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??

Domain.com.au allow private advertising on their website and it may well be worth alot of money to them. I had a meeting before Christmas with one of their representatives and he told me that it was a very small amount of their revenues.

Newspapers for years have allowed private advertisers and its seems that real estate portals are now seeing real revenues from this sector. Realestate.com.au do not allow private advertisers, however many more agents now just charge a flat fee for listings, sometimes as low as $750.00.

Most of these agents are targeting the lower end of the market. However a few weeks ago I came across a site, that will make many agents skin crawl, but from a technical point of view it shows that this market is growing up and agents are going to have to sharpen their minds as this onslaught continues.

The site I am talking about is zeroagents.com.au and it really is an attack on real estate agents – and makes no bones about tapping into popular misconceptions of agents in some of the consumers minds. Here is the offer for premium advertising from this site @ $297.00 Inc GST.

You get 4 months advertising on Zeroagents.
In Zero Agents your Internet property advertisement will appear at the top of searches above standard listed properties.
You get 2 corflute signs delivered.
You get 4 months advertising on Domain, Trading Post and Hot Properties websites.
You get real buyer exposure. The thing that impressed me about this site, is that it is polished and shows a maturity in the understanding of the Internet. It does have its flaws but it is easily the most impressive site for private advertisers on the market today.

So what does this mean for agents?
For me, it is all about getting your message right, simply shrugging your shoulders may not be enough going forward. Many claims these companies make cannot be proven – just as many claims agents make cannot. So the must be a better approach taken to this. Of course the success of private sales is far far lower than through real estate agents, and yes sometimes they may sell for less. Most of the time they get agents through their homes to get a price and then list privately at around or above that price.

Agents of course can go through these sites and market their products and services to these people, however from talks with some agents this can be annoying, maybe a softly approach, an introduction, a “Mitsubishi……please consider”.

The reality is though, that private advertising is only going to grow stronger each year, as the Internet lowers the cost of entry. So agents have to be able to counter this in many ways.

The days of the glitzy multi office agency maybe coming to an end, replaced by mobile salespeople from an office and on the road.
Your thoughts?