too many inaccuracies and its a problem they have had since day one. Better it maybe but fixed it is not. On top of this myHome now has the double whammy and that is very little data and what is there is too often either out of date or is just plain wrong.

I did a quick count of houses and units for sale in Nerang.

Realestate.com.au  has all 8 Nerang based agents and 253 listings for Houses and Units in Nerang

Domain.com.au has 3 Nerang based agents and 133 listings for Houses and Units in Nerang

Myhome.com.au has just 1 of the Nerang based agents and 35 houses and Units in Nerang however 6 of them are multiple entries of the same property by the same agent.

It is not unusual to find the same property listed by many agents on any portal) ie. an open listing) but the same property should only be listed by the same agent once. Both realestate.com.au and domain.com.au jump on these very quickly to keep their data as clean as possible. myHome needs to place as much of its time to clean up what its got on their now as it does to finding new data sources.

The problem for myHome (and for domain for that matter) is that although they still have property for sale, realestate.com.au has the same properties and more… much much more.  I know that is not the case in every district in Australia but it is for the vast majority.

There are still positives for myhome though. The site is getting much better lately. On a strictly technology front it is far superior to the other two major portals. It’s failure to attract audience was never about the technology, it was the user interface that had the problems.

No doubt the hardware that he got in the deal was the best money could buy and we already know it was put under much higher loads that what it is seeing now. Many of the multi-loaders and real estate groups already have data connections set-up to myhome. They have just been switched off and Shane’s job is to get them to switch it back on.

I think the industry as a whole would like to see him succeed. I can still remember disgruntled staff members blaming real estate agents on this blog for myhome’s failure. Nothing could be further than the truth. I don’t know anybody that likes realestate.com.au’s dominance of the real estate industry. I have been to a number of training events recently where the speakers have specifically spoken out about agents getting out from under the control of REA. Healthy competition should do that and to borrow from the democrats, a strong myHome will keep the “bastards” honest.

I wish Shane all the best.  I hope for our sake that he can pull it off. If he can fix the data errors we will be lending our support by flicking the switch and I would urge everyone else to as well. But like always, if that results in angry phone calls from buyers about wrong data, old listings etc that plagued the old myHome we will turn it off again just as fast.

A second chance … Yes!
A third… No!

On Thursday evening I had a phone hookup with Simon Baker, former Managing Director of Realestate.com.au. We spoke about a range of issues and I will place some excerpts from the interview here. Simon recently departed from Realestate.com.au in the typical pathetic fashion that large organisations feel necessary and from his blog My CEO Life Simon explained his departure.

“I was summonded to a hotel room in town, asked for my access pass and told not to go back to the office and that my desk would be packed up and couriered to me – 7.5 years over in a flash. I was not to say goodbye to the team.”

Since that date Simon has been inundated with offers and judging by the response was very popular amongst his team. Simon is still a large shareholder of realestate.com.au so I am sure he will want to see continued growth from this company. You have got to give credit where it is due, the company now has a market capitalisation of over 500 million and employs some 750 people.

Realestate.com.au has a number of challenges ahead of them, not only trying to keep growth running along nicely, but also making its international businesses profitable (nearly all the profit comes from Australia).

There was no malice in this interview towards REA and he answered all questions openly.

So here is the interview.

It has been a dramatic few weeks, can you share with us some of your thoughts over the past few weeks, what have you been up to?

“Well I have had over 20 opportunities present themselves over the since the announcement. Anything from board positions, investment opportunities and of course some serious offers which I am taking my time mulling over, it has to fit.” Simon is also involved in a number of early stage companies and has investments in a number of these, from real estate to arts. Simon is currently Chairman and CEO of Artshub, a Director of Redbubble and a Director of 3eep. Simon seems to have a passion for the arts and you can see this from his investments, ArtsBub looks like a little ripper.

Where do you see yourself working, do you think you will remain in the online space in real estate or just general technology?

“Well it will have to be on the Internet, I am not interested in anything non internet related, I couldn’t cope with it.” So I am weighing up some opportunities and will make a decision in due course, but I have had a plethora of interest both in and around the real estate space.”

Realestate.com.au saw incredible growth over the past few years. Is this going to continue, or do you think it will be tough to continue at around 40% growth? We all have been waiting for Google Classifieds (Google Real Estate) to come to Australia. Do you see this as a threat to current revenue models?

“No”. Simon recently had a chat with Abe Murray Product Manager at Google and pointed out that Google are not in the business of taking down markets, more so complimenting them.

“Only around 30% of traffic comes from Google, Realestate.com.au is now part of everyday life for consumers, the real challenge is for off-line print media, realestate.com.au drives leads for agents, this is what we do, currently in Australia around 15% of marketing is spent online compared with 85% in newspapers, yet newspapers struggle with around 20% of leads. Naturally agents will just get smarter where they spend there money.”

Will the Portals embrace Google?

“Portals will embrace Google, they will be crazy not to”. Simon also spoke of the challenge for Google if realestate.com.au, domain.com.au, realestateview.com.au, myhome.com.au all send the same properties and perhaps also agents sent feeds to Google as well. We did disagree on some aspects of this, as I did point out that Google will be smart enough to filter these or link to all sources. Simon does however feel that Google will not be a threat, he thinks they will compliment the portals.

Newspapers have been struggling with print property guides, seeing revenues fall over the past few years. Can you ever see them give up, like the LA Times has done recently?

“I don’t think they will give up, agents will use newspapers more for branding and perhaps only high quality properties will be featured in papers – maybe 1.5 million dollar properties.” I agreed with Simon on this. I mentioned that it may well start at around $600,000 but more and more consumers will not want advertising in newspapers and each year the benchmark will increase, lower priced properties, especially in times where many may be getting less than what they paid for properties and will not want to spend money in print.

Do you think print and online departments should merge?

“No”. Many have speculated that this is where Simon and the Board had the base of their disagreement. I think the ‘no’ was a great answer, short and sweet. It is also speculated that Fairfax Digital and Print are also having the same bunfight.

Where do you see real estate in 5 years? Do you think Mobile is the answer or do you think digital television is the next big area?

“I think it will be via the browser, whether it is video or not, the mobile market here in Australia is different to some countries where there are so many more options and everyday uses for mobile phones – maybe an integrated TV browser”.

If you had to name one thing you could be proud of in your time at REA what would it be?

“Created a household name”. Simon struggled to name just one. He also spoke of his time coming into a company on its knees and systematically building it up with a great passionate team and taking it international.

Simon was leaving on a flight overseas tomorrow, so I thanked him for his time and wished him luck. I think we will see him somewhere building a smallish company up, more than likely in the real estate space. He does have a passion outside of real estate, but real estate is where he has all of the connections and a great reputation, he understands the market internationally, so I think that will be where we see his more prominent roles.

If you get a chance take a look at his MyCEO Blog it has some great articles and insights into his life as a CEO and also some good commentary on his departure.

Google Trends has allowed users to compare the the number of searches for specific keywords. You could compare how popular searches for “Sydney Real Estate For Sale” compared against “Sydney Property For Sale”. Just recently Google has added the ability to compare actual visitors to specific sites. Your site has to produced significant traffic to appear on their radar so virtually all individual agent websites don’t produce the traffic to show, but lots of sites do as per the examples.

These are some graphs I have created using the tool. The graphs speak for themselves but there are a couple of things worth specifically noting. Look at MyHome since the money got turned off. Shane definitely has some work ahead of him just to return it to is previous traffic levels.

Also, have a look at the domain and REA comparison. REA really lost ground very late 2007 however they bounced back. I remember commenting on this at the time but have never revisited it. In recent months, REA looks to be more effected by the slowdown in the industry although this could just be the resolution of the graph too.

I could not help put in the trading post versus ebay graph given my recent post on Sensis. How they think they can compare their numbers is crazy. Interesting to see that whitepages and yellowpages traffic is down substantially over the past year.

Anyway.. on to the graphs (please note.. if you want to have a play yourself to get the actual traffic numbers you have to have an account or else you get the trend lines only, I think)

I shrinked the graphs so they appear on the web page better but have linked them to our image host so you can view the slightly larger versions yourself or you could even visit Google Trends and run your own report at Google Trends.