Property Portal Watch » Opinions

Google Real Estate in Europe – What is All the Fuss About? Lessons from Australia

Simon Baker — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 03:51:23 +0000

The news yesterday that Google was “entering” the UK/European market sent the share prices of Rightmove and Seloger into a tailspin. The Seloger share price closed down 5.7% at €23.50 while the Rightmove share price was hammered a whopping 10.3% to 499.9p.

So let’s look at what happened. An article by the Financial Times (Dec 2 titled “Google set to enter UK property market”) seems to have set the cat amongst the pigeons. The article stated that Google is in talks with British estate agents and that “experts” say that an entry by them to the market could pose a serious threat to existing property websites. The article didn’t talk about what Google was going to do and Google didn’t comment. So there is really not much to go on. So the only guide we really have as to what Google may do in the UK and Europe is what they have done in Australia.

Google “entered” the Australian market 6 months ago (July 2009) when they made it possible for agents, brokers, franchise groups, and portal sites to place their listings on Google Maps. When a user does a search on Google Maps (not the main Google search) for real estate, Google plots the houses in its database on the maps and users can then click on the various dots to see if they like the houses and then are driven back to the advertiser’s site.

At that time, there was a similar uproar and many were predicting the death of realestate.com.au and domain.com.au and the REA Group share price dropped nearly 7% from $5.90 to $5.50. However in the 6 months since the announcement by Google, the REA Group share price has increased 53% to $8.44, the traffic to the site has increased from 4.5m UB’s in June 09 to 5.4m UB’s in October and analysts are predicting an additional 20% revenue growth for the REA Group in FY 2010.

In August we wrote about the challenges for Google knocking over the market leaders. Here is the link to the article called “The Challenges for Google Real Estate”. All of these still hold true.

Over the next week, we will be writing a series of articles about the true hurdles that Google has to overcome in any market to knock off the incumbent market leaders. Tune in for these articles.

In New York on the 12th January we will be holding the Property Portal Watch Workshop. At this workshop we will be discussing Google and its potential impact on the property portal market. Join the 60+ other attendees to discuss this and other important topics in the property portal market.

It’s All About the Leads

Simon Baker — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 13:02:06 +0000

Property portals around the world are famous for talking up their numbers. Almost every week we receive press releases claiming one of two things – a portal is bigger or faster than everyone else in their market. The bigger claim is almost always followed by a Unique Browser, page view or visitor number while the faster claim is followed by some percentage growth between two arbitrary dates. This approach is reminiscent of newspapers touting circulation and readership.

While these are interesting, they are not that relevant outside of the industry and probably not that relevant to the people that matter most, the advertiser. They are measuring the inputs and not the outputs. What portals should be talking about is the number of leads they generate for the advertiser. This is the true measure of effectiveness. The problem is most portal sites just don’t know how many leads they really generate.

All portals can measure the email leads that they generate. That is easy. However the problem is portals also advertise telephone numbers and open house times and when it comes to measurement, these are far more problematic.

Here are some approaches people are taking to measure telephone traffic.

Redirecting Telephone Numbers

In the UK, it is popular for property portals to not list the agent’s real telephone number but to list a number the redirects to the agent’s real number. This allows the portal to count how many telephone leads they have sent. The approach also allows a marketing message to be played to the person making the call (e.g. “ABC portal is now redirecting you to a market leading agent”) and when the agent picks up the phone, a marketing message can also be played (e.g. “Here is another lead from ABC portal”).

This works well in the UK where this service is very inexpensive however in most other markets, the cost of implementing this approach is way too high.

Telephone Number Links

Some portals are replacing the agent’s telephone number on a property details page with a link to the telephone number. When someone clicks on the link, the telephone number is revealed. This way, the portal can count how many times someone clicks on the link to gain some idea of how many phone calls are being made.

This has recently been implemented by realestate.com.au and domain.com.au in the Australian market. Domain’s implementation is slightly flawed as you only click on the link to see additional numbers. I am sure this will change shortly.

Contact Agent Tab

Some sites split the property details page into multiple pages and have a tab system that allows the consumer to tab between the property details, the photos, a map and a contact the agent page. This allows the site to track how many time the “contact the agent” page is displayed and therefore gives the site some indication as to how many leads are being generated.

In some markets, open house or open for inspection times are very important. In this case, a consumer can see a property listing on the site and then just turn up to the property at a prearranged time. In this case, the portal has no way of knowing how many people they directed to the open house. This becomes more problematic as portals provide more and more tools for the consumers that allow them to plan their day looking at open homes.

As the property portal industry matures, the market leaders will need to find better ways of communicating their effectiveness to the market. The days of talking about unique visitors and page impressions are probably numbered and the more progressive sites will talk about the leads they generate. We just now need to find a reliable and independent measurer of leads.

How Zoopla Helps Rightmove and Did DMGT Get it Wrong?

Simon Baker — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 11:09:23 +0000

Over the last month Zoopla has clearly signalled to the market its intent to be a major player in the UK property portal market. It has snapped up Thinkproperty and Propertyfinder to clearly position itself in the top three UK portal businesses behind market leader Rightmove and DMGT’s The Digital Property Group.

In the process there have been some winners and some losers. However, it is Rightmove who is likely to gain the most from this move while questions have to be asked if DMGT truly missed a game changing opportunity.

Firstly, it looks like most traditional media companies in the UK have been sidelined in the UK property portal race with the exception being DMGT. GMG has exited the market with the sale Thinkproperty to Zoopla, News International now only has a 50% stake in the 5th placed Globrix, and Trinity Mirror has investments in the minor players Fish4Homes and Smartnewhomes.

The real winner appears to be Rightmove. The market structure in many ways has been maintained. For Zoopla to take on Rightmove, it has to get past DMGT’s sites – Findaproperty and Primelocation. DMGT will therefore have to compete against both Zoopla and Rightmove. Assuming Zoopla maintains an aggressive (read low cost) pricing model, pressure will be placed on DMGT’s ability to rapidly grow revenues.

If DMGT had picked up Propertyfinder, the market would have consolidated around two players rather than three. DMGT would then have been able to price under Rightmove’s pricing umbrella and therefore DMGT would have been able to increase revenues.

It seems that DMGT may have lost a unique opportunity to consolidate the UK market and to position itself as a real challenger for Rightmove’s market leader title.

The Challenges for Google Real Estate

Simon Baker — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 00:37:15 +0000

The launch of Google Real Estate search on Google Maps in Australia, the US and New Zealand has shaken the property portal world. It is expected that Google Real Estate will make an appearance in the UK and German markets shortly.

Last week we published our initial thoughts on what the launch of Google Real Estate will mean for the existing portal sites in Australia. These thoughts are equally applicable for portal sites around the world.

Having followed the debate about Google Real Estate and its potential impact on portal sites, we thought it would be good to outline what we believe has to fall into place for Google to truly impact the property portal market leaders around the world.

Management of Spamming, Scamming, Phishing

A key challenge for Google is managing active abuse of the free listings site. Given that anyone can upload listings to the Google Real Estate section, it will be only a matter of time before false listings are uploaded to gain clicks and leads. It will not be hard to imagine false listings being loaded to secure potential buyer leads and then these leads being sold back to the estate agents.

Google already experiences this problem in its normal search results where a range of techniques are used to get to the top of the search and to capture clicks which are then monetised in a number of ways.

Craigslist is a great case. Agents in New York took advantage of free rental listings on Craigslist leading to numerous repetitive and false listings. The solution that Craigslist eventually employed was to charge for listings on the site.

It is not clear how Google will tackle the same problem.

Building a Comprehensive Database of Active Listings

If major portal players decide not to upload to Google in key markets, then Google will face the challenge of sourcing enough active listings to provide the consumer with a comprehensive experience.

Sourcing listings may be challenging as Google will be reliant on smaller portal sites, software providers, individual agents and franchise groups for listings. Given agents are not always proactive and Google is unlikely to employ direct sales method, it may be challenging for Google to build enough awareness amongst agents to build a comprehensive database of listings.

Therefore it may be tough for Google to build a comprehensive database equal to or better than the market leader. If this happens, consumers may not switch from the incumbent sites to Google.

Ensuring Listings are Up To Date

This issue is closely related to the spamming and phishing discussed earlier. Old listings are problems on any portal site and for Google it will be no different here. Agents are notorious for leaving old listings up on portal sites (and even in their shop windows) as a way to capture buyer leads for redirection to active listings. A simple search of Google Real Estate already uncovers out of date listings on the site.

Property portals handle this situation by either displaying listings in date entered order or they allow the consumer to sort the listings from newest to oldest. Portals also employ algorithms that ensure that agents don’t game the system by taking listings off the market and then immediately putting them back on so that they go back to the top of the search.

Management of the Same Listing from Multiple Sources

Google is likely to source the same listing from multiple places. They may get a listing from the agent, the franchise group site, and potentially several portal sites. The question is how Google determines which listing to display first. They have probably already developed an algorithm to determine which listings to display first. However, the agents, franchise or most likely the portals, will work to understand that algorithm and therefore compete to ensure that their listings are displayed first. This already happens with the main Google search.

There may also be the challenge of the same listing being on the site at different prices. It will be interesting to see how Google handles determining the most credible sources.

Driving Significant Traffic But Not at the Expense of Revenues

An interesting challenge for Google is how to drive significant traffic to the Google Real Estate section while maintaining the PPC revenues it already captures from real estate related searches.

Historically, consumers went to Google, entered a search for property and then were presented with a list of sites they could click on. Most people clicked on the natural search results while some clicked on the paid search results and therefore Google made money.
To drive traffic to the Google Real Estate site, Google will need to think about how it promotes the site. The obvious way is to incorporate the listings on Google Real Estate into the search results. However, while this will drive significant traffic to the Google Real Estate section, it will probably take away PPC revenues as consumers no longer need to click to the paid search results.

Google will be able to put PPC search results around the listings, however as consumers are looking for houses, they will be less likely to click on the PPC search results. This approach may actually give better results for consumers however it may drive less revenue for Google.

Building Applications Consumers Expect

Consumers have come to expect a range of applications from portal sites as part of their overall experience. These include email alerts, saved searches, comparisons and so on. Google will have to build these out to provide the consumers with a comparable experience to existing market leaders.

Agents Ceasing to Use the Incumbent

Finally, for the existing market leaders to be truly impacted by the presence of Google, agents will need to stop spending or significantly reduce their spending on the existing portals sites. This is unlikely to occur as these existing portal sites are still cheaper than alternative advertising opportunities (i.e. print) and they are still driving significant traffic to the agents. It is unlikely that agents will forego quality leads to save a relatively small amount of money.

Agents may stop using the smaller paid for portal sites as Google may be seen as a substitute for them.

In addition, in some market, agents actually use online marketing as a profit centre. Where agents receive vendor paid advertising, agents sometimes on charge the cost of online advertising at a rate higher than they actually pay the portal site.

Is Google Beginning to Lose Its Grip?

Emma Sorensen — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 00:21:02 +0000

propertyportalwatch.com welcomes a guest opinion post from Nick Alexandrou of estateagents123.com on Microsoft’s new search engine bing.com. While Google has been busy introducing real estate search for Google Maps, Microsoft’s new search engine is growing in popularity. What does it mean for the property industry – portals and agents?

Microsoft’s newly revamped search engine bing.com (formerly live.com) could give Google a run for it’s money if the current trend continues. The popularity of bing.com has been rising steadily but is this just for now or will it continue into the future?

According to alexa.com bing.com is the top 16th website in the UK and top 15th globally.

I really like the look and feel of the site, especially the imagery used for the backgrounds, I have found myself using it more and more recently as it is part of Hotmail which I log into regularly.

So how will this affect the property industry?

Well, I would say that utilising any available marketing opportunity is a must whether it be the top, second, third or even fourth most popular search engine – you should aim to be on as many as possible. That way you cover all your bases and hopefully do not miss out on any potential business.

In the last few weeks we have seen a large surge in traffic coming from bing.com. We have always ranked well for key search terms such as ‘estate agents’ , ‘estate agents directory’ etc on Google and likewise on Bing/MSN Live. What this shows us is that more and more users are choosing to give Bing a go, maybe the new logo has caught their eye or they are bored of using the same old same old and simply want to try something new and fresh.

What do you think of bing.com? Do you agree with Nick? What impact do you see it having on the property industry? Share your thoughts by commenting below.

by Nick Alexandrou
estateagents123.com

Real Estate Added to Google Maps – What it Means for Australian Property Portals

Simon Baker — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 03:43:57 +0000

In Australia and the US, Google has added properties for sale to its mapping site – maps.google.com. Users of Google Maps are now able to see a selection of homes for sale and rent plotted on the maps. These homes for sale seem to be sourced from Google Base – Google’s classifieds engine. It is free for anyone to upload a listing and this can be done through an online interface or through an XML data feed.

The inclusion of property listings from Google Base onto Google Maps has some parts of the Australia real estate world abuzz with thoughts of the end of market leaders’ realestate.com.au and domain.com.au.

However, while this launch is new and innovative in the Australian market, a lot has to fall in place before realestate.com.au and domain.com.au are truly affected by the “entry” of Google into the Australian real estate advertising scene.

For the market leaders realestate.com.au and domain.com.au to be truly affected, the following probably needs to happen.

Google will need to build an comprehensive listings database
Google will need to drive high volumes of visitors to these listings
Google will need to get visitors to permanently switch away from realestate.com.au and domain.com.au
Agents will need to stop subscribing to realestate.com.au and domain.com.au

Let’s look at each in turn.

The Challenge of Building a Comprehensive Database of Listings

People visit realestate.com.au, and to a lesser extent domain.com.au, because there is a comprehensive range of listings available for them to search. realestate.com.au probably has around 95% of all Australian listings on their site. People continue to visit because these sites have built, over a long period of time, a reputation of being comprehensive in almost all areas of the country.

Therefore the first hurdle that Google has to jump over is building a comprehensive set of listings in any area that someone is going to search. If they have this, then they may be able to swing a visitor from realestate.com.au or domain.com.au to the new site. Without this, they are dead in the water. To build this, they will have to source the listings.

While secondary sites such as myhome.com.au, reiwa.com.au, and homehound.com.au will eagerly send their listings to Google for inclusion in Google Base, it is doubtful that realestate.com.au or domain.com.au will do so, thereby forcing Google to source listings directly from agents and franchise groups. (Note: ~40% of agents in Australia are part of a franchise group)

The challenge for Google is how to get to the 9,000 real estate offices (brokers) around the country with a simple to use method for them to upload their listings to Google Base. At the moment this approach does not exist and both realestate.com.au and domain.com.au have existing feeds in place to source almost all properties within Australia. Yes, an agent can use the Google Base interface to upload individual listings, however agents are notoriously reluctant to manually upload listings more than once.

Therefore it will be reliant on the raft of intermediaries to put links in place to Google Base. Interestingly, two of the largest, My Desk Top and HubOnline, are owned by Domain and realestate.com.au respectively.

It will take time for Google to create comprehensive (and equal to realestate.com.au and domain.com.au) list of properties available for sale.

The Challenge of Getting Visitors En Masse to Property Listings on Google

The second challenge is actually getting people to look at the listings on Google. While Google has massive traffic, that traffic visits Google for a number of reasons – only one of which is to find property listings.

At the moment finding the new map based real estate listings is not exactly easy. If you do the normal Google search, you will continue to get the same results as you did before with realestate.com.au and domain.com.au at the top of the search and thus getting the clicks to their sites.

To find the new listings search, you actually have to click on “map” at the top of the page, enter a search term like “properties for sale in Bondi” and then you have to click on “Real Estate on Google Maps” to see the results of your search. This is not exactly user friendly and until they incorporate the map based results into the general search results, it is unlikely that this new approach will impact realestate.com.au or domain.com.au to any significant level.

We expect to see the listings search results incorporated into the general search results at some point in time. The interesting question will be what impact that may have on Google’s PPC revenues – both people wanting to advertise and the click through rates on AdWords.

The Challenge of Getting Users to Permanently Switch from realestate.com.au and domain.com.au

So assuming that they get Australian real estate searchers en masse to the Google property listings, the next challenge is switching them from realestate.com.au and domain.com.au and keeping them on the Google real estate site.

Both realestate.com.au and domain.com.au drive traffic to their sites from a number of sources including the strength of their brand, their large email alert databases (realestate.com.au’s is believed to have over 1 million entries), their ongoing online and offline marketing (with media owners) and their presence on Google (which is unlikely to change). These will be a hard segment for Google to switch.

The second part of switching is providing people with an experience that is better than the alternative. Now assuming that Google can source the same number of listings, the next question is do people prefer mapping over the traditional list approach to search results.

It is often assumed that people like mapping more than any other approach however I suspect that more people look at the listings based results on realestate.com.au and domain.com.au than the map based results. Remember that these two sites have done more to frame the Australian real estate search psyche than any other sites.

If people do like mapping, both realestate.com.au and domain.com.au already offer mapped search results. It is interesting to note that the Google Maps representation of listings is similar to realestate.com.au’s long forgotten beta site, property.com.au.
The most likely impact from this is that realestate.com.au and domain.com.au will analyse the usage of Google Maps for real estate search and incorporate these changes into their sites. Thus making the reason to switch to Google Maps less compelling.

Google will also have to learn from realestate.com.au and domain.com.au about what users want from a real estate search. This includes the ability to set up an email alert.

Will Agents Dump realestate.com.au and domain.com.au for Google (or Other Free Sites)?

The real question is will realestate.com.au and domain.com.au actually lose any advertisers on their sites? The short answer is highly unlikely.

If you are a real estate agent in Australia, you would have to be sure of two things before turning off realestate.com.au or domain – that you are not going to lose any leads and that your competitors are not going to gain more leads by you not being on these sites.

Now if you look at this rationally, a converted lead in Australia is worth somewhere between $8,000 and $12,000 in commission – definitely more in places like Mosman. Now, the standard subscription from realestate.com.au or domain.com.au is likely to set an agent back $4,000 to $6,000 per annum.

Therefore, even if an agent maintains a standard subscription with these sites and achieves just one sale, then they have more than covered the cost of the subscription. Therefore, an agent would have to be slightly crazy to forego a subscription with either of these sites and rely solely on Google (or free sites) for its leads.

Assuming agents are not crazy and they maintain their subscriptions, these sites (realestate.com.au and domain.com.au) maintain the volume of listings and therefore the customer experience that people have become used to.

So What is the Likely Outcome?

The likely outcome is that Google will co-exist with market leaders realestate.com.au and domain.com.au. Some real estate searchers will like the approach Google has taken and will use the site however we don’t believe that this will be to the significant detriment of realestate.com.au’s or domain.com.au’s traffic.

Google will probably struggle to get 100% coverage of the listings in Australia as realestate.com.au and domain.com.au will hold out sending them their listings fearing that they will create a competitor.

Agents are likely to continue to advertise on realestate.com.au and domain.com.au as these will continue to be significant drivers of leads and they will fear missing out on leads that could go to their competitors.

Agents may reduce their spend on premium advertising options however this will most likely be at the margin and will not significantly impact the revenues of realestate.com.au or domain.

And if it does have impact, then realestate.com.au and domain.com.au can always embrace Google and send their listings to Google Base in the hope of swamping the listings on the site. It will be interesting to see how Google handles the same listings from realestate.com.au, domain.com.au, homehound.com.au, myhome.com.au, the agent and the franchise group. Somehow I suspect that there may be some favouritism towards those companies that spend big on pay per click. Now I wonder who they may be.

The last thought is what impact this will have on the tier two sites such as myhome, homehound, and realestateview. They have no choice but to embrace Google as Google is probably their main source of traffic. The problem will be that they may be feeding the beast the will devour them over time as visitors no longer need to go to the site that the listings are sourced from.

As Mark Twain is reported to have said “the reports of my death are greatly exaggerated”.

Zoopla Confirmed as Potential Propertyfinder Buyer

Simon Baker — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 21:40:07 +0000

Last week it was revealed that the Propertyfinder’s management buy out attempt had failed and that the REA Group and News International had entered into a heads of agreement with a mystery party. This mystery party has now been confirmed as being Zoopla.

Zoopla is a relatively new entrant to the UK online real estate market having initially launched a site around home prices and more recently moving into advertising homes for sale in the UK using the pay per lead model. Earlier this year Zoopla closed out a £3.75m capital raising. Check out our coverage of Zoopla over the last year.

On reflection, this deal makes sense by providing Zoopla with a boost into being a serious competitor in the market and it gives propertyfinder.com and its team a new lease on life.

The deal clearly makes sense for Zoopla. It allows them to short cut years of work and to join the upper eschelons of the UK property portal market.

They will immediately get a boost in overall traffic by accessing more than 1.2 million people using propertyfinder.com
They will get access to a strong existing brand
They will have a direct billing relationship with 5,500 agents around the UK
They can move from a pay per lead model to the most successful pay to advertise model
They can have access to a strong, existing revenue stream
They now have access to a strong team – especially the direct sales team of propertyfinder.com

The deal also makes sense for Propertyfinder by giving it a new lease on life.

Most people at propertyfinder.com should retain their jobs
The propertyfinder.com brand will continue to live in the UK
Propertyfinder will probably have a new, more innovative technology platform to drive the business
The agents using propertyfinder will have access to a broader range of innovative technologies

The big winner from the deal will be Rightmove while DMGT and its Findaproperty and Primelocation brands will face stiffer competition from a re-energised Zoopla/Propertyfinder. If Propertyfinder had closed, DMGT would have a clear run at Rightmove however the continued presence of Propertyfinder means that they have to split their attention between Rightmove and Propertyfinder.

The challenge now for the team at Zoopla is to have a clear model for the future, to get the existing Propertyfinder team engaged around the future and to make sure that this is done as quickly as possible with minimal impact on visitors and agents who currently use Propertyfinder.

Propertyfinder MBO Fails But …

Simon Baker — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 11:36:31 +0000

The much talked about management buyout of propertfinder.com in the UK has failed however a new mystery buyer has emerged. In a late announcement on the ASX, the REA Group & News International have entered into a non-binding heads of agreement for the potential sale of their UK online business.

Internal sources say there were three “very detailed and strong bids” however the while the existing management put in a “very impressive bid”, they were not the preferred option.

A period of exclusivity has been entered with the preferred bidder so that they can undertake due diligence and the identity of the preferred bidder might be revealed as soon as the end of next week. Given the comment in the ASX release that “if this transaction successfully proceeds to completion, it is unlikely to have any impact on the guidance (already) provided”, the offer being considered is likely to be small.

The REA Group and News International have also kept the door open to close the business or just sell the assets to the preferred bidder as they continue the consultation process with staff – a prelude to closure.

So who is the mystery bidder?

Well we don’t know who the mystery bidder is however speculation is that it could be one of DMGT, Trinity Mirror, GMG, or the outsiders Zoopla and Rightmove.

It would make sense for DMGT to buy Propertyfinder. They are currently competing with Propertyfinder as well as Rightmove and by acquiring Propertyfinder, they would remove a competitor (and distraction) from the market, gain more customers, and have a clear run at Rightmove. It is believed that the REA Group and News International came close to doing a deal with DGMT earlier this. Perhaps with the announcement of potentially closing the business, DMGT has come back with a bargain basement offer for the asset of Propertyfinder.

Trinity Mirror has made a range of acquisitions in the online property space. These include email4property, fish4homes, homemaker, homesoverseas, smartnewhomes, and zoomf. However, none are in the same league as the top 4 sites and therefore it would not be surprising to see them acquire Propertyfinder.com to add to their portfolio of companies.

Guardian Media Group (GMG) has invested heavily in market leading back end solutions with the likes of Vebra. They launched Thinkproperty a few years back with the hope of taking on the market leaders however this didn’t eventuate. There is a chance that they could be an acquirer of Propertyfinder, however this is more of an outside chance.

Zoopla has recently made a lot of noise in the UK market and is gaining some readership. While initial progress has been good, it is still to capture the levels of traffic that Propertyfinder and the other members of the top 4 have achieved. Rumours have it that they may be interested in Propertyfinder – especially from a traffic perspective. They could be a dark horse in the process.

Finally, we would be remiss if we didn’t speculate about Rightmove. Strategically, Rightmove want Propertyfinder to remain it the market. It keeps the DMGT sites of Findaproperty and Primelocation partially distracted and therefore gives Rightmove more clear air in furthering their market leadership. If they are the acquirer of Propertyfinder, expect them to keep Propertyfinder in the market as a foil for DMGT.

While the potential acquirer is unknown, our best guess is that it may be DMGT or Trinity Mirror.

The Future of Real Estate Search?

Emma Sorensen — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 00:21:52 +0000

propertyportalwatch.com welcomes a guest opinion post from Greg Robertson, the co-founder of W&R Studios, a software company dedicated to creating the next generation of web-based software solutions for the real estate industry. Their first web app is a social bookmarking site called Dwellicious. Prior to co-founding W&R Studios, Greg was the General Manager/Vice President of eNeighborhoods and also one of the founding partners of IRIS, a real estate software company started in 1992. Both eNeighborhoods and IRIS were featured in Inc Magazine’s, “Inc 500” list of the fastest growing privately held companies in country. Still active in the MLS community, Robertson currently sits as a director on The Council of MLS, an MLS industry trade organisation.

You can read more from Greg at his blog: blog.wr-studios.com.

Sometimes when I get asked, “What’s Dwellicious?”, I jokingly reply, a “it’s new way of searching for gingerbread houses on the web.” Sometimes this draws a laugh, but most of the time they think I’m somewhat serious. Actually, the name is a mash up. Like a lot of Web 2.0 applications, we took the name of an existing web service, delicious.com (formerly del.icio.us) and added the word, Dwelling. Delicious is one of the web’s most popular “social bookmarking” sites. So when you speak with someone who is familiar with Delicious (most likely a geek) and you tell them the name of our new site is called Dwellicious, they get it right away, “ahhh, a bookmarking site for real estate, cool!”

Still, most people don’t understand social bookmarking. I want to describe what social bookmarking really does, and how it might just be the future of real estate search.

The very first bookmarks.

Anyone who surfs the web a lot has most likely created a bookmark or saved a website to their “favorites” folder at one point. Typically this is a site you visit often, maybe your MLS, your agent website, or a News site you read often. I’m sure the first feature added, by the engineers who created the original Internet browsers, were creating bookmarks. The engineers, like us, got tired of typing in the same letters so often.

But, having all your bookmarks on a browser also has it’s disadvantages. Number one, you can only access your bookmarks from your personal computer. Not good-what if I’m at my friend’s house or on my iPhone? Also, what if you have a lot of bookmarks, say over 50? Your favorites toolbar, or the drop down menu on your browser would be too short to display all your bookmarks. A free account on delicious.com gives users a “Bookmarks Page”. Delicious also has a great identifying and sorting tool called “Tags”.

One of the best features of delicious is sharing. Delicious allows you to search everyone’s bookmarks. This is where the “social” aspect of social bookmarking comes in. Before I go on, lets talk about how people search on the Internet today.

Who do you trust, the computer or the pitchman?

When someone searches for something on the Internet today, they most likely start on a search portal such as Google or Yahoo! Once they submit their search, they get back two results.

1. “Natural” web site suggestions based upon a computer program/algorithm created by the search portal.
2. “Paid” web site suggestions that are based on “key words” in your search request.

So which result is better? The search results generated by a computer program? Or the search results paid to show up by the highest bidders?

Granted, Google’s natural search results are sometimes very accurate. But on the surface, having to choose from what a computer program tells me and what an advertiser says doesn’t seem like a good deal.

Social bookmarking

Now, lets imagine you are interested in motorcycles. You love motorcycles. You “ride to live and live to ride motorcycles”, as the saying goes. As part of your passion for motorcycles you scour the web for the best motorcycle websites out there. The best ones you “bookmark”, but since you are using a social bookmarking service instead of just “add to favorites” on your own browser, your bookmarks are shared with everyone using the service.

Now lets say another kindred spirit, who also loves motorcycles, joins the social bookmarking site you belong to. He types in “motorcycles”. Now all the bookmarks that other motorcycle junkies (like you) have made, appear on a list. The motorcycle websites with the most bookmarks are on the top of this list. This is very powerful. What you have in front of you is a list that other humans beings put together about the best websites about motorcycles. Think about that, OTHER HUMAN BEINGS, not a computer, not an advertiser that paid to be on top, not a fancy mathematical program, but other REAL PEOPLE who love the same things you do!

This type of human based computation is just the beginning.

Mass collaboration and real estate search

The National Association of REALTORS(r), in a recent survey reported that 84% of all homebuyers start their search for real estate on the web. And we know from other industry statistics, and just plain old human nature (everyone is curious!), homebuyers search across multiple real estate sites.

Now lets imagine you’re interested in buying a 5 bedroom house in Costa Mesa, CA. Listings are everywhere so you have a lot of options. You can search all the popular search portals like Realtor.com, Zillow, a local broker site and countless others. If you use a social bookmarking site to bookmark your favorites, others can also search upon your favorites.

Think about the possibility of searching a real estate website like this:

* Would you be interested in knowing what the top 10 most popular 5 bedroom homes for sale in your city?
* How about finding out the most popular home for sale in your neighborhood?
* What about the most popular home below $500,000?

Everyone loves talking about real estate. But before you can share this information with everyone (Facebook, Twitter, etc) having all your favorites in one place is key. Bringing that off-line conversation on-line could bring the whole concept of “crowd sourcing” real estate search to reality.

Engagement

To engage with someone is to occupy, attract or involve their interest or attention. But how is the usurped agent or broker, whom the consumer has bypassed on their way to the Internet, going to engage these new homebuyers? New tools are being created to help put agents and brokers back at the beginning of the search process, where they belong. Agents and brokers need to be involved early because no “street view”, list of schools, or neighborhood demographic report is ever going to replace the knowledge a good real estate professional can bring to the kitchen table.

Where do we go from here?

There are big challenges. Real estate listings tend to be transient, and they also change (the price can go up and down, new photos could be added.) And, of course, the biggest challenge would be usage. Some level of critical mass would have to be generated to give this sort of web service any legs. However, services like Alexa still provide useful information without having a huge footprint. As the Internet begins to enter a new phase of social networking it would only be natural that new tools would emerge to leverage the world’s fascination with real estate.

by Greg Robertson
co-founder of W&R Studios
woolleyrobertson.com

Greg Robertson on remax.com and roost.com

Emma Sorensen — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 02:09:48 +0000

Greg has kindly let us reprint his blog post comparing the recent redesigns of remax.com and roost.com. This post originally appeared on vendoralley.com.

I’m not a professional reviewer but due to my past gig and since launching Dwellicious, a social bookmarking site that works with all the major real estate search portals, I’ve become somewhat of a “connoisseur” of these types of websites.

Both RE/MAX and Roost have basically the same model/approach to displaying listings on their websites. RE/MAX International is a huge real estate franchise (not a broker), and therefore runs remax.com as a “network of broker IDX websites”, while Roost.com runs “a real estate search site that features multiple listing service-based property listings information shared through partner brokers.”

The big news is that they both have launched new site designs. It’s very interesting to see how each company approaches the way in which they display the listing content.

It’s as if you put a team of creative and talented people in one room with a certain task and another team of creative and talented people in another room with the same task. Now, months later, they come out of each of their respective rooms and gave you a demo of how they solved the problem. In this case, the problem was to create a new user interface to display broker IDX sites connecting thru a “wrapper” site.

As many of you know, I was part of the team that helped launch the first version of remax.com’s network of broker IDX sites. It was one of the best times I have had in my career. We were doing something so new and innovative and really had a national stage. So, it’s great to see what new things the eNeighborhoods and RE/MAX (and their design partner) teams have added.

Also I’m just going to focus on 3 parts

* Home Page
* Search Results Page
* Detailed Property Page

With that said, here are my quick thoughts about each site:

Home Page

Remax.com

The overall design is more a conservative approach. It has a much lighter feel (lots of white space, good!) than the darker blue that covered the previous site. The addition of the one line search field on top is great, it helps balance all the self promotion (”Top Ten…”, “Become A…”, “Find A…”) going on below. I like the addition of the video upfront, but I am confused by the “Popular Searched Real Estate Markets”, it seems like they are trying too hard here.

Roost.com

Very inviting. Although the layout might be better for SEO considerations, I think there is a lot going on here. But the design does scream Web 2.0. The new logo is reminds me too much of Twitter. The sliders are an interesting addition, and I did find them useful. Roost seems to be fighting for credibility. For example it displays lots of other company logo’s (”Featured In”) and numbers showing you the amount of listings available. I guess this is understandable, but it is something remax.com doesn’t have to worry about.

Search results page

I just typed in a zip code of “92648? at a price range of 750K to 1.2M. This was much easier to do on Roost due to the sliders. Although, when entering in the price range on remax.com it automatically gave me the comma’s (”,”), so I didn’t have to count the zeros like I would on a lot of other real estate sites.

The search results came up quicker in Roost, but remax.com brought up more listings (443 vs 370). On my system, remax.com showed me 5 listings per page (you can change this).
remax.com’s search results page

On the search results page remax.com does a simple sort by “lower to higher”, while Roost defaults at “Recently added”; both can be changed.

On remax.com I was only able to view 2 listings without having to scroll down for more, whereas Roost gave me 12. This, I believe, is a matter of personal preference, whether you want more listings viewable (meaning smaller photos) or larger photos and text.

Both pages had the listings maps. I didn’t like they way Roost implemented the map. Although it was larger than the map on remax.com I tend to use the scroll button on my mouse a lot which caused a problem. The map was “active” on the right hand side of the screen where I usually find the scroll bar. With my pointer on the map it zoomed in and out, not scrolling down the page as I expected.

Not filling the screen with listings gave remax.com more space to devote to lead capture forms and information about “Home Pricing Trends” and search fields. Again, I don’t know whether this trade off of less listing viewable per screen is worth it, hopefully thery are testing. If they are not seeing a lot of usage on these additional elements I would switch to more listings per page.

Detailed Listing Page

I selected 509 20th St, Huntington Beach, CA, listed at $1,099,000

This is can be broken up in to what’s above the fold and what’s below the fold.

Above the fold:

First off, the remax.com page was taking a lot longer to load. Even when most of the images were displayed, I could still see my browser cranking away. Roost was nice and snappy.

remax.com -Is it a one story?

roost -Or is it a two story?

The photo viewer on remax.com when you first came to the detailed listing page didn’t allow for images to be displayed, in portrait mode; Roost did. To be fair, you could see them in the correct mode once you clicked on the link “View All Photos” (also this might be a browser thing, I’m using FF on a Mac). But, first impressions where pretty dramatic.

I did like that remax had the listing photos start a slide show (once the page loaded!). Roost’s approach was to show me all the photos and let me jump to the image I wanted.

Remax.com chose to display the photos on the right hand side of the screen. Roost has them on the left. I went and checked some other sites, and they are all different. Realtor.com shows 4 big photos in a square starting from the left hand side. Trulia.com has them sort of in the middle. I guess everyone wants to be different.

I think that remax.com’s use of white space made the listing detail page much easier to read than Roost. As I’ve said, the approach to displaying photos is, to me, a matter of personal preference.

Below the fold:

Both sites have a lot going on here. Roost has a Google Street view imbedded and viewable on the map (nice). With remax.com, you must click to see the street view but they also have a “Balloon View” which gives you another interesting view of the property not offered by Google. Also, when you click on “Expand Map” you get an entirely new listing detail screen. I really liked this view and would argue that it would make a better default view of the detailed listing page.

Roost gives you a Zestimate, provided by Zillow, recent homes sales, and a mortgage calculator.

Remax.com gives you some quick links to neighborhood and school information (helpful), and recent home sales, but no Zestimate. Remax.com does give a list of “Similar Properties For Sale” which I think is a great feature.

Summary

I purposely didn’t go into any IDX issues or the way each site brands it’s brokers/franchisors and partners. I’m sure others can split hairs about how each site is properly displaying real estate listings.

I was impressed with how RE/MAX International’s new design stood up to Roost and other sites. Roost is an exciting and innovative Web 2.0 company and really leading in a lot of different areas. For a big corporation like RE/MAX International to create a compelling user experience is a huge accomplishment!

Of course, the main value proposition is how well these new site designs increase lead generation.

One thing is for sure: both teams have a great group of dedicated, creative, and talented people working hard to compete in a highly competitive arena!

by Greg Robertson
co-founder of W&R Studios
woolleyrobertson.com