Property Portal Watch » News

rentals.com Releases Smartphone Apps

Alice Allan — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 02:33:58 +0000

rentals.com, a US-based portal for rental properties, now offers property search applications for both iPhones and Google Android mobiles.

The portal’s new smartphone applications offer all the features that have become expected of mobile property search, including the ability to view complete listing information, contact agents, search for nearby listings, and save and rank favourites.

“Mobile devices were once a luxury, but have evolved into a necessity for most consumers,” says David Quinlan, general manager of emerging technologies at rentals.com. “Leveraging mobile applications to connect consumers and advertisers is a powerful marketing tool.”

rentals.com moved up one place on the latest Hiwise list of US real estate websites to land at number 13.

The portal’s parent company, Primedia Inc., recently announced total revenue of US$257.9 million for the full year 2009, which is a $46.2 million decrease compared to 2008.

Fourth quarter revenue from rentals.com decreased by 4.6 precent compared to the fourth quarter of 2008. Primedia said this was primarily due to a decrease in paid listings through the self-provisioning feature of its websites, partially offset by an increase in the number of listings generated from property managers.

domain.com.au Looks to Video

Alice Allan — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 23:38:57 +0000

After a year dotted with regular releases, domain.com.au has been quiet for the first few months of 2010. Now, Australia’s number two property portal has announced a new focus on video property tours through a partnership with the conviniently-named video production company Visual Domain.

The launch of “Domain Video” means agents will now be able to add video property and agency profiles to their listings, allowing potential buyers to have what domain.com.au calls “an even more emotive connection with a property”.

“The first inspection starts online,” says Daniel Goldstein, director of Visual Domain, adding that the use of video benefits agents in that it tends to generate more qualified leads. “When they turn up at an inspection, they’re ready to buy,” he emphasises.

domain.com.au sales manager Carolyn Matthews explained that the addition of video to the portal’s listings was an effort to offer everything possible to both agents and those researching property, including interstate and overseas buyers. ”Domain Video provides businesses the opportunity to be true leaders in their field,” Matthews said.

Visual Domain’s property profiles start at AUD$495. The video they created to promote Domain Video can be viewed here.

[Image: Fletchers property profile video]

New Luxury Portal Launches

Alice Allan — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 21:56:53 +0000

A new property portal has just been launched at dreamhomesdot.com promising to showcase luxury real estate from the around the world.

The dreamhomesdot.com listing model offers unlimited property listings for US$49 per month. The website currently lists just under 1,000 properties from countries such as Spain, Australia, Malta, Mexico, and France.

Along with property listings, dreamhomesdot.com features properties on its blog and offers e-commerce packages which include personalised videos, customised website design, and search engine optimisation services.

An advice section is also available covering various stages of the buying and selling process, and dreamhomesdot.com is taking advantage of Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube to promote its services.

rentbits.com Buys apartmentfrog.com

Alice Allan — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 02:50:53 +0000

US rentals search engine rentbits.com has just splashed out on a new acquisition: apartmentfrog.com.

apartmentfrog.com provides an apartment listing service for independent landlords across the US, and allows apartment hunters to search for properties using a wide range of criteria. Renters can also use it to post free advertisements for roommates.

rentbits.com says its distribution network will now reach 10.2 million unique visitors per month.

“This acquisition is part of our long-term strategy to continue expanding our distribution offering for our advertisers,” says Tim Moynihan, rentbits.com’s chief operations officer. “As part of the rentbits network, apartmentfrog.com offers our multi-family customers relevant distribution and qualified lead generation for their apartment communities.”

Along with the new acquisition, rentbits.com says it is rolling out a number of website enhancements. These include extending its network reach for multi-family advertisers and adding to its database of rental rate data from over 7,000,000 historical rentals nationally.

rentbits.com was one of the Hitwise “fast movers” for January, climbing 51 places to land at number 75 on a list of US real estate websites. A redesign for the website was released in February.

zillow.com Joins with John L. Scott

Alice Allan — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 00:19:33 +0000

US real estate marketplace zillow.com, the current US number two, has teamed up with John L. Scott Real Estate to add 15,000 of the company’s for sale listings.

zillow.com explains that the partnership will benefit its users in Washington, Oregon, and Idaho. John L. Scott joins over 800 partners in zillow.com’s listings feed program.

“If you’re a John L. Scott agent, it’s time to celebrate and to thank your broker for doing you a huge favour,” says zillow.com chief operating officer Spencer Rascoff on the website’s blog. “Your listings are now on one of the largest real estate websites at no additional cost to you, complete with multiple photos and open house information.”

Each listing John L. Scott feeds to zillow.com will include a description of the property along with with photos and contact information for the listing agent. These listings will also be displayed on zillow.com’s iPhone app, which has been downloaded almost 1 million times.

New Commercial Portal for China

Alice Allan — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 21:38:39 +0000

Australian commercial property portal operator Real Estate Commercial has created a new version of its website for the Chinese market.

The new website, zhongguorec.com, lists commercial property for sale and rent in both Chinese and English, and also allows users to search businesses for sale.

zhongguorec.com is pitched at property developers and private sellers as well as real estate agents. Standard for sale listings cost 580 Yuan (US$84) and remain active until the property is sold. Premium listings cost 880 Yuan, while rental listings are slightly cheaper.

Real Estate Commercial explains that the new website is currently in beta and will be officially launched in July this year.

Russell Robertson, managing director of Real Estate Commercial Australia, says the website is the beginning of the company’s expansion into other Asian countries. A Hong Kong website is also scheduled to be launched in the next few months.

Real Estate Commercial operate two other websites in Australia - realestatecommercial.com.au and primesite.com.au - along with the company’s main hub realestatecommercial.asia.

casayes.pt Claims User Base Growth

Alice Allan — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 22:32:18 +0000

casayes.pt, a Portuguese property portal run by the Portuguese Real Estate Brokers Association (APEMIP), says its internal figures show it is receiving thousands of new visitors per day.

The portal, which competes with websites such as Portuguese market leader casa.sapo.pt, was first established in June 2008. According to a statement from casayes.pt, it now lists nearly 450,000 properties from over 1,500 agents associated with the APEMIP.

The portal also states that page views have increased by around 560 percent compared to this time last year, and that it now sees a daily average of 4,500 visitors. casayes.pt claims this equates to approximately 140,000 new visitors per month.

“This growth has been steady and sustained, which creates expectations that in the second semester 2010 we will achieve results to the level of the best national and international real estate portals,” a casayes.pt spokesperson told propertyportalwatch.com.

casayes.pt listings are free to members of APEMIP, and the portal is available in Portuguese, English and Spanish.

Google Street View Expands in UK

Alice Allan — Sun, 14 Mar 2010 21:15:56 +0000

Google’s Street View has just been expanded to cover more than 95 percent of UK roads.

The move has been welcomed by zoopla.co.uk and s1homes.com, both of which are emphasising the benefits for their users.

“Being able to offer street-level imagery for the whole of the UK is an invaluable feature for our users as they search for homes to buy or rent and do their research on current home values and recent sold prices,” says zoopla.co.uk CEO Alex Chesterman. “zoopla.co.uk is all about providing useful tools to our users help them make better informed property decisons and Google Street View is an important part of that mission.”

“Since we introduced Google Street View on s1homes.com, it’s become one of the most popular features,” adds s1homes.com managing director Mark Smith. “Our users are spread across a wide geographic area, not just the main cities, so we are delighted that more will now benefit from it.”

According to The Press Association, the increased Street View coverage provides mapping of an additional 210,000 miles of British roads to the public.

Google Rumoured to be Hiring Online Real Estate Sales People

Simon Baker — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 02:01:22 +0000

Rumours emanating out of Sydney today indicate that Google is aggressively looking to hire a field sales team to target the Sydney real estate market. Sources said that Google had approached a number of sales people from domain.com.au in an effort to hire them as field sales people for the Google real estate initiative. Sources also believed that Google may be initially targeting the Inner West region of Sydney.

Surprisingly, there were no rumoured approaches to sales people from the market leader, realestate.com.au.

If these rumours do pan out to be true, it would be a major increase in Google’s efforts to compete with the incumbent market leaders realestate.com.au and domain.com.au. It is also probably a recognition that the approach of targeting sales at the franchise group level only is not working so well and a realisation that agents don’t self service.

Earlier this month, Google announced a marketing partnership with LJ Hooker. Industry insiders believe that this deal is worth between $300k and $500k and will promote LJ Hooker across Google Maps. It is also believed that no other franchise group has yet entered any formal marketing partnership with Google and franchise groups such as Ray White and Century 21 are only uploading their listings to Google Maps.

The hiring of a field sales force probably means that Google will, over time, aggressively offer its services to real estate offices through Australia. The question is what will that offer be and what is the likely take up by real estate agents. It also raises some longer term questions about relationship between Google and the two market leaders (realestate.com.au and domain.com.au), both large PPC spenders on Google.

New Partnerships for Nestoria

Alice Allan — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 22:24:30 +0000

Property search engine Nestoria has recently entered into three white-label partnerships in Spain, Germany, and the UK.

In Spain, nestoria.es has teamed up with El Correo Gallego, a regional media group based in Galicia, to provide their property search. nestoria.es explains that this is its first property search partnership.

In Germany, nestoria.de has linked with gutefrage.net, a new social network focused on asking and answering questions. Nestoria says gutefrage.net is one of the top 20 German language websites in terms of users.

In the UK, nestoria.co.uk has integrated with Buyers Edge, a service that helps match prospective buyers with qualified buying agents. Buyers Edge users can now search the nestoria.co.uk database in a co-branded environment.

These new partnerships mirror similar deals with The Daily Telegraph, The Independent and Channel 4 in the UK, and with Financial Times Deutschland, Capital magazine and Wetter in Germany, amongst others.