Another FSBO Portal: buymyplace.com.au

buymyplace.com.au is the latest For Sale By Owner (FSBO) portal to hit the market.

buymyplace.com.au is a privately owned company based in Melbourne, and at the moment the portal only covers the state of Victoria.

Currently in beta form, the company plans to hold an Australia-wide launch in early 2009, and have big hopes for the site’s growth, saying:

“Buy My Place is an online real estate advertising company that represents the future of real estate Australia. They provide you with the choice of selling your own home online without the worry of paying high agent commissions.”

“Just as eBay changed the way ordinary people buy and sell goods, Buy My Place will change the way real estate is bought and sold in Australia.”

buymyplace.com.au might look slick, with illustrated cartoon style characters, and well-thought out design, but it’s not the first in the Australian market. It will face competition from existing FSBO portals like owner.com.au, smartvendor.com.au, onthehouse.com.au, and zeroagents.com.au.

Behind the website are a team of industry professionals from real estate, marketing, technology and customer service.

As well as FSBO property listings, market value information, and a customer service team, the website also contains a knowledge centre with resources for owner sellers and buyers alike.

AgencyLogic Aquires Smart Streets

AgencyLogic, the largest real estate industry provider of single property Websites in North America, have announced that they have acquired the single property Website provider, Smart Streets in a deal involving cash and future revenues.

According to a press release from the company, the acquisition follows six consecutive quarters of record AgencyLogic growth and is part of several initiatives aimed at sustaining the company’s increasing market share into 2009.

“We have spent the year focusing on growth through acquisitions and developing a significantly larger vendor base - a strategy that has worked well for us,” said Stephen Fells, CEO and co-founder of AgencyLogic. “Our vision includes continued growth through similar transactions and substantial expansion of the single property Website feature set into other, so far untouched, property services. With more and more residential Brokers marketing to ‘For Sale by Owner’ listed properties, we expect the brand to additionally provide the residential market with a source of valuable leads.”

“The acquisition of Smart Streets and the opportunities it provides with expansion into the FSBO market is further confirmation of our commitment to increasing market share,” said Mark Wayman, CIO and Co-founder of AgencyLogic. “Coupled with the recent opening of our California based development office and an increase in technology staff, we now have a more productive, effective and streamlined development process ensuring we can roll out new value-based features quickly and more frequently.”

Smart Streets was established in 2005. Founder, Amanda Guerin, said Smart Streets had worked with AgencyLogic for the last year and was excited to open the Smart Streets brand to a larger marketplace.

AgencyLogic is a division of Network Earth, Inc., a technology company founded in 1995 that specializes in Web-based software development for businesses. Network Earth’s expertise includes application and Website development with the company recently moving into the social networking world with the formation of Social Gears, LLC.

Ex-MapQuest CEO Joins neighborhoodscout.com

US neighborhood search engine neighborhoodscout.com have announced that former CEO and founder of MapQuest, Barry Glick, has been appointed to neighborhoodscout.com’s board of directors.

The company said that Glick will lead the company’s strategic effort to build visibility and expand NeighborhoodScout into new markets.

Glick has over 20 years experience in the field and a PhD in Geography. After capital raising he sold MapQuest to AOL for US$1.1 billion. Another mapping company he since worked for, NAVTEQ, was sold to Nokia for US$8.1 billion.

“NeighborhoodScout offers a unique, valuable service, and I am impressed at how well it can help home seekers make decisions by answering the first question most ask: ‘where should I focus my house hunt?’” said Glick. “The capability to easily search for neighborhoods around the country based on the critical factors that people want is revolutionary. I look forward to joining their team so that together we can take this company to new places.”

Andrew Schiller, president and founder of NeighborhoodScout, said: “Consumer interest and demand for web-based location information services like the ones we provide at NeighborhoodScout are growing rapidly, and we believe we have made a great investment for our company by adding Barry Glick to our team.”

The appointment has some, including agentgenius.com, speculating that a future sale might be on the cards.

NeighborhooodScout is owned and operated by Location Inc, a Rhode Island-based company borne of university research, specialising in nationwide relocation software, retail site selection, and real estate investment advising. Location Inc was founded by Dr. Andrew Schiller and the company developed NeighborhoodScout by coupling new technologies with PhD-level geographic expertise to serve the location selection needs of employees, families, and businesses.

Top 5 Crazy Names For Property Portals

Around the PPW office we’re always hearing of new portals with crazy names. So we thought we’d put together a list of our favourites.

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globrix.com Partnership with LetMC

This week UK property search engine globrix.com announced they were working in partnership with letting agency software provider LetMC.

In a statement on their blog, globrix.com said they looked forward to working with LetMC to help agents market their properties online:

“LetMC clients will soon find their properties are listed on Globrix, the UK’s fastest growing property site. LetMC clients will benefit from being part of a direct datafeed, this is the most reliable and accurate way for agents to list their properties on Globrix.”

LetMC is in the process of contacting their customers directly to explain the partnership in more detail. Their customers include Halifax Estate Agents Group, and other leading lettings agents, which is sure to be a boost for globrix.com’s listings.

Interestingly, LetMC originated from a successful letting agency developing their own Letting Agent software. Glyn Trott, Director of LetMC, who established the company in 2000 says: “As an agent, we came across the problems of reducing administration and keeping our staffing costs down. The core of our Property Management Software gives the expected features, but centralises and automates repetitive administration. This saves time and money, and allows a letting agent to concentrate on letting more property.”

LetMC also have a separate partnership with DezRez, The Dezrez Letmc Data Bridge which is a software solution that helps bridge the gap between sales and lettings.

What Google Can Tell You About Competitors

Perhaps you’ve used Google trends to compare your portal to a competitor. Well there are other ways to see what your rival is doing – or not doing.

A fascinating article published on Business2 by Glenn Batten shows that it is possible for a company’s confidential information to become available on Google if that computer is accessible from the Internet.

In this case, the company is Australia’s number 2 portal, domain.com.au. Glenn’s article describes how by searching with some key terms on Google you can find literally hundreds of ‘inactive’ listings, which represent closed estate agent accounts with the portal.

“Whilst these accounts have no property in the directory anymore, nor are they in the agents directory on the portal the pages are still active and therefore are still indexed by Google and continue to appear in the search engine.”

Glenn found 3370 individual agent profiles that were inactive, but still listed by Google.

As Glenn says: “I can’t think of any reason this information should be in the public domain and it is just poor housekeeping by Domain IT staff. If you were an REA salesperson and a new agent was considering one of the two portals this list would help sway them your way quickly.”

We suggest you read the full article here, as it shows the serious ramifications of SEO, search engine rankings, and the wonderful possibilities of Google.

propertrack.com Encourages Malaysian Investment

Malaysian property portal propertrack.com has teamed up with visa programme, Malaysia My Second Home (MM2H) to promote the visa scheme to prospective overseas purchasers, making the portal a one-stop-shop for foreign investment in Malaysian property.

MM2H is an initiative of the Malaysian Government to encourage citizens of countries with which Malaysia has diplomatic relations to spend extended periods of time in Malaysia. It is essentially a long-stay visa programme for foreigners in which successful applicants are issued multiple-entry social visit passes for 10 years with an option for renewal.

Interestingly, the portal is using the global economic crisis as its marketing hook.

Asia Move Machine govern the website propertrack.com, and released a press statement quoting YBhg Dato’ Kamarudin bin Abu, Chairman of MALVISA (MM2H) Sdn Bhd and the former Malaysian High Commissioner to London:

“With the current economic and political turmoil in many developed countries, Malaysia is still the safer bet with her relatively low cost of living as compared to many of her neighbouring countries. By working together, propertrack.com has incorporated a Malaysia My Second Home (MM2H) information desk into their prime location property centre and property portal, to provide both a physical and virtual gateway for international property investors, tourists as well as families wishing to retire and live in Malaysia”.

He continued: “In essence, propertrack.com is Malaysia’s first independent one-stop property and related services information hub which will now include an MM2H information desk”.

Malaysia is gaining in popularity in what the press release refers to as “the long-stay market”. International living.com magazine ranked Malaysia as the 7th global retirement destination in its 2007 survey – the first Asian country to have been ranked as highly.

The Malaysian property market has also been buoyed by the abolition of Real Property Gains Tax in April last year.

All this is sure to give the property industry in Malaysia a boost.

Stephen Hodgson, propertrack.com’s Team Principal said the company envisaged the “consumer-driven outreach will provide ease of accessibility to MM2H information and will bring greater exposure of Malaysian property as well as foreign investment in-to Malaysia.”

And the Best UK Property Portal Is…

UK Newspaper, the Daily Mail has unveiled the winners of the UK Property Awards for 2008.

Three portals were highlighted in the awards.

REA Group owned propertyfinder.com has been awarded Best Property Portal UK with 4 stars, alongside property search engine globrix.com, who received the same accolade.

But the real winner was smartnewhomes.com who received a 5 star ranking. The portal was praised for its all round quality of service.

smartnewhomes.com is one of the UK’s leading websites for new homes and according to the company the portal attracts more than 1 million searches per month. smartnewhomes.com is a wholly owned subsidiary of Trinity Mirror, the UK’s largest newspaper publisher, which operates a portfolio of more than 500 media brands and many websites, including a quarter share of the fish4.co.uk group.

The inaugural International Property Awards were presented in 1995, and in 2005 the Daily Mail UK Property Awards were launched under its umbrella. Other regions covered under separate awards include the Middle East, Asia, Americas, Europe and Africa. 5 star winners like smartnewhomes.com go on to be judged for the overall International Property Awards.

For a complete list of award winners in all countries, visit propertyawards.net.

Online Classifieds to Ruin Newspapers

A report in leading Australian newspaper The Australian today says that newspapers in the country will lose up to $1 billion in revenue over next four years if classified advertising continues to migrate online.

The story arose from the Future of Journalism conference in Melbourne.

Quoting research from EL&C Bailleau stockbrokers at the conference, Ivor Ries said that Australia’s main newspaper companies had already lost $450 million in classified advertising revenue in the past four years.

According to another commentator, worst hit was Fairfax, who own leading newspapers including the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, as well as online property portal domain.com.au, the number 2 player in the Australian online property market.

Read the full article from The Australian here.

In the US, an Inman TV News clip shows Ben Phillips, vice president and MD of Realogy’s openhouse.com, discussing similar issues, with the migration of classifieds online causing industry-run destination sites like openhouse.com to take advertising into their own hands.

inea.co.uk

inea.co.uk stands for the Independent Network of Estate Agents, and offers a multiple listing service (MLS) for independent estate agents in the UK. inea.co.uk has signed up 150 agents to their portal.

Established in July 2008, the ethos behind the website is that for years agents have been working together behind the scenes on behalf of their valued clients. Now with inea.co.uk research and software they can access other members’ shared properties. The website is also linked to other international property networks.

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