immoweb.be Honoured in WebAwards
November 10, 2008 by Emma Sorensen · Leave a Comment
Winners in the Web Marketing Association’s annual WebAwards have been announced for 2008.
In the category of Best Real Estate Website, Emakina were among those honoured for their work on immoweb.be, Belgium’s leargest property website. immoweb.be is a member of the ProduPress group, and received the Real Estate Standard of Excellence for outstanding achievement in website development.
Will Ad Revenue Drop for US Property Websites?
October 30, 2008 by Emma Sorensen · Leave a Comment
The results of the half-yearly Internet Advertising Revenue Report, conducted by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP for the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), will be met with some anxiety by property portals and websites.
The good news is that overall Internet advertising revenues are up on last year. But the not so good news is that second quarter 2008 figures are slightly lower than the first quarter of 2008. It’s the first dip in revenue since the third quarter of 2004:
trulia.com Introduces New Features
October 27, 2008 by Emma Sorensen · Leave a Comment
House Wars is trulia.com
Late last week US based trulia.com introduced even more features to its already jam-packed list of portal functions.
Among the developments, users can now obtain driving directions to properties listed on trulia.com via Google Maps and receive email alerts on local property prices.
The main change is “radius search”. Users entering a city or zip code can now see listings up to 10 miles from that location.
While trulia.com is promoting this as a feature that allows users to access more listings and open their minds to nearby neighbourhoods, it is undoubtedly more appealing to real estate agents, giving them more exposure for their listings.
trulia.com have also rolled out a new Facebook application, House Wars, where users can battle Facebook friends and compete for global real estate dominance. House Wars is a game where participants earn cash to build a real estate portfolio by attacking other players’ houses. The game was created over the summer by two of trulia.com’s student interns, Alan and Anand, which just goes to show that interns can do far more than make coffee or photocopy.
These changes maintain the website’s reputation as an innovator (read our previous news story here) and makes us wonder what else trulia.com might have up its sleeve?
Interview with homethinking’s Niki Scevak
October 24, 2008 by Emma Sorensen · Leave a Comment
homethinking.com is a US based website that helps house buyers and sellers make better decisions in selecting an agent by showing them transactional histories of real estate agents and mortgage lenders.
homethinking.com has just launched a new Neighbourhoods application designed to provide users with information on the neighbourhood they are moving into. By crunching demographic data from the US Census and other public sources, the site produces scores based on comparing age of inhabitants, number of children, frequency of arts events, and more.
trulia.com Provides Therapy For The Property Obsessed
October 22, 2008 by Emma Sorensen · Leave a Comment
There’s a new fix out there for all of us property addicts: Trulia Snapshot was launched at the end of May 2008 and is billing itself as “therapy” for the real estate obsessed.
At a glance, this new application available on trulia.com may look like yet another map based way to show property listings. But some of the functions are very cool indeed, taking map browsing to a whole new level.
redfin.com Announces Staff Layoffs While trulia.com Stays Optimistic
October 21, 2008 by Emma Sorensen · Leave a Comment
redfin.com, the first online brokerage for residential real estate in the US, is clearly feeling the pinch.
The company has announced on its blog that it has laid off around 20% of their staff. This announcement follows closely on the heals of zillow.com announcing that it was laying off 25% of its staff.
News Corp Enters US Online Property Market With globrix.com
October 21, 2008 by Emma Sorensen · 1 Comment
A short announcement on globrix.com’s blog late last week revealed their plans to break into the already crowded US market. globrix.com Chief Technical Officer, Ian Parry, explained the details in an exclusive interview with globaledge.co.uk.
globrix.com will initially enter the premium property market on the US East and West Coasts in early 2009. And it won’t stop there: Parry also announced that the company has developed semantic translation technology which will translate real estate listings into multiple languages, allowing for further global expansion.
zillow.com Lays Off 25% of Workforce, What Future Does it Have?
October 18, 2008 by Simon Baker · 4 Comments
I recently wrote an article about how companies need to tighten their belts as time are tough and are likely to remain that way for some time. Well it seems that well known US portal site Zillow is feeling the pressure and on Friday announced that they would be laying off 25% of their work force.
On the company’s blog, Rich Barton, the CEO, said “This was an incredibly painful decision for me and the leadership team, but, in the end, we concluded that we had no choice but to securely batten down the hatches as we sail into a major economic storm.
The unprecedented economic events that are playing out on a global stage began in our own industry and have made a prolonged recession likely, in our judgment. We are a young company that is not yet making a profit. Despite having sizeable cash reserves, we deemed the responsible course was to meaningfully reduce expenses, so that Zillow emerges from the other side of the recession in a very strong position, even if the recession lasts many years.”
condogala.com
October 6, 2008 by Simon Baker · 1 Comment
condogala.com is a new entrant in the condo property portal market place - competing with the likes of condo.com based out of Miami. condogala.com has the aspiration of a global coverage and given the early stage of growth, will be a site to watch.
Real Estate Advertising in US Newspapers Takes a Hammering
September 12, 2008 by Simon Baker · 2 Comments
Pete Flint from Trulia recently alerted me to an article on the Trulia Blogs about the decrease in newspaper real estate advertising revenue over the last 18 months.
The article is based on the quarterly release of advertising expenditure by the Newspaper Association of America (Click here). What is interesting when looking at the results is that, on a quarterly basis, the spend on real estate advertising in papers is down for the 6th quarter in a row to levels not seen since 1996.
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