Late last month Realestateview undertook a small makeover to the residential section of their portal. What they’ve done is enhanced the usability of the site, provided extra content, improved the styling and overall, offer site browsers a better experience.

The key homepage improvements include:

1. Search – is now the main priority on the homepage allowing users to search for listings or agents. REV have also launched a search via map feature which can be selected from the homepage search.
2. Local Data – this is now a key part of the homepage and showcases a few graphs with medium prices. I’m surprised this does not link through to their property data section.
3. Expert View – useful information for vendors, property seekers and investors, links through to this section where site users can engage in forums.
4. My Searchers, My Shortlist and My Last Viewed – here REV have attempt to personalise the portal by providing information specific to site users.

Other changes within the site include removing the right sidebar for search results and on the property page they have added recent sales and suburb profile information which is sensible given the sold data they have access to. They’ve also moved away from the sidebar navigation and placed a secondary navigation across the top below the header. This provides a much cleaner and less cluttered experience for the user.

I think Realestateview has done a reasonable job with this upgrade and they’ll find users become a lot more engaged with the portal.

What are your thoughts?

Over the last week it appears Realestateview has launched itself up the Google search results for the term “real estate” now ranking number 2 behind Realestate.com.au. Domain which was number 2 has now been pushed down to the 4th result below PropertyNow.com.au

This is quite alarming for Domain and they would surely be seeking answers to why this has happened. Could this be due to a blunder by the Domain SEO team resulting in Google punishing them?

What’s interesting is, that Page Rank doesn’t appear to be influencing rankings too much as Realestate (PR=8), Realestateview (PR=6), PropertyNow (PR=5) and Domain (PR=8).

Could it be that Google have changed their algorithm and this has affected the results. Perhaps using the terms “realestate” and ‘property” have more weighting now than before. That said Realestate1 don’t appear on the first page.

Anyway, it would be great to hear from some SEO gurus. Andrew B any ideas?

Thankfully, it now appears that almost every Real Estate Institute in Australia has decided to put their support behind establishing a National Industry Based Real Estate Portal throughout Australia called RealEstateView.com.au.

In numerous comments made on this site, Enzo Raimondo, CEO of the REIV stated,

“I have been involved with the REI’s for the last 14 years and I can honestly say that this the closest we have come to being in complete alignment on this issue. I have no doubt that all REI’s including the REIA are 100% committed to making this work not only with the portal but also including the collection of national sales data.

The combined membership of the REI’s is over 8000 RE offices so the potential is huge.”

“The Corporate Structure will need to be fair and equitable and take into account all the members needs.”

“Whilst I can’t comment on the proposed structure, I can advise that we are awaiting on one remaining State to come on board.”

“an Industry owned and operated Portal, is closer than a lot of people think, we have been working to our strategy which includes the REIA, State REI’s, Franchise groups and others and we have deliberately kept under the radar, however the success or otherwise of an industry owned portal rests entirely with the Agents across Australia.

The Agents have the clients, the content and they can drive the eyeballs, we have proven this in Melbourne and it’s time that they understood that around Australia. However they also need to understand you can’t compete with multi-billion dollar media companies by offering a free service.”

Enzo also said “if any Real Estate Office want’s to subscribe,they should email sales@realestateview.com.au”

There has been a significant groundswell of interest from agents about this latest news and having recently spoken to RealEstateView.com.au General Manager Petra Sprekos, it appears that a number of agents from NSW and QLD have already expressed interest in subscribing to the RealEstateView.com.au site.

The roll out of the RealEstateView.com.au site also coincides with the proposed collection of national sales data via PropertyData.com.au.

I’d be very interested to hear others thoughts on this important industry development.

Is there anything you would like to see included? Are there any suggestions you may have as to how this roll out could happen quicker or perhaps some improvements you feel RealEstateView.com.au could make?

PS: If you’d like to read the original comments from Enzo Raimondo, they were posted on my previous article Domain.com.au Agrees to Upload Over 1700 Private Sellers in One Go

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.

Rumour has it they are trying to get other state Institutes to use their technology (for want of a better word) but the problems will not be fixed until the above issues are resolved.

The site has stated for some time (since as far back as 2001) that it will soon have up to 75% of Victorian agents. By my calculations they have about 20% and this figure is falling.

If the Institutes really want to make a go of it, I think they need to start from scratch and build a national model and be extremely careful to pick the right web development partner, it is just too risky to develop something of this nature internally, especially when it is not your core business.

Marketing is also not in their favour. Consumers go to either Domain.com.au and Realestate.com.au, both of these sites have incredible power through their newspaper affiliations, so unless the Real Estate Institutes across Australia are willing to pour at least $100,000 per annum into marketing my feeling is it will simply be a donkey.

GOING GOING
Realestateview.com.au
Major Shareholders: Real Estate Institute of Victoria, Collins Simms, Barry Plant Doherty, Buxton Real Estate, Bennison Mackinnon Real Estate.