The Video

ListGlobally.com Simon Baker from Peter Ricci on Vimeo.

Overview

There is a little more to this product that warrants more than just a first glance. The software allows any agency to list properties for sale on www.listglobally.com for a fee of $90 per listing for 90 days  Listglobally.com then feeds (pushes) those listings to many of the most popular real estate websites in the world automatically including Canada, Germany, Great Britain, Japan, Russia, South Africa, Spain, United Arab Emirates, with many more in the pipeline.

Here are some of the websites that www.listglobally.com pushes to:

• rightmove.co.uk (United Kingdom)
• immobilienscout24.de (German)
• enormo.com (World)
• realestate.co.jp (Japan)
• iproperty.com.my (Malaysia)
• iproperty.com.sg (Singapore)
• propertyfinder.ae (United Arab Emirates)
• canadahomeguide.tv (Canada)
• gohome.com.hk (Hong Kong)
• 99acres.com (India)

The software looks to be very clean and efficient, the website looks the same, only information needed is presented and I like this approach. if you wish to join you have two options for adding your listings, you can join for free and then add each listing manually or you can feed your listings (talk to your IT people) to listglobally.com and then login and select which listings you want to activate for a fee of $90 per listing for 90 days. Most of these sites are the most popular in their country and the global ones like Enormo.com (which is really the only international portal available) should give your listings some decent exposure.

Listglobally.com have a number of country specific sites that have actually added on an “International section” for your listings to appear on and I understand in some cases listglobally.com have actually built in some of these international sections for portals.

If there is an inherent weakness in the product, it is this – I have real doubts that anyone would go to a site like realestate.com.au to search for listings in Japan , UK, India etc. If  you were a serious buyer, you would seek out sites that had all the listings for that country. So just keep in mind that the figures quoted (around 40 million eyeballs) are actually not very accurate as far as the sections of the portals we are talking about with Enormo being the only true global website. Realestate.com.au may get 5 million visitors per month, however the International section may only get a few hundred thousand –  so just keep this in mind.

As for the cost, $90 per listing for 90 days does sound pretty cheap but if you are going to market your whole portfolio, this can get quite expensive (10 x = $900, 100 times = $9,000), I am never a fan of time-limited fees, I would hate to see a realestate.com.au or domain.com.au do this in Australia although it will only be a matter of time before agents are charged per listing as more and more agents become mobile and offices begin declining in numbers (and they will).

All in all Listglobally.com should be a decent offering, but it will take time a few years to mature. At the moment the offering is fairly limited and probably will only be used by agents to attract more vendors,as with anything, the longevity of products like this does come down to the value it provides real estate agents.

I suggest you give it a go with one or two listings, you can jump right in now and give it a run with a property or three!

Simon is a pretty astute fellow and his reputation alone will get him off to a decent start in the market, long term – if they stick at it – I expect Listglobally.com to be a winner!

As a note for disclosure I am a shareholder in www.zooproperty.com which in some small way competes with Listglobally.com, although on a different level.

That poll revealed that 75% of UK agents would not renew their subscription with the portal when they fell due. This has lead to many weeks of hot discussion in the UK ultimately resulting in some massive changes in their industry.

Could a similar situation arise here in Australia if agents were forced with rises in fees in trying times by one of the major portals? In Australia realestate.com.au is in a similar position and has made it clear they will be increasing fees significantly.

Firstly, to put this in perspective, as Simon Baker commented on his site PropertyPortalWatch, anybody could complete the poll. This meant that the results were not going to be an accurate representation of exactly who would cancel. It revealed more the underlying sentiment of the industry and since then UK agents have been extremely vocal about the way they have been treated.

The agent complaints centre on two major issues, Rightmove’s fee structure and their attitude towards agents. Sound familiar?

Many agents started to advertise their rental properties more so Rightmove went for the jugular going so far as to increase rental advertising costs by 30% in the past year. It is no wonder that they lost 500 agents in July and has been losing around 300 agents every month since.

The Global Financial Crisis has put pressure on everywhere and since the results of this poll became public the roll on effect has snowballed.

Rightmove.co.uk have announced that 20% of their staff are being laid off.

Membership to an industry cooperative called the Estate Agency Buying Group (www.eabg.co.uk) quickly surges to 1600 trying to put pressure on rightmove.co.uk and all paid portals to reduce their fees.

Rightmove’s share price has been slammed particularly hard as it tumbled to 18% of its value since March 2008 and there is now rumours of a takeover.

Rightmove issued a press release stating :

1. A reorganisation of the existing estate agency sales force and customer service teams into account management teams, each covering a region of the country.
2. Greater focus on the national and regional house builders as well as the growing housing association market, with less focus on more speculative individual developments and property conversions.
3. A scaling back of the Rightmove Overseas business to reflect a decreased demand for property in continental Europe.
4. Exiting from direct selling of banner advertising on the Aboutmyplace mapping website reflecting the general excess capacity for on-line generalist banner advertising.
5. A general reduction in overheads in line with the tough trading conditions being experienced by the property industry as a whole.

Rightmove has announced increased marketing, changes to their lead response and allocation system to improve results for agents, but it seems it is too little too late.

So what lessons are to be learnt from this??

If a poll was run in Australia and local agents sent REA the same message, would they laugh it off so quickly?

Realestate.com.au must be looking hard at this agent backlash in the UK. They fill the exact same position here in Australia that rightmove.co.uk fill over there. Despite the current conditions REA are increasing their fees at ridiculous rates. They are the significant market leader escalating costs whilst many agencies are closing their doors because of turnover round 30% of the business they did the year before.  REA has also started scaling back their overseas business.

They have a reputation of arrogance and this writer believes that they have no real goodwill built up with agents, particularly over the past year where it has been one blunder after another. If the industry decides to teach them a lesson they will come out of it with more than a black eye when they get belted.

In recent months I have heard a number of industry trainers openly

Will REA learn from rightmove.co.uk’s experience or will the industry finally say enough is enough?

Should we run a similar poll?