2006 Report – The Year Ahead

6 minute read

Ok, it is this time of year again when I start to make predictions as to the future in Real Estate Online, so here goes.

1. www.realestate.com.au
This site comes first, why? Because they are simply the leaders in this field. News Ltd will effectively take control of this site and pay whatever is necessary for the remaining 50+% (over 120 million AUD). The site will continue to find news ways of generating revenue and this means price increases across the board. They will need to be careful however as most agents now are very wary of them. Look to see them take even more market share in the coming year.

2. www.domain.com.au
Fairfax (owners of Domain) should be ashamed of themselves for letting this excellent website slip further behind. Fairfax seems to be more preoccupied with other acquisitions (RSVP and Mooter) rather than strengthening their existing brands. The site development wise is the best there is, but is fails in the marketing aspect and only has true strengths where Fairfax Newspapers rule. My suggestion is focussing more on innovation and tools for agents, but hey, who wants to listen to me!

3. www.justlisted.com.au
The less said about this site the better. When first launched by Sensis over 18 months ago it was to be a national site by at latest mid 2005, still nothing! The site is nothing short of a disaster and this is why. People go to real estate sites to get as much information as possible before contacting an agent directly. Just Listed gives just a little more information about properties as you would find in a newspaper. Result = Most email enquiries from this site are asking agents for more information about properties! This basically shows a complete lack of understanding of what the internet is about, hopefully one day they will at least think about it. If you want a look back at what the Internet was like 5 years ago go visit www.justlisted.com.au. The last word on this is I hope Sensis learn their lessons from their Sensis search engine launch. That is, if you are going to spend ,millions marketing a product – at least make sure it is of some value.

4. www.homehound.com
Ok this is the new kid on the block, the site is ok, looks good, takes a bit long to actually get to listings, but the layout and idea is fine. Just Listed could learn a little about how to launch a national portal from these guys. That is, just do it, it will take some time for this site to get anywhere, but it has the support/backing of many of the majors franchise groups.

5. Broadband
What companies loosely we call broadband now will seem like 14.4 dial up in the coming year, as we already see companies like www.iinet.net.au adding ADSL download speeds at 24 megabytes a seconds compared to Telstra’s meagre 1.5 megabytes a second. The bigger difference will be more generous download caps. At the moment Telstra and other broadband suppliers make allot of money by offering pathetic caps to their plan. This will change.

6. WIMAX
Late 2006 will see the first introduction of WIMAX and once this is rolled out we will see some big changes in the broadband world. WIMAX is wireless and will take even further control away from Telstra’s fixed line revenues. With wireless ranges up to 45 kilometres from base and speeds of over 100 megabytes a second this will be huge in 2007/08. Not only that Intel will be delivering WIMAX chips in every PC laptop sold, which basically means everything will be WIMAX ready (and bigger sales to Intel)

7. VOIP
2006 WILL be the year of VOIP, I use it almost exclusively now and rarely have a problem, we will see new companies emerge and better hardware to take advantage of this relatively new technology. Phone calls across Australia will drop to around 8 cents a call untimed and Telstra will be shedding even more tears than jobs. Look for new International arrives such as www.vonage.com to heat things up in this space, aggressive marketing by Vonage should see Australian small businesses rise to VOIP.

8. Newspapers
Newspapers still rely on the old school from real estate agents, the ones that have not firmly embraced the Internet. I now have a few agents that do not even advertise in newspapers, which was unheard of over 2 years ago. This trend will continue and newspapers will be forced to look at other ways to make money other than their fat money cows in jobs, cars and of course homes. Expect to see big layoffs and aggressive marketing from the newspapers in 2006 and also expect to see a continual decline in their classifieds revenues with the onslaught of……

9. You guessed it Google!
I don’t care much for their share price (over $400 USD – very high) but this company has cash and lots of it, raising another 4.5 billion dollars for continued development (they did not even have to say how they were going to spend it). Products to watch out for are the new Google Base which will only get stronger as more and more agents embrace this form of classified advertising. The more ads, the more users will be drawn to it.Will they go into real estate? I hope so as this will drive pricing down and be a massive competitor to the current portals! They may also use this service with their excellent Google Earth software which will continue to grow in popularity as time goes by.

10. Microsoft
Microsoft are also embracing FREE classifieds with their soon to be released Fremont (code name) classifieds service, our system will serve both and I am sure my competitors will follow, the fact is any form of advertising that gets agents listings to more potential buyers is good.

11. Agents websites
Firstly get your own professionally developer and free of any of the portals control. Dump splash pages and trying to be clever with silly java applications that users of your site don’t want. Start investing in your future and build on current sites, do not simply build a new one every few years.

12. Something new?
Yes, I have been working on something for 2 years now and it is close to completion. I cannot say what but it will be a world first and hopefully be a huge success (any investors out there?). I do not normally plug myself in here but I am very very excited. stay tuned….

For all of my readers than you for your feedback throughout 2005. Some good, allot bad, but this is what this medium is all about.