Predictions 2009 - Australia

On the surface, the Australian property portal market ended much the same way it started with realestate.com.au dominating the space and domain.com.au continuing to struggle in second place. We also had myhome.com.au come and go in the market while homehound.com.au and realestateview.com.au continue to show promise but with little headway. However, there were changes at the various players that could mean 2009 will be an interesting year.

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Strategies for Tough Times Workshop

In today’s tough business and financial climate, property portals around the world face challenging issues. These can include:

• Where can I cut costs to ride out the financial storm?
• Can I really compete with the market leaders?
• Where do I get my next injection of funding?
• Will the free to list models really work?
• What impact will Google have on portal sites?
• What new products are coming and should portal sites invest in them?

Answering these and other vital questions alone is not easy, so we thought we would hold a workshop to discuss them as a group.  Property Portal Watch has teamed with the folk at Inman News to create Property Portal Watch Connect – a free, one day workshop for the owners and operators of property portals from around the world.

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REA Group Changes HubOnline Product

In a guest post from REA Group’s Dave Platter, Group Manager of Public and Investor Relations, he reveals that realestate.com.au has made some changes today around its HubOnline product.

HubOnline Global was purchased by the REA Group in April 2006 and provides software products that enable real estate agents to easily manage every stage of their business, including web based sales, lead management, marketing solutions and trust accounting real estate agents. More than 480 real estate agent offices in Australia and New Zealand rely on HubOnline.



realestate.com.au has made some changes today around its HubOnline product that deserve an airing here.

In the first change, the company’s Agent Solutions Group (which provides the HubOnline Software) is making some changes that will be of interest to anyone using HubOnline. Here’s the email they sent to HubOnline 1 customers today:

Over the past three months, REA have had a number of projects to investigate and understand what HubOnline customers (as well as customers of competing real estate Customer Relationship Management packages) need, use and value in their solutions.

As a result, we are announcing a roadmap for making some important and meaningful improvements to the version of HubOnline that you are currently using.

We intend to release improvements to HubOnline over the coming half-year. These will include:
· Simplifying the application to improve the user experience and reduce training requirement
· Improved performance speed of the CRM application
· Improved speed for vendors and buyers viewing your website
· Improved system stability and availability
· Improved disaster recovery and protection of your data

Some of you know that we have had an R&D project underway that would have eventually resulted in a newer version of HubOnline on a different platform. Based on the user research we have done, we have determined that this is simply not the best way forward for the majority of our customers who want a simpler CRM solution, rather than a more complex one with advanced features. The research tells us that most agents want easy-to-use and reliable software that provides an agent website, export to multiple portals and services, good (but basic) contact management and reporting. Therefore, our intention is to focus on making these improvements to the current product.

We believe that this will get you more improvement in a shorter time-frame, and will ultimately meet your needs better, than the more complex solution we were building. Again, this is not just our opinion, but is based on the feedback we have received from our customers and the customers of other Australian real estate CRM applications.

What do you need to do? Nothing. Because HubOnline is offered as a “Software As a Service” over the internet, you will receive the benefits of these improvements as they become available. We will communicate improvements beforehand, and as is our normal practice, will design and release them to minimize disruption.

Thank you for being our customer, and we hope that you will see these improvements as a net benefit to your business.

The HubOnline team made another announcement, too. Here are some excerpts from the letter mailed yesterday to customers of the Trust Accounting product lines–including Clarke Computers SalesTrust and RentTrust.

REA has agreed to sell its Trust Accounting product line to Rockend Technology Pty Ltd (Rockend). This means that from December 12th, 2008, your contract for the Clark Computers products will be assigned to Rockend. Rockend will also provide future services and customer support. You can reach Rockend on 1 300 657 700.

We have selected Rockend to take over your customer relationship in respect of trust accounting services because of its experience in trust accounting. Rockend has been recognized by the Customer Service Institute of Australia (CSIA) with both state and national awards for its excellence in supporting customers.

We believe that this change is in the best interest of our Trust Accounting customers as Rockend has proven its commitment to the excellent customer service and support.

Rockend have informed us that it is their intention to continue supporting these products for the foreseeable future, and over time to help customers make an easy transition to the core Rockend products. You do not need to take any action for this change to occur and there should not be any disruption to your support services, although the team will be physically moving to the Rockend office on December 12, so responses may be delayed on that day.

I would like to thank you for being a trust accounting customer of the REA Group. We look forward to continuing to provide you with our range of other services.

Yours sincerely,

By Dave Platter
Group Manager of Public and Investor Relations at REA Group

Advertising Winners and Losers from Economic Slump

One area of the real estate industry that will be changed forever as a result of the economic down turn is advertising. Most notably newspapers will be wounded and are unlikely to fully recover.

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Launching PropertyAdGuru

Property Portal Watch now has a sister site, www.propertyadguru.com. While Property Portal Watch focuses on the owners and operators of property portals, Property Ad Guru is for agents and realtors around the world and provides them with advice and guidance on how to get the most from their online advertising spend.

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Using a Nude Dude For Viral Marketing

REA Group owned realholidays.com.au recently launched a viral marketing campaign to advertise the holiday rentals website ahead of the Australian summer. realholidays.com.au was established in 2007, and contains over 22,000 holiday rental listings.

The viral is a URL, whereisnudedude.com.au which uses a nude character in an interactive game that plays homage to the Where’s Wally picture books.

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REA Group Changes Name

At the most recent Annual General Meeting last week on Wednesday 26 November, the REA Group shareholders voted upon two name changes for the company.

Firstly, the publicly listed group holding company, realestate.com.au Limited, will now be known as REA Group Limited.

And secondly, Netwide Solutions Pty Limited, which is the Australian operating company, will now be known as realestate.com.au Pty Limited.

The name changes seem to better reflect the current status of the global online property advertising business, who own websites in 9 countries around the world, no longer just Australia.

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.

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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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.

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