Google Real Estate will force the portals to embrace, open and innovate or die!

Slowly but surely Google Real Estate is making inroads into the Australian real estate market with the recent signing of LJ Hooker on top of most of the major players in real estate in Australia. It will take longer for all of the smaller independent agents to come onboard, however it is clear that this is the beginning of a new era and it is time REA and Domain stepped up to the plate and opened themselves up to the Google way of life!

Why? Because not doing so will slowly end their dominance and when the decline occurs it will be so fast that no maneuvering will make a difference.

Some may argue that Google Real Estate has not made a difference as yet, but these people live in complete denial and it will only be a matter of time before visitor numbers begin declining and Google Real Estate begins its upward March.

Remember, Google only has to get comparative data to make a difference. Google also have a far greater capacity to let people know about it than all other real estate portals in the world combined.

Recently a number of videos have been produced that well and truly show how serious Google is about maps and real estate.

Finding a house on Google Real Estate Maps

Here is one to showcase real estate listings throughout Australia

Here is one on how to refine your real estate search on Google Real Estate.

Real Estate API’s
Realestate.com.au and domain.com.au must open their databases up to the general public to create a whole new wave of web and mobile applications.

I have been pushing API’s with these portals for over 2 years and yet we still have nothing. Maybe Realestate.com.au’s big announcement will include an API?

What can an API do?
As an example any website would be able to carry listings through this API, so community websites, industry websites, councils, agents, even business2.com.au would be able to carry listings, sales data etc. Portals do not need agents permission as agents have signed away all rights to the data when they join these sites.

Signing up should be simple and approval rapid and it should be accompanied by rapidly evolving documentation and examples.

Boon for portals
One other thing we will see is innovation across the board, even things we have not even thought of will take us by surprise, but the biggest boon will be for the portals. It will extend their listings and sales data reach and allow that data to be ingrained across 10’s of thousands of websites across Australia and the world.

Versions
There should be two versions of the API, the free version which carries 3rd parties adverts from the portals and is a little limited and then a paid version that carries no advertising and allows the user to do whatever they want with the data!

Flow on
The flow on effect of this will flow across the industries to jobs, cars and classifieds.

Will this happen?
Don’t hold your breath, large organisations are slow at moving on these opportunities, usually waiting until it is too late. We are fast approaching a time where I think realestate.com.au and domain.com.au will start going backwards unless they really innovate with API’s.

One only has to look at the music industry and the movie industry to see how stubborn incumbents completely ruin their own industries by not embracing and innovating.

53 Comments »

REA Major Announcement in March

There are strong rumours circulating that Realestate.com.au will be launching a new site in early March 2010. What this site will look like is any one’s guess?

REA have come under criticism in the past that the realestate.com.au website is more about selling 3rd party services than actually marketing real estate agents listings, so it will be interesting to see how much of the feedback they have received over the years gets put into place.

Given that REA are the leader, I am be expecting something special, no excuses, I mean the site has had some minor adjustments over years, but this is 2010 and I would expect nothing short of brilliance from this team after this period of time. I am sure the hype will build up and can’t wait to get a sneak peak and report back to all.

Here are some of the things i will be looking for:

Make the Home Page Customisable

If you want registrations and repeat customers, make it so I can fully customize the home page. I should be able to login and set what types of listings I am looking for. The home page should then become ‘my home page’, with relevant listings, sales data, advertising and real estate news and media from my areas. I should be able to login with my Google, Facebook accounts and I should be to set up watch lists for local properties, agents etc.

Agents Listings First

95% or more of realestate.com.au’s visitors would be people looking to buy, sell, rent or have their properties managed, so it beggars belief that so many real estate sites make it difficult to contact an agent on a listing page. This should be prominent at top left of listings page (where eyes first look) and not hidden away down the left or right side.

Give me what I search for

I don’t care if a listing is one year old or one day old, I want to get accurate results for what I search for. Today agents need to re-list properties (which can get you barred on REA) on some sites every ninety days, otherwise they are not found.

Agents are commissioned to sell a property for the vendor. It makes it hard to sell if it cannot be found, it is just so pathetic that only the first 200 listings are displayed, load and data cannot be the excuse, especially when there is so much junk thrown in the users face on each page.

3rd Party Advertising

REA should by now have realised that pop up ads are a pain in the proverbial, just give me non-intrusive, relevant advertising and I am happy. Surely by now they would have some control over their advertising market.

API

Yes this is 2010 and not one of the major portals has an API (Application Program Interface) That allows anyone to mash data up and create just about anything you could think of and many things we hadn’t. This is why Google is such a threat, to companies like REA and Domain – because it likes to share and makes billlions from it!

Comments

We should be able to make comments on a property, agents should be able to choose whether the comments and their responses are public. This would provide great information to other prospectives! It could also separate the productive hard working agents from the rest. Maybe some kind of comment/feedback all star agent.

What are you expecting to see?

30 Comments »

Google to buy up real estate sites!

When Google ventured into real estate listings many of us thought it would signal the end of annual fee increases being charged by the likes of realestate.com.au and domain.com.au. I mentioned how it will eventually force these organisations to change their business models and build simpler, smarter platforms and I still do!

Despite making it clear that it will take time, some industry heavies quickly began commenting on how little effect Google was having on sites like realestate.com.au with increased share prices /revenues traffic figures. The most vigorous of these was writing on just about every single notable real estate blog (including his own) how it wasn’t making a jot of difference, I thought at the time, it was pretty short sighted from a person who should know better!

I also made it clear that it will take time for Google’s impact to occur. Only when Google Real Estate has similar volumes of listings and only when they include the searchability of these listings directly within the search engine will it begin to have an impact on the majors.

Now it seems Google is stepping it up a gear……..is this an aggressive phase for Google?

During a session at the 2010 Inman Real Estate Connect conference in New York, Sam Sebastian, Google’s director of local and business-to-business markets, was quoted as saying “We’re actively looking to acquire one to two small real estate companies a month.”

Read this again………
“We’re actively looking to acquire one to two small real estate companies a month.” This statement speaks volumes of just how important Google thinks real estate is to their overall search strategy. It tells me they really do think it is one of the most popular search markets. Many people are talking of Google purchasing the likes of Trulia, Roost and some other independent companies. Personally, I think they will buy into products that compliment and drive traffic to their search and real estate website rather than buy other search engines and portals, they will also more than likely delve into products to compliment their Andriod operating system and new phone offerings.

Life without Realestate.com.au and Domain.com.au?
One thing is for sure, in a few years the real estate landscape will be completely different. Once Google has comparable listings and if it is confident it has a faster way to search then all that needs to happen is for consumers to become aware and use the systems and things will get tough for the portals.

Realestate.com.au and Domain.com.au continue to provide a decent service to agents, however it is the control that agents are wary of – no one likes having monopolies or duopolies, it only serves the few and each and every time hurts too many businesses and stifles innovation. Google’s involvement in any major industry allows a fair price to be charged for services, forces innovation and will make companies like Realestate.com.au and Domain.com.au offer better support and services for their money.

27 Comments »

How To Get More From RealEstate.com.au Without Paying Extra Money – Part 2

Before uploading your listings onto realestate.com.au, it’s important to look at what you are trying to achieve within each part of the site. Plus, it’s important to look at realestate.com.au from an internet marketing perspective, rather than simply uploading your listings and hoping.

With this in mind, this article takes a look at how agents could improve their results from the perspective of an internet marketer and achieve the best click-thru rate that they possibly can from realestate.com.au.

In the first article on ‘How to Get More From RealEstate.com.au Without Paying Extra Money’ I discussed the Find An Agent Section of the site, in today’s session we’ll look at how to get the best results out of the Search Results Pages of realestate.com.au

The Search Results Pages are that part of the site where someone does a search for property within your area and all your listings plus your competitors’ listings appear all together under an area search, price range search or both.

For example, here’s the Search Results Pages for a search on the suburb Balmain.  http://www.realestate.com.au/cgi-bin/rsearch?id=balmain&a=qfp&cu=fn-rea&t=res

Within the Search Results Pages of the realestate.com.au site, 10 listings are displayed per page, (except for the first page where the ‘Guaranteed Top Spot’ listing appears, to make it 11 listings).

When looking at how to market your listings effectively within the Search Results Pages, it’s important to learn 3 simple internet marketing concepts.

1.    The Image Catches Their Eye
2.    The Heading Grabs Their Attention
3.    The Text Makes The Sale

Now there are a lot of agents who write ads that may look alright on paper, but these ads don’t actually convert very well once they are uploaded onto the web.

Plus, normally the same ad that is placed in print is also used online, which means that typically the same AIDA method of advertising ends up being adopted onto the web.

A = Attention
I = Interest
D = Desire
A = Action

Whilst the AIDA method still works online, to get the most out of your advertising on realestate.com.au it’s important to use AIDA twice within the same advertisement.

You see, with a typical AIDA style advertisement the call to action is left at the very end of the copy, which ends up appearing on the Property Details Page.

On realestate.com.au it’s absolutely critical to capture Attention, create Interest, develop Desire and include a call to Action within the very first part of the advertisement, because this is what the majority of people will see within the Search Results Pages.

Now you may be thinking that’s too hard or even impossible. I can assure you it’s not, because when you look at what the first call to action really is, you’ll discover that your job as a marketer within the Search Results Pages is simply to ‘Sell The Click’.

That’s right! Your listing within these Search Results Pages of realestate.com.au is racked up side by side with 9 other listings (or 10 other listings in the first page ) and your strategy at this point should be simply to ‘Sell The Click’ because once the browser has clicked open your listing, that’s where all the magic happens.

At this point the browser has not only opened the Property Details Page but at this point…

• That’s when you get a visit registered against that listing

• It’s where the client can find out your contact details

• Where they can see how professionally you promote a property

• View videos, virtual tours, floor plans & see more photos, etc

• They can share the listing with their friends on Facebook

• Send you an email enquiry or email the listing to a friend

• Print out a brochure of your listing

• See how many visits the listing has had

• View a map, get local sales information & write a street review

• Gateway to them finding out more about you & your company

• And, if you use a strategy that I’ll be teaching in an upcoming article in this series, there’s a good chance that more people will end up clicking through to your company website as well.

But, none of this happens unless they click the red ‘View Property Details’ button in the Search Results Page & open up your listing.

Here’s How To ‘Sell The Click’

There are a number of ways that you can ‘Sell The Click’ from within the Search Results Pages.

Firstly, upload the best photo of the best part of the home as the main photo (or Hero Photo as some like to call it). The main photo should preferably be an interior photo or an enticing outdoor entertaining area photo.

By using internal images, you’ll stand a better chance of catching the browsers eye because people love looking inside other peoples places. Also, you’ll find that your listing will not only stand out from your competition, but browsers will also have a tendency to click open the listing to see what the front of the property looks like too.

Additionally, selecting the right main photo to use for your listings will also have an impact on the number of visits you generate from the new Gallery section within realestate.com.au.

In the new Gallery section 10 listings appear per page, displaying only an image, property address, price, icons for number of bed – bath – garage & a red “View Details” button.

Secondly, use a great headline, not the same old boring copy like ‘4 BR Home + Pool’ or ‘Don’t Miss This One’. Put some real thought into it.

Thirdly, remember what I said earlier, that “The Text Makes The Sale”. You’ve got approx. 300 characters to write some copy at the beginning of the advertisement that can help you to ‘Sell The Click’.

You’ll find that’s plenty of space to build Desire, Interest & include a call to Action.

Finally, you may not get this right the very first time & it may take some practice but that is the beauty of the internet, you can easily make changes as you go.

I hope this helps you to drive lots more traffic to your listings on realestate.com.au without costing you any extra money.

Back soon with the next instalment. Cheers. :)

PS: If you’re not great at writing short copy that converts well, try using Twitter where you only have 140 characters to ‘Sell The Click’ or seek out a professional copywriter for some help.

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Price Freeze Over: Can Realestate.com.au Justify a Price Rise?

Last February Realestate.com.au CEO Jaimie Pride announced that “I am pleased to announce that realestate.com.au is freezing residential subscription prices until February 2010*.”

It turns out of course it was not so much of a price freeze but a price cap as many agents who were below the prevailing price at that time were still increased to the higher price. Some people reported that because of an extra increase in September 2008 their number of actual prices rises didn’t actually reduce. All this means  the great gift of a price freeze in February 2009 was not as good as realestate.com.au would have you believe.

During the past year many of realestate.com.au’s add-on products have continued to increase at an amazing rate.  In August 2008 you could get a  Feature Property for $75. In the past 15 months we have seen three prices rises so that a feature property now costs an incredible $105.  Email is suppose to be free right? Not at realestate.com.au where ebrochures will actually cost you close to double of what it would to physically post a letter.

So the traditional subscription increase is back on the cards for February 2010 but can realestate.com.au justify an increase?

Lets look at a few things before we answer that.

Industry Performance

The industry has had a very bad year during 2009. Reports coming out of many of the real estate groups as they all completed their yearly awards were that many offices have experienced revenue drops of 40 to 60%.

In the midst of so much economic uncertainty people have decided to stay put and just “see what happens” when in the past they would have moved or relocated. As sales started to climb as the year rolled on another problem has reared its head and that’s a lack of salable stock. The listings are just not coming in fast enough for most agents.

Google openly shares some of its search analytics which provides us with an amazing overview of the levels of real estate interest on the web. Traditionally real estate interest on the web has 4 separate peaks every year. The biggest in January, then another around March, another around the end of the financial year and then there is the all important Spring peak. Its the spring peak where appraisal and listings numbers soar that stocks the larder for the post Christmas rush.

Here is the Google Insights graph for the Real Estate Category and as you can see the 2009 year is very different from past years.  There is no peak around March and even worse the Spring traffic actually dropped!

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But that’s the industry as a whole.. what about realestate.com.au’s actual performance?

As any agent knows every month we get an update from the company with a new and added spin on why realestate.com.au is performing better than the past and better than their opposition.

The topic of Realestate.com.au stats was raised again in August and kicked off some interesting debate. During many phone calls Realestate.com.au was adamant that their figures were monthly uniques and even “suggested” that I run all articles I post on them  through their office for checking first…. YEAH RIGHT!

At the heart of the matter was realestate.com.au (and others) changing metrics they receive from their analytics company and renaming them as “Property Seekers”. This implies that these are people when nothing could be further from the truth.

After repeatedly asking for confirmation on their position to be provided in writing the realestate.com.au PR machine eventually provided me with an email that claimed  ”“We report on monthly unique browsers, not daily unique visitors.”

Now it got interesting… as Neilsen’s themselves decided to wade into the mix and confirmed that “the official metric that Nielsen uses to determine rankings in Market Intelligence (our cookie centric product) is actually “Average Daily Unique Browsers”.

One of the big problems I raised with the figures was cookie deletion caused figures to be exaggerated. Neilsen’s also commented on this with “That is not to say we do not report the monthly unique browsers for clients (for some it is an accurate figure due to their low frequency of visitation which means cookie deletion doesn’t have an effect) it is just that we acknowledge they are potentially overstated (especially in websites that have frequent visitation) due to cookie deletion and use from multiple locations”.

So in short,  Neilsens official metric is worked on Average Daily Unique Browsers  but they also do provide monthly figures however in websites with frequent visitation the monthly figures are potentially overstated.  Which one realestate.com.au change to be “property seekers” is still not clear  but if it is monthly as they contend then Neilsens has confirmed that the higher the number of repeat visitors the higher the overstating of the figures would be.

Regardless of what figures are used I contend that the use of the word “Property Seekers” is misleading and pure marketing spin. During a phone call I received from a realestate.com.au PR rep I asked why they changed the name to “Property Seekers” and the response I got was that stats needed to be “dumbed down” for agents to understand.

It should not be any surprise that agents can’t trust the portals own performance statistics.  In our area we have 11 local agencies and over the course of the last 12 months 8 of those agencies have claimed to be the market leader.  Puffery and boasting is one thing, I would just like to see better transparency on offer for the statistics they quote. Dumb them down but refrain from twisting the definitions and  provide the full data for those that don’t need the simpler version.

So how is the performance of realestate.com.au really going right now?

Using Google Trends for Websites we can see that not surprisingly realestate.com.au traffic has dropped significantly over the past 12 months.

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In fact it looks as though the traffic figures are down by as much as 40% from last year alone.  I should say that this is typical of the industry and most of the portals will show similar drops.

Another metric that comes into play is the number of enquiries that the portal generates but that is not an easy figure to get a hold of.  Each office should look at their own enquiry levels  but I would think that with the industry traffic down and realestate.com.au’s traffic down that the vast majority of agents would also be experiencing drops in the number of enquiries from all portals including realestate.com.au.

So What Increase Can They Justify?

Realestate.com.au have been rolling out a few changes recently but nothing adds value and in fact many people will argue that their feature set has gone backwards.  Agents contact details are no no longer on display so when a potential buyer prints the browser page there is no easy way to contact the agent and those agents with a standard subscription now no longer have their salespersons details on display.

In fact the whole concept of a premium subscription has gone out the window with 85% of agents now on premium.  This means that premium is now the standard and this has created that many feature properties in popular suburbs that when combined with the 200 property limit for searches  and high levels of property under contract it is possible for a non feature property listing to last only a matter of days in suburb based searches.

The changes made to the phone numbers are trying to detect when a visitor looks for the phone details. It does not take too much stretching of the imagination to see that realestate.com.au is going to use this information to justify the next price increase.

Many people will probably argue the should not increase their subscription fees at all … but costs go up.. so I could understand an increase up to the current inflation levels but if we see an  increase with double digits like previous years I would not want to be one of the realestate.com.au account managers on the frontline.  Life for them will get real difficult real quick as they are the ones who often bear the brunt of agents frustrations. Maybe they should be given danger pay!!

Still, all in all I am pretty sure they will not hike the price as much as Domain tried on us this year. We cancelled our Domain subscription when they wanted to increase their subscription for our office by 170%… and that’s not a typo. That’s an INCREASE of 170% so nearly three times what we were paying before.

52 Comments »

Google, REA & Domain – What’s The Deal?

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 »

REA Hypocrisy?

Giving Private Sellers access to list their property on realestate.com.au has been a very hot topic recently. I first posted about the issue back in April and Realestate.com.au issued a Private Selling Policy on the 28th of May which further defined the rules and which Peter posted on.

In this policy, REA state that their “business model focuses upon licensed real estate agents as our primary customers”. It also states the “entity does not obtain at least the range of agent services set out above, REA will consider that such a listing is a “private listing”” and that “REA has made the decision not to allow private listings on its website”

However this is where the Hypocrisy starts as one hand forgot to tell the other what it was doing. REA forgot to tell Hubonline just what the rules are and even though REA owns and operates both realestate.com.au and hubonline they are working against each other.

Hubonline created the website for www.myhomeisforsale.com.au which in turn uploads and continues to upload their listings to realestate.com.au but these listings are in clear breach of realestate.com.au’s “Private Selling Policy”.

From the website of www.myhomeisforsale.com.au – “My Home Is For Sale is a professional property advocacy company which holds a real estate license.  We work with you to sell your home, providing you with the tools to sell your home without paying agents fees.”

When you see realestate.com.au’s sister company is guilty of flouting the rules, you can understand why nobody else in the past seemed to have been forced to follow the rules and stop uploading private sales.

So what does all this mean..?? First of all, let be clear… you can’t blame websites like www.myhomeisforsale.com.au and the others. They are just trying to make a buck and if REA does not enforce its own rules you can understand why they continue to upload private sellers to the system. In fact given that it was hubonline that built their website you could argue that it was given some sort of implied approval at least. In fact, if that website turns out to be pointless for their business model I reckon they should be able to ask for their money back as Hubonline should have known the concept breached REA’s rules.

A few of the comments in the other posts have focussed on the ACCC getting involved with this whole issue based on anti-competitive grounds. Till now I personally thought that was stretching it but when an REA business builds a website that is outside of the rules of another REA business, then there may be an anti-competitive case to answer after all.

One things is for sure….  Websites like www.happeningrealestate.com.au and www.place2live.com.au which I mentioned in the first article have had to change their offerings substantially. There products they offer are vastly different that those they promoted in April. They are now marketing themselves only as discount real estate agents and are not offering a service for private sellers. From this I can only conclude that realestate.com.au is now actively enforcing the rules right around the country but to be open and fair they need to have their own people follow the same rules or else someone might argue that it is anti-competitive!

Naturally this issue polarises opinions especially when you have some serious money involved. Real estate agents watched their impact on realestate.com.au being diluted with more and more private sellers popping up every day. REA had $1,000  per month per client on the line. Just  www.myhomeisforsale.com.au had over 200 clients being charged $295 up front and then $79 per month so private sellers represented a fantastic income stream for those online agents. No wonder the FSBO sites were so upset!

REA made its bed with an agent only, no private sales policy and in the end they had to lie in it because agents helped to create realestate.com.au where it is today. The moral and right thing to do was to start properly enforcing their own rules again, which to their credit they did.. after a push, a shove and a nudge.

I suspect that this issue highlighted has fallen through the cracks and will be rectified shortly,  as they seem to have fixed the problem with the other companies. Whilst they may not have cleaned up every incidence just yet it is probably well on the way.

The issue of private sellers on realestate.com.au will probably raise its head again one day. As an agent my preference is that private sellers be kept off the portal.. but IF it was ever to change, I really dont think it will make that much of a difference. Some.. but not much. I know many agents will consider that as blasphemy but lets look at it another way… Google’s entry (Where the bloody hell are you?) could mean that they become a major player in presenting listings to prospective purchasers and anybody can upload to Google Base.

This all got me thinking about what everyone’s preferences would be over the matter…How many would agents would accept private sellers if www.realestate.com.au decided to allow them? Would love to hear your thoughts!

Feel free to forward this around via email/twitter/facebook etc and ask real estate agents and salespeople to complete the poll.

EDIT: It seems that the deadline for the updated Private Selling Policy is still to come which goes a long way to explain why www.myhomeisforsale.com has not been updated. I think we can expect to see policy enforcement very shortly … Glenn  26/7/09

19 Comments »

A Small But Timely Revamp For Realestate.com.au

Someone at REA has paid attention to the blogs around Australia and the recent improvements by Domain. As REA have just published a press release highlighting current updates to their site.

The new features include:

• Cleaner home page and site design: The realestate.com.au site has been refreshed to give it a cleaner look and feel.
• Improved navigation: The navigation menu has been simplified to drive more people to search your OFI and Auction times
• New page layout for OFI and Auction Times (beta): The new page layout appears in a list format, making it even easier for potential buyers and sellers to see all the upcoming OFI’s and Auctions in their selected suburbs.
• New ‘view results by inspection times’ (beta): The search results page can now be easily filtered by OFI time – property seekers can quickly sort the search results page to order the listings by the date and time of the next Open for Inspection.

The homepage looks a lot crisper with smaller text used for less important areas and JavaScript to control links. It appears they are trying to more easily allow the user to navigate to property pages rather than the non real estate and marketing pages. Adding OFI and Auction Times as an option in property results pages is great for property seekers as they can easily print or short list properties they are interested in viewing.

As indicated in their press release we can expect further updates over the next 12 months. It has been a long time between website updates at REA, which should make the next 12 months a very interesting time.

10 Comments »

Realestate.com.au upgrades private selling policy.

Realestate.com.au has upgraded it private selling policy with some new rules which may make it very difficult for agencies not providing a full service to their vendors. It is still very much an open to interpretation document.

Published: 28 May 2009
This policy of www.realestate.com.au (“REA”) is intended to provide guidance on the nature of the customers to which we wish to provide online real estate advertising services, and the commercial basis and reasoning on which we have based our business model.

Background
REA provides online services listing real estate properties advertised for sale or rent through licensed real estate agents, and various associated services.

REA is committed to enhancing the service it provides to its customers
This business model focuses upon licensed real estate agents as our primary customers. Therefore, we only allow licensed real estate agent managed listings to be advertised on our website – it is inconsistent with our policy to allow private listings.

For the purposes of advertising on our website, a “private listing” means a listing of property whereby the individual, company or business, who wishes to sell or let their property directly to purchasers/lessees without engaging a licensed real estate agent in the course of the transaction for the provision of the following range of agent services (without limitation):

1. Market appraisal of property.
2. Marketing the sale or rental of the property (eg copywriting; signboards, booking print and online advertising, letterdrop, etc).
3. Managing and responding to enquiries from potential buyers or renters.
4. Negotiating or brokering the key commercial terms of the transaction between seller/lessor and purchaser/lessee and solicitor/conveyancer.
5. In respect of a sale of property, organising the auction or tender of that property (where relevant), and facilitating the sale transaction between the purchaser and the seller when the property is sold.

An individual or company or business may use a licensed real estate agent to perform a limited number of the services set out above, such as Marketing item b) and/or the Management of enquiries item c).

However, where such entity does not obtain at least the range of agent services set out above, REA will consider that such a listing is a “private listing”. REA will exercise its sole discretion, but will not act unreasonably, in determining such issue.

REA has made the decision not to allow private listings on its website:

1. on an internal and unilateral basis;
2. on reasonable economic grounds;
3. on the basis that it supports the real estate industry in Australia; and
4. results in the provision of a quality and more professional and useful service to visitors to www.realestate.com.au, which caters to those visitors’ needs.

Before real estate agents jump into the air celebrating here a a few things to thinik about.

• Should realestate.com.au be dictating to licensed real estate agents how they sell or market their property listings.
• Should realestate.com.au be able to view private documents between an agent and a vendor on request? Obvious privacy issues here between a real a agent and their vendor.

My opinion on this is that real estate agents should be using private selling sites as a great way to get listings as my experience shows that the majority of private sellers eventually move to sell through an agent.

Private selling will be a slow growth area in the future and realestate.com.au have not said they will never allow private sellers, to me, at the moment it will not work commercially for them, but they have never said they will never do it, so don’t think for one second they are doing it to protect you – more so to protect their revenues from agents lashing back.

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Realestate.com.au Communications Grind to a Halt… Again!

In the past Realestate.com.au has often been caught out shouting from the rooftops about some new innovation or initiative they are releasing only for it to be dumped once the gloss had worn off and the ink had dried on the press release.

Past inclusions of dumped or forgotten initiatives include the REA Labs which was launched right in the end of 2006 highlighting REA as the global innovator when they tried to mirror Google Labs but has never been updated since.

Then there was REAIAC (The REA Industry Advisory Council) which according to realestate.com.au was the peak industry body. The participants were suppose to change every year but nothing ever seemed to come from this mystery body other than a few REAIAC members releasing a paragraph or two on their opinions on the market. Pfffttt… all that waiting for the peak industry body for their own opinions on a failing market! It seems that claims by a few that the REAIAC was simply a boys club to pat select clients on the back appear even more accurate in hindsight.

Now it seems the REA blogs have gone the way of the dodo. Somebody forgot to advise their chief webmaster though as the blogs still feature on the homepage menu.

Here are the latest posts on each of the REA blogs:

• CEO Corner Blog has not been updated since 22nd of July, 2008
• News & Views Market Commentary Blog has not been updated since the 23rd of January, 2009
• Agent of the Year Blog has not been updated since the 22nd of August, 2008
• Out There Blog has not been updated since the 5th of September, 2008
• Property Investment Expert Blog has not been updated since the 25th of November, 2008
• Renters Retreat Blog has not been updated since the 26th of November, 2008

It seems in all the confusion and corporate reshuffle someone forgot to keep the communications lines open at realestate.com.au . Maybe one day they will understand that being an innovator is more than just declaring it and coming up with some new concepts. They have to follow through with it sometimes.

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