findrealty.com.au had humble beginnings but has grown into something a lot bigger. Kevin says he originally began propertycatalogue.com.au to accommodate the sales of properties belonging to his mortgage business database. “However, shortly after creating the site I started receiving emails from general web surfers asking how they could promote their listings so I decided to rename the site and build an entirely new database and features that would compete with the majors. I believe the site we have developed, findrealty.com.au, certainly has search features that are in many ways superior to the main competitors in the property portal business.”

Targeting Australian, New Zealand and international audiences with homes for sale, rent, share, and holiday rentals, findrealty.com.au also has open house and auction features. Its listings are from private advertisers, real estate agents, holiday agents and local businesses.

One of the website’s nice features is indeed the map search, which allows you to zoom in by country, state, region, and city.

Kevin told propertyportalwatch.com that over 200 agents will be adding their properties to the site within the next month and also says he has entered into affiliations with TakeABreak which will result in around 15,000 holiday listings gradually being added to the site.

Kevin says he is looking for offers to buy all three URLs: findrealty.com.au, findrealty.co.nz and propertycatalogue.com.au.

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Nicholas Marr is CEO and founder of Marr International, the company behind UK based overseas property website homesgofast.com, which has been running since 2003. Nicholas is also a lifetime property investor who has a passion for international real estate, and appears on Television show ‘Ask the Property Expert’ on Overseas Property TV.

There is a quite revolution going on and its right here at your computer and it may well affect your real estate business online. Google is changing the way search engines present their results. No longer is it one size fits all, now you will be served a more personalized search result. The results you receive when searching for say “property in united states” are very likely to be different to the ones that I receive conducting the same search query.

You will be put in a group
You and I will be grouped into different populations, and will be presented with a lists of results for a query in an order based upon past user behaviour of other members of that population.

The good news is that spammers who falsely achieve better rankings via unethical means will no longer benefit and that you may be presented with more accurate search results.

The existing Google algorithm which worked out how it would rank a certain website was based on a limited set of variables. Linking is an example, websites that had good one way links ranked better than others. The new system has increased the variables and consequently ranking is now likely to be less important as it is only one of a many new variables

The Bad News
The bad news that makes me nervous is the unknowns, how will this effect real estate website that lists property in more than one US state or with property abroad. How will the search results react to a person in the New York seeking property in Florida. Will the New York based property websites take precedence over the Florida or overseas websites?

Google has the power
Some may say that this change has come at a time when online businesses are suffering with the global slowdown and now real estate professional are set with another hurdle to get over. I am sure the debate about Google having too much power and the ability to make or break at the change of its tactics will continue.

Ranking not important anymore
For those that have worked hard to rank their property related websites the fear is that ranking may be dead! What is the point of being No.1 for your cherished search term when each user is presented with different search results?

What the experts say
Bruce Clay of Bruce Clay, Inc. “Ranking is dead,” says Bruce, recalling his words from his presentation. Going forward, he says you’re going to have to look at analytics, measure traffic, bounce rates, action, etc. SEOs will have to ask themselves questions like: Did I get the conversion I was after? Did I really deliver on the promise of SEO?

Bruce thinks that in the first six months of 2009, we’re going to see a lot more implementation of behaviour and intent-based search leading to a mindset of “ranking is dead, and traffic is all that matters.”

Matt Cutts of Google Cutts said, “I’m not sure I would say ranking is dead but it’s not as important as it used to be. The fact is the smart SEOs are not just necessarily looking at the rankings. They are looking at conversion, they are looking at their server log. It’s great if you’re ranking for a phrase but unless that leads to sales that doesn’t help you very much.”

“The challenge is not to pay so much attention to ranking, pay attention to traffic, pay attention to conversions and keep building good content and don’t worry about ‘can I show people that I rank number one for my trophy phrase.’”

Bill Slawski of www.seobythesea.com says “What this might mean for searchers is that Google might show you results in an order based upon what it thinks might interest you the most, based upon whatever information it can collect about you, and based upon what people whom it believes share population information with you found interesting enough to look at in the past.

What this might mean for site owners is that the search engine might rank your pages higher for some populations of searchers and lower for other populations of searchers based upon a wider range of information than just whether your site is relevant for specific query terms”.

A conclusion
What ever the outcome its certainly change that may make the search experience more accurate for users. Real estate professionals will need to monitor how this will change their business online it may prove the best thing Google ever did

Interesting reading on this matter
How Google Might Personalize Search Results Outside of Personalize Search
Will Personal Search Turn SEO On Its Ear?
Google Ramps Up Personalized Search

By Nicholas Marr
CEO of Marr International the company behind overseas property website homesgofast.com

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“In an effort to continually provide our customers with the most comprehensive real estate listing data available we are pleased to announce this new alliance with realtytrac.com,” said Jason Dittberner, president of homesaledirectory.com. “Home buyers and investors are searching for the best buying opportunities available and this partnership adds yet another valuable resource that homesaledirectory.com can provide to our clients.”

The foreclosure marketplace is one of the few growing areas in real estate at the moment. A statement from the companies about the new partnership says that more than 750,000 homes received a foreclosure notice in the third quarter of 2008, up 71 percent from the third quarter of 2007, according to the realtytrac.com US Foreclosure Market Report.

“Our new partnership with homesaledirectory.com reflects our common goal of providing consumers with real estate services that are in great demand,” said Ari Monkarsh, vice president at realtytrac.com. “We look forward to providing homesaledirectory.com and its valued customers with the most comprehensive foreclosure data available on the Internet.”

realtytrac.com is ranked as the third largest real estate site by MediaMetrix and No. 53 on Inc. magazine’s 2006 Inc. 500 list of the nation’s fastest-growing private companies.

Established in 1996, realtytrac.com claims to publish the largest and most comprehensive national database of pre-foreclosure, foreclosure, For Sale By Owner, resale and new construction properties, with more than 1 million properties across the country, property reports, productivity tools and extensive professional resources. With 3 million unique visitors monthly it supplies foreclosure data to MSN Real Estate, Yahoo! Real Estate and The Wall Street Journal’s Real Estate Journal.

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But what is the real estate industry actually doing about it?

It seems they’re getting serious about social media.

US based Internet marketing and IDX company Diverse Solutions (DS) has announced the appointment of a new Social Media Manager.

Mike Price has joined the DS team with over 12 years of experience serving the industry. In his most recent role as the president of MLBroadcast Mike has established a a firm foothold as a well respected member of the re.net and social media space.

His blog, Mike’s Corner has become a “go-to” guide for real estate marketing advice and opinion. Price is a frequent speaker and of the organizers of the REBarcamp concept, an industry event platform that has spread to cities across the country.

Diverse Solutions write on their blog:

“Diverse Solutions provides a wide range of Real Estate development services to produced inspired, attention-grabbing, easy to use products. Our decision to create Mike’s role was to extend our customer service experience while engaging clients and prospects of DS within the social media channels, extend the Diverse Solutions brand and offer general assistance with development and IDX questions.”

Appropriately, you can follow Diverse Solutions and Mike on Twitter, Facebook, and Active Rain.

Diverse Solutions are certainly not the first or only real estate related company to hire a social media expert. It is, however, an interesting way to start the new year, and it remains to be seen what 2009 holds for the industry and portals in the realm of social media.

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Established in 2007, it has quickly gained in popularity with users. The site does not accept paid placement or listing fees from agents. Funds are generated by allowing targeted and relevant ads on the side of the page.

Ownership | Market Position | Key Measurements | Market Coverage | Advertising Model | Financials | Site Sections | Technology | Key Management | History | Recent Press | Information Sources

Ownership

imobilien.com.br was initiated in January 2008 by the reunion of four entrepreneurs: Carlos Fertonani, Luis Fertonani, Marcos Ricardo dos Santos and Rodrigo Noronha. In this current stage of development it is being supported by the entrepreneur’s own resources, and the company is aiming to be backed by a big player in the Brazilian market in the near future.

Market Position

imobilien.com.br.com.br is in its early stages of development. By adopting a new free-to-list model in Brazil it has quickly become the property website with biggest number of property in the market. The number of users is surprisingly growing based on word of mouth and extensive SEO actions.

Key Measurements
(January 09)
In addition to user growth, the company says it has seen rapid increase and engagement in its current features, and quotes these figures:

• approximately 40,000 unique users visit imobilien.com.br monthly
• imobilien.com.br has more than 200,000 real estate listings nationwide

Market Coverage

All of Brazil.

Advertising Model

Properties for resale are listed for free and new apartment building are paid on a CPM based model.

Brazilian real estate market is unique. Approximately 70% of families with high economic standards live in buildings. There is an induced demand for property given the population growth and the increasing economic power of the families. The construction companies therefore launch new apartment buildings to supply the demand and advertise for sale afterwards. This makes the real estate marketing budget big enough to support our business in a free-to-list model.

Financials

Undisclosed.

Site Sections



The key sections of the website are:

• Properties to Buy
• Properties to Rent
• Blog

Technology

imobilien.com.br are very proud of their technology, which uses Google Maps: “After nearly an year investigating real estate web portals around the world and analysing how they managed to put tons of properties together in one map, we can proudly say that we have developed one of the best web user interfaces for the real estate industry.”

Locating one property in the map is easy, but letting the user navigate through the map and see all properties available in the region is something that only imobilien.com.br and a few others can do.

Properties are located in the map with a pin and they group and ungroup according to the zoom level the user prefers to work with. In case of a high level zoom, lots of properties will be grouped together into one single pin. As user zooms in, the exact location gets more important and properties will get ungrouped.

Key Management

The key management are:

• Marcos Ricardo dos Santos - CEO
• Wesley Milan - CTO
• Luis Fertonani - Design

History

Development began in the end of 2007 and it was launched September 2008.

Recent Press

News is posted on the company blog.

Information Sources

Management Interview
Site Review

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While 2009 was generally a quiet year in the New Zealand property portal market, there was one notable exception – the exit of the REA Group’s allrealestate.co.nz and the subsequent marketing arrangement between the REA Group and its former competitor, realestate.co.nz. There now two main players in the residential property portal market and 2009 should see some interesting developments with this new market structure.

2008 will probably go down as the yaer in which realestate.co.nz became the leader in the New Zealand market.  It started the year tied in second place with the REA Group’s allrealestate.co.nz however it was gifted a near monopoly position by the REA Group when they decided to exit the market late in the year. Following this departure, realestate.co.nz entered a marketing agreement with the REA Group that sees traffic be directed from the realestate.com.au site and the allrealestate.co.nz URL to realestate.co.nz. Stranglely, there is no link on the realestate.co.nz site back to the REA Group’s network.

There are now two main players in the New Zealand market - the real estate dedicated realestate.co.nz and the general purpose site, Trade Me. Here are our top 6 predictions for the New Zealand property portal market in 2009.

realestate.co.nz will overtake the real estate section of Trade Me

For the last few years, the real estate section of Trade Me has received the highest number of real estate visits.  However with the closure of allrealestate.co.nz and the redirection of traffic to realestate.co.nz, we would expect realestate.co.nz to significantly close the UB gap with Trade Me’s real estate section.  Some dedicated online marketing (especially SEM, SEO and PR) will see the gap further close and realestate.co.nz overtake Trade Me’s real estate section.

realestate.co.nz will increase the range of agent and listing premium products

realestate.co.nz will develop a range of products that agents can purchase to upgrade their listings or brand themselves on the site.  While these dont exist at the moment, pressure by the leading agents will see realestate.co.nz launch these new products and services as a way in which they can extract more value from their customer base.  allrealestate.co.nz did offer these products so the market is already aware of them and predisposed to purchasing them.

Agents will redirect their spend from Trade Me (and the papers) to realestate.co.nz

At the moment agents are spending on both Trade Me and realestate.co.nz.  However due to the continuing tough economic conditions, the improving traffic to the realestate.co.nz site (and therefore more leads) and the simple all you can eat subscription packages offered by realestate.co.nz, agents will probably move their spend from Trade Me (and the newspapers) to the industry backed realestate.co.nz.  The likelihood of this happening will increase if realestate.co.nz launches a range of agent and listing premium products.

realestate.co.nz will increase the range of information offered on its site

realestate.co.nz will add sales data and neighbourhood information to its site in a bid to increase its attractiveness to consumers in the market and to further differentiate itself from the real estate section of Trade Me.  By doing so, it will create a more loyal consumer base and therefore probably more traffic than the real estate section of Trade Me.

realestate.co.nz will increase prices - but only slightly

Like all businesses, realestate.co.nz has to provide a return to its shareholders.  The NZ market is going through a tough economic period and agents are either going out of business or are closely looking at their marketing spend.  This would be having some impact on the revenues of realestate.co.nz.  Having seen off allrealestate.co.nz and improved its offering to consumers, realestate.co.nz is now in a position to increase the price of the subscriptions it sells to agents to help maintain and increase revenues.  At the moment they charge NZ$200 per month to advertise and we would expect this to modestly increase over the year.

REA Group will close realcommercial.co.nz

When the REA Group decided to close its allrealestate.co.nz site, it didnt completely exit the New Zealand market.  It decided to maintain its realcommercial.co.nz site.  However, the site is small and really an offshoot of the Australian realcommercial.com.au.  Therefore during the course of the year it is likely that they will close realcommercial.co.nz as well.

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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.

Overall there is no reason why realestate.com.au wont end the year as the clear leader in online real estate marketing in Australia.  We also expect domain.com.au to continue to be in second place - a fair way behind realestate.com.au.  Finally we also expect there to be a group of tier 2 players continuing to exist in the market.  However, we also expect there to be some subtle and not so subtle changes in the market.  Here are our top 10 predictions.

Newspapers will continue to see a decline in real estate classifeds revenues

With the economic downturn impacting the Australian real estate market, agents are looking hard at where they spend their marketing dollars and are likely to realise that online marketing provides a much better return on investment than traditional print advertising. Therefore, we expect to see a continued decline in the amount spent by agents on traditional print advertising and the savings either going into the agent’s pocket or perhaps some being spent in additional online marketing.

realestate.com.au will increase its prices again

This is not exactly a bold prediction but one of necessity. Greg Ellis, the REA Group CEO, was recently reported in News Limited’s The Australian as expecting around a 50% increase in the REA Group’s revenues in 2009. realestate.com.au is the biggest contributor to the REA Group revenues and therefore as realestate.com.au already has around 95% of Australian agents using its services, the revenue increase has to come from a mixture of higher prices and agents purchasing more advertising products.  However, as agents are looking closely at all marketing expenditure, they will probably not purchase significant additional advertising products and theefore the majority of revenue growth will probably come from price increases.

domain.com.au will close the readership gap with realestate.com.au

Recently the REA Group decided not to renew its distribution agreement with ninemsn which allowed domain.com.au to become the property section on ninemsn.com.au. This will have a two way impact – realestate.com.au will lose some of the traffic it had been gaining and domain.com.au will have an increase in traffic. Our estimation is that there could be as much as a net 400,000 to 500,000 change in the gap between the two sites. Historically the gap had been around 2m UB’s per month and it will probably close to around 1.5m UB’s in early 2009.

domain.com.au will get more aggressive with its local advertising

On the back of its deal with ninemsn, domain.com.au will get more aggressive with its advertising by focusing on the local markets – especially where they have market leadership and local newspaper support. In reality, online real estate advertising is not a national or global game but a local or suburban game. Therefore domain.com.au is likely to take a slowly slowly approach to beating realestate.com.au on a suburb by suburb basis – this is the only way in which they can eat into the large lead realestate.com.au has in the Australian market.

realestate.com.au will launch a much needed change to its look and feel

The realestate.com.au website has had a similar look and feel for the last 4 -5 years. However, last year the REA Group succesfully launched a new look and feel for its propertyfinder.com site in the UK and it is likely that this look and feel, or elements of it, will be transposed to the Australian site – giving it a much needed update. 

RP Data will launch a new property portal site in the Australian market

In mid 2009 a 5-year non-compete agreement between RP Data and realestate.com.au comes to an end. RP Data will probably launch a new property portal site in the Australian market off the back of its property data business. The new site could seamlessly integrate property data and listings to provide customers with a single source of information on what is for sale, projected housing prices, and even neighbourhood information. RP Data may actually buy an existing site with myhome.com.au and homehound.com.au potential candidates.

realestate.com.au will enter the property data business

In response to RP Data entering the property portal market, realstate.com.au will enter the property data market. This could either be through a home-grown solution (unlikely) or through a partnership with one of the existing providers of property data in Australia. There is a chance that they will acquire an existing business, like Property Data Solutions, however some sort of distribution arrangement is more likely.

There will be consolidation in the Australian market

Tier two players such as homehound.com.au, myhome.com.au and realestateview.com.au could merge or be bought by a tier one player (most likely domain.com.au) as hard economic times bring operating reality to these businesses. 

A new player will enter the Australian market most likely with a pay for performance model

A new site could launch in the Australian market that is free for agents to list on and would probably adopt either a trulia.com / globrix.com like model (pay for upgrades to listings) or propertyindex.co.uk type model (pay for leads). This site has the potential to gain rapid traction by playing on agent’s fears of continued price increaes by domain.com.au and realestate.com.au and the perceived increase in control of realestate.com.au by News Corp.

News Corp will increase its equity stake in the REA Group (realestate.com.au)

In 2008 News Corp, through its Australian arm News Limited, increased its equity stake in the REA Group to just over 60%. It would not come as a surprise if News Corp made a takeover bid for the complete REA Group business during 2009.

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With declining web traffic overall to real estate websites in November, the competition has been heated.

rightmove.co.uk still leads with almost twice the number of unique visitors (1,994,000) as its nearest rival, findaproperty.com (1,069,000) at number two.

Over the last two months findaproperty.com has overtaken propertyfinder.com, who has been relegated to number three (1,030,000).

Controversially, the Digital Property Group, which owns findaproperty.com, as well as findanewhome.com (33rd with 96,000), primelocation.com (4th with 908,000) and homesandproperty.co.uk (8th with 300,000), claims to have closed the gap on rightmove.co.uk.

In November the difference between the number of unique visitors to rightmove.co.uk and the Digital Property Group’s portals was at an all time low of only 211,000. Mark Milner, chief executive of Digital, was quoted in Estate Agent Today as saying: “We have firmly established ourselves as second in the market place and are most certainly gaining ground on the market leader.”

However, the Digital Property Group makes its claims based on combining web traffic for all their portals together, whereas rightmove.co.uk is a single website.

It isn’t the only claim the Digital Property Group have made about the November figures. Earlier this month findanewhome.com claimed it had overtaken UK market leader smartnewhomes.com as the most-visited new homes portal. smartnewhomes.com issued a statement suggesting that the number one spot was only held by findanewhome.com for a short period of time, meaning smartnewhomes.com is still the market leader.

Meanwhile propertyindex.com has issued a statement claiming it has not only overtaken one of its biggest competitors, globrix.com, but also bucked the market trend by doubling its visitor traffic in November. propertyindex.com came in at number fifteen on the list (211,000), with globrix.com at number twenty one (171,000).

Visitor numbers to propertyindex.com in November were reported to be more than double the amount recorded for October and five times the volume of visitor traffic reported for June 2008. By contrast traffic to all real estate websites in the UK fell by around 20%. In November total UK real estate traffic was 6,595,000 while in September it was as high as 7,719,000.

propertyindex.com’s chief executive, Lee Bramzell is putting a very positive spin on the comScore results:

“The fact that we’ve seen our traffic increase in a declining market bodes extremely well for the future. It’s certainly not all doom and gloom…”

“Industry insights such as the comScore figures are invaluable to new portals and will no doubt send a clear message to all estate agents and developers planning how best to market their properties for sale and rent in 2009.”

The comScore Top 10 for UK real estate in November 2008 was:

1. rightmove.co.uk
2. findaproperty.com
3 propertyfinder.com
4. primelocation.com
5. realestate.com.au
6. nestoria.co.uk
7. vebra
8. homesandproperty.co.uk
9. Trovit UK Homes
10. houseprices.co.uk

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The news was announced on look4aproperty.com’s blog, which says that James Caan sees the move as a clear sign of his confidence in the UK housing market.

Through the investment arm of his business empire – Hamilton Bradshaw – Caan has secured a 25 per cent stake in look4aproperty.com. The exact figures involved in the deal have not been disclosed.

look4aproperty.com was founded by young entrepreneur Aaron Turner. “Aaron Turner is one of the most innovative and successful entrepreneurs in the country and I am delighted to be working with him,” said Caan.

Aaron Turner established look4aproperty.com in 2004, after working for 12 months as a ‘young MD’ for The Caudwell Group, which is the parent company of several other major businesses, including Phones 4U and 20:20 Mobile Group. During Turner’s time at the company he was the subject of a BBC documentary for The Money Programme.

Caan and Turner say they plan to announce a series of new products to kick-start the struggling UK housing market in the New Year.

“I see this investment as an important move in the face of the current recession,” says Caan.

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In June 2007 Student Services Australia Pty Ltd purchased the two websites - flatmates.com.au and flatmate.com. In February 2008 it was relaunched.

A sister site, studentflatmates.com.au is launching in January 2009 and will be aimed at students seeking house share accommodation.

Ownership | Market Position | Key Measurements | Market Coverage | Advertising Model | Financials | Site Sections | Technology | Key Management | History | Recent Press | Information Sources

Ownership

Acquired in June 2007 by Student Services Australia Pty Ltd. Current website was formed from the purchase of flatmate.com.au and flatmates.com.au, both of which were established in 1997.

Market Position

flatmates.com.au is the 12th ranked site for property in Australia as measured by alexa.com. It provides listings for share accommodation in Australia. Among the specialist share accommodation sites, flatmates.com.au is the largest free site in Australia.

Key Measurements
(November 2008)

• 90,000 unique visitors per month (company’s own measurement)
• 1.2 m page impressions per month (company’s own measurement)

Market Coverage

Australia wide.

Advertising Model

Free for all users, with revenue from onsite advertising, plus acquiring an opt-in student database for the sister site, studentflatmates.com.au (launching January 2009). Major site sponsors in 2008 were Mastercard and Radio Rentals.

The site audience is:

• 84% aged 18-29. Average age 23
• 99% are in urban capital cities, 89% east coast capitals
• All are in-transition
• Many are “newly independents” -just graduated from university and moving out of the family home

Financials

The company says as of November 2008 the current revenue earned by flatmates.com.au would be less than $500k per annum.

Site Sections



The key sections of the website are search based:

• I need a place
• I need a flatmate

Technology

Php, Google Maps and YouTube video.

Key Management

The key management are:

• Andrew Maloney - Managing Director
• Anika Magee - Marketing
• Lori Shea - Technology

History

flatmates.com.au lays claim to being the first Australian share accommodation site online circa 1997. It was founded by a Melbourne based programmer. Around the same time, another internet pioneer, Sonya Green, launched her Perth share search agency with the website flatmate.com.au.

In June 2007 Student Services Australia Pty Ltd (SSA) purchased the sites. In February 2008 SSA relaunched the site adding a new guide, Google Maps and YouTube video. In January 2009 SSA will launch a sister site - studentflatmates.com.au. This will sit inside SSA’s student portal, studentvip.com.au.

Recent Press

No links to recent press.

Information Sources

Management Interview
Site Review

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