I recently took the car for a spin and had a look around Sydney to see what real estate agents are doing as far as real estate signage in front of homes for sale (and a couple of rentals). So I took a camera and a photographer (thanks Janett) and spent a day across Eastern Sydney and the Inner West.

So here are 50 signs that we came across snapped. It is clear that their is not a lot of innovation here and if agents are wanting to differentiate themselves, then they are not doing it with their yard signs.

Some signs look really good but the lack of information on some signs is a worry.

Here are some things to think about:

Website Link It was hard to find a direct link to any listing. Some agents did not even have their own website link on the signs.

Yard signs are great for agency promotion, but if the user actually wants information, they can be next to useless if they are not attractive and informative. After all you want these to lead to a contact and hopefully a successful result.

Sale signs must haves

• Offering: Is it For Sale, For Rent or For Auction?
• Agency Branding: Clean and easy to identify with phone number and logo.
• Property Photo: A great sized photo, that captures the essence of the offering.
• Website Link: Where can the user get more information on this listing? Preferably a direct link to full listing on YOUR website.
• Bed Bath Car: Bed, Baths and Car.
• Bullet Points: A couple of features.
• Contacts: Name of people to contact.
• Inspection Times: When is it viewable.

So lets view the signs

Richardson & Wrench Double Bay

Di Jones

Century21

Ray White Unlimited

Run Property (Rental)

McGrath

Ray White Randwick

PRD Nationwide

LJ Hooker

McGrath

Ellouise Tyrell

Ellouise Tyrell

Goodyear Donelly

Laing + Simmons

Ray White Double Bay

LJ Hooker

LJ Levi

Ray White Unlimited

LJ Levi

Raine & Horne Double Bay

Richardson & Wrench Double Bay

Position Realty

Richard Willis

Shields Gillham

LJ Hooker

Christies – (I took this photo)

Ray White Double Bay

Raine and Horne Double Bay

Di Jones

Laing + Simmons

McCrath

Raine & Horne / Burridge First National

Epping First National

Warwick Williams

Burridge First National

Garry White First National

Burridge First National

Boyle First National

Gerard McCarthy

Cobden Hayson

Sarah Lorden

Cobden Hayson

Cobden Hayson/LJ Hooker

Ray White Unlimited

RE/MAX

Bradfield Prichard

Edge

BHR

Australian House and Land

LJ Hooker

Yes, there is a fair amount of advertising skewed to realestate.com.au but they are clearly number one across most segments in the online real estate space in Australia and so it makes sense. There are one or two doozies, such as “Should I buy or sell first?” (seriously).

Some articles have accompanying videos, which are quick and clean and very well presented by Comedian Lawrence Mooney and rumoured to also run a 10 week television campaign which will run in Melbourne and Sydney.

Agents will want to be familiar with the materials that potential clients will arm themselves with on this site. Overall this is a very good resource.

So this site seems to be a significant investment for REA in Australia in 2009 and it will be interesting to note whether vendors use this new website.

PDF brochure file download. Guide to selling

PDF brochure file download. Agents Checklist

It is a pretty rough guide, but in principal it should work reasonable well. Many companies want this space, because with it comes advertisers….and they pay. Google, Yahoo and MSN are all getting in on the act as well.

This survey is all about real estate, and what they have tried to do is put together a big list of all of the major players in the market, you can read it here, however a list is provided below. Australia’s own Realestate.com.au is actually ranked number 4, which is pretty impressive.

Here is the list:
1 Zillow.com [US]
2 Trulia.com [US]
3 Realtor.com [US]
4 Realestate.com.au [AUS]
5 Propertyfinder.com [UK & Overseas]
6 FindaProperty.com [UK & Overseas]
7 Primelocation.com [UK & Overseas]
8 EscapeArtist.com [US & Overseas]
9 Rightmove.co.uk [UK & Overseas]
10 Globrix.com [UK]
11 HotProperty.co.uk [UK]
12 Daft.ie [Ireland & Overseas]
13 Properazzi.com [Overseas]
14 ThinkProperty.co.uk [UK & Overseas]
15 Green-Acres.com [Overseas]
16 Kyero.com [Spain]
17 MyHome.ie [Ireland & Overseas]
18 TheMoveChannel.com [Overseas]
19 ThinkSpain.com [Spain]
20 Look4aProperty.com [UK & Overseas]
21 FrenchEntree.com [France]
22 Viviun.com [Overseas]
23 French-Property.com [France]
24 Holprop.com [Overseas]
25 Propertyworld.com [Overseas]
26 BulgarianVenture.com [Bulgaria]
27 EuropeanProperty.com [Overseas]
28 Property-Abroad.com [Overseas]
29 Zoomf.com [UK]
30 HomesGoFast.com [Overseas]
31 WorldofProperty.co.uk [Overseas]
32 HomesandProperty.co.uk [Overseas]
33 SunshineEstates.net [Overseas]
34 InSpain.tv [Spain]
35 FrenchPropertyLinks.com [France]
36 PropertyShowrooms.com [Overseas]
37 Spanish-Living.com [Spain]
38 PropertyMagnate.com [Overseas]
39 Escapes2.com [Overseas]
40 YourKeyToSpain.co.uk [Spain]
41 HomesWorldwide.co.uk [Overseas]
42 IdealSpain.com [Spain]
43 KeyItaly.com [Italy]
44 HomesOverseas.co.uk [Overseas]
45 AMLASpain.com [Spain]
46 PropertyIndex.com [Overseas]
47 Newskys.co.uk [Overseas]
48 Nestoria.com [UK]
49 Medhead.com [Overseas]
50 Libercasa.co.uk [Overseas]

How do you know how much to spend marketing real estate?

Some interesting survey data that just became available should be of help. A video marketing company in the US surveyed 1,304 real estate agents to see how much they spent. There isn’t a lot of info here, but what there is is gold.

One thing that jumped out at me: The agents surveyed said a significant portion of their listing budget was spent on newspapers, even though only 20.4 percent said they think this medium is “effective.”

Yet, 49 percent felt that online ads were “very effective.” The reason more agents aren’t putting their money where the results are is that they feel the vendors want print advertising.

Read the press release.

Read the eMarketer story.

Here are some articles on this subject:
Google Maps is Going To Be My New Real Estate Search Page
Google Maps Adds Real Estate Search
Another Hint at Google Real Estate?

There are certainly interesting times ahead. I have no idea why Google has not released Google Base in Australia, but they should get their act together and release it shortly. It is not as if it would be a hard thing to do (add country, regions, suburbs) and I cannot wait until it does happen.

1. Keep your competition from registering a domain name that draws visitors to them instead of you.
2. Increase your exposure in the search engines provide customers more ways to find you when searching the Internet which drives more traffic to your Web sites.
3. Create distinct advertising and promotion strategies that target different markets.
4. Protect your brand and online identity from those who may have unsavoury purpose

I know plenty of agents with up to 20 domain names registered and some with even more. Most people just had these extra domain names pointed to the main website which meant they in effect created duplicates of their primary website with different web addresses.

This worked for a while but the problem with this practice was that search engines began filling up with an endless amount of duplicate websites. The search engines fought back and adjusted their algorithms to penalise duplicate content which meant that these duplicates dropped in the search engine results which reduced their traffic. Still they were cheap and easy to implement and were still producing some traffic.

At around the same time search engines looked at improving their service to visitors by giving preference to websites that are local to the visitor as a way to make the search results more meaningful. So when you search on most major search engines today, local sites often fill the majority of results along with high ranking and popular results from elsewhere around the world. In addition to giving extra credence to Australian websites to Australians searching we were also given the option to show just “pages from Australia” which removed all non-Australian sites totally.

Search engines classified .com.au domains as being an Australian website which left all Top Level Domains (TLD) like .com .net .org considered to be non-australian. Overnight the extra traffic generated by these .com domains which had recently suffered duplicate penalities reduced to a trickle because of the introduction of localisation.

Around the world many people have invested in .com domains for localised use and the drop in traffic now meant there needed to be a way to allocate a specific domain to a specific audience in Australia, New Zealand, United Kingdom, China or other countries or regions.

It comes as no surprise that Google has come to the rescue. Very late last year Google added the ability to allocate any domain name to target a specific geographic area such as a country, state, city or even a particular suburb. This ability was added into the tools area of Google Webmaster Central at http://www.google.com/webmasters/.

Allocating a domain name to Australia or an area inside Australia does not work instantly as it takes a little while for it to fully propagate through but the results are worth the wait. Changes applied in the first few days of this tool being released have only recently been rolled out although I would expect future updates to be a little quicker. The good news is that the traffic to the .com domains that I updated returned almost overnight. I expect the other search engines to follow Google’s lead.

If you have any TLD domains lying around not generating you traffic it may be well worth the investment in time (or money if you have to get somebody else to do the work) . To make the most of it you should have each domain pointing to unique content as well. With cheap overseas unlimited hosting and low cost .com domain names you could set up 10 domains and have them hosted for around $200 per year. All you need to do is make a unique site for each which will cost a little more unless you have the skills in house.

Proactive agents will take this even further as using this tool also allows you to target a specific audience as well. Grab a .com domain and build a website to specifically target it to a New Zealand, the United Kingdom or even a US audience.

I want to state here that I believe that this is a real and present threat and that I make no bones about coming from this viewpoint.

So what is global warming?
There is a now famous saying that ‘it is difficult to get man to understand something when his salary depends upon him not understanding it” and with global warming this has never been more poignant!

Global warming is not about it just getting hotter. It is about the thin layer of atmosphere that protects us from the suns harmful rays and how the carbon dioxide that gets trapped there keeps the heat in our atmosphere, the more Co2 the more heat trapped…

The amount of C02 (Carbon Dioxide) in our atmosphere is at record levels. This comes from over 600,000 years of scientific tests done from ice cores from the Arctic. Scientists have also found a direct correlation between the amount of Co2 in the atmosphere and global temperatures as the oxygen trapped in the ice samples tells many tales about the weather and concentration of chemicals in the atmosphere at the time.

If any of you have seen the movie Inconvenient Truth you will understand what I mean. If you haven’t you should.

But its effect on real estate?
Real estate booms and busts too have a direct correlation to the economy, the more disposable income consumers have, the higher property prices go.

Certainly, even if at the low end of the scientific predictions of rising sea levels, many low lying areas will be effected and therefore property prices in those areas will plummet.

But it is the short term that I am interested in examining here. If the government here is to act, and as voters are becoming more aware of the issues and what is at stake, you will see the government act – it will have to make some very unpopular decisions that will effect us all…

History has shown that government’s rarely act on something that is going to effect us and them 10,20,30 years from the present, because at that stage it will be someone else’s problem and this government is no different. However the media and now consumers are becoming more aware of what is at stake and it is at this time (considering an election coming up) you will see that governments act.

New Taxes
I have no doubt there will be new taxes, more than likely to companies and consumers that emit the most of these types of gases, energy companies, transports companies, air conditioning, large commercial and residential complexes and many more industries and if history tells us anything, the consumers end up footing the end bill.

And this is where the immediate near term effect of this will be on our industry, it will effect me, it will effect you. If consumers pay more for many items, inflation rises and they have less money in their pockets!
So what do you think? Do you think my assertions are correct, is there more to it? Am I missing something (again), if so let me know!
It is no use trying to delay the inevitable and it is no use trying to pretend it will not have an effect, but I believe acting now will stop the harm caused later.