Tag Archives: real estate

Real estate industry selling with technology

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According to Queenslands The Sunday Mail, real estate agents have turned to technology to assist in securing property sales.

According to the Mail, in order to stand out from the real estate crowd, agents need to develop innovative approaches to lure buyers.

Many agents have turned to Facebook, online video clips and even iPhone applications to showcase homes more thoroughly.

If we are marketing a property with a home theatre or media room we will have live concert videos playing during our opens, explains George Hadgelias of Ray White Paddington in Brisbane. Many homes on our listings can be viewed via an online video tour, he said.

Chris Hinds, principal of RE/MAX, has taken the concept of virtual tours once step further and produced video clips of the properties that he is selling.

In another example, LJ Hooker offers an iPhone application which allows potential buyers to view property listings, preview the home through photo galleries and locate the property on Google Maps.

According to the report, technology is continuing to advance in order to meet the demands of information-hungry property buyers.

CommBank creates AR app for home buyers

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The Commonwealth Bank has released an iPhone augmented reality application for consumers to keep on top of the property market.

The app will allow consumers to use augmented reality to see the past sales history on a property that’s for sale (on more than 95% of properties in Australia), current property listings and recent sales, and is mapped on to a real world view through the iPhone’s camera.

Users can also switch to a list or bird’s eye view to pull in insights on properties matching their search criteria. Home hunters can then track their ‘dream house’ in their favourites, send to a friend and make informed decisions with access to detailed suburb profiles revealing demographics, median price, property hotspots and capital growth trends.

“We are leveraging new technology and continually innovating to deliver convenient, relevant and real-time services to make buying a home easier,” said Mark Murray, general manager consumer marketing, Commonwealth Bank.

“Home buyers and sellers can easily access a host of customised information, tools and insights on every home in Australia for free.”
The app will be available for download from the Apple App Store, with technology supported by realestate.com.au and rpdata.com.

Radar search tool launched by Domain.com.au

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Domain.com.au has launched its Radar search tool in partnership with the Commonwealth Bank and Fairfax Digital.

Radar allows house hunters and renters to search according to the property’s proximity to community amenities, facilities and services: whether it’ s close to transport, primary schools, sporting facilities, childcare or restaurants.

House hunters also have the option to nominate the property features that are ‘important’ or simply ‘nice to have’, such as ensuites, security parking, internal laundry, or polished floor boards.

Tony Blamey, Domain general manager of key categories, Victoria publishing, commented, “Radar’s lifestyle search will provide our real estate agents with more highly qualified leads as well as a unique insight into the way-of-life wish-list, which underpins Australians property purchases.”

For real estate agents and property vendors, Radar will encourage more qualified potential buyers to inquire about each property.

It aims to:

  • Highlight a property’s particular features
  • Highlight the community amenities, facilities and services surrounding a property
  • Assist real estate agents in conveying the likely lifestyle of the buyer and renter given where the property is located, and
  • Move properties that would have otherwise been outside of a buyer or renters consideration set into consideration.

“As Australia’s largest home loan lender we are committed to using our expertise to provide home seekers with information that will help them make informed decisions about the property market. Radar allows home buyers to calculate a home loan and repayment scenario for individual properties, so buyers can truly assess whether it is in fact the ‘perfect’ home,” said Michael Cant, executive general manager retail products Commonwealth Bank.

Australians working less hours

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According to Roy Morgan, Australia’s working hours are down more than in previous years.

Australians worked an estimated 1.52 billion hours in June 2009 as opposed to 1.575 in June 2008. This equates to 56 million less hours worked in the preceding financial year.

Despite significant seasonal and monthly variation in hours worked, the data show a clear downward trend. Between January and June 2009, Australian’s worked 9.14 billion hours, 180 million less than the same period in 2008.

Roy Morgan’s analysis says the reduction in aggregate hours is not spread evenly across the Australian economy. The company claims the biggest losers are:

  • Young people (older people are working more hours)
  • Australia’s largest cities (country areas are virtually unchanged from a year ago)
  • Men (women are in fact working more hours), and
  • Manufacturing, mining, construction and retail workers.

“The dramatic fall-off in hours worked by younger Australians (under 25) shows just how hard it has been for younger Australians emerging from school and university over the past year to get a job — the contrast with the increasing hours worked by those over 35, and especially those 50+ is very apparent,” said Michele Levine, CEO of Roy Morgan.

Industries that have grown include: recreation and personal, communication and financial, property and business services.

Domain.com.au introduces iPhone app for house hunters

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Online property site Domain.com.au has launched a free iPhone application through the Apple iPhone App Store.

The app, which Domain says is the first of its kind in the country, will be directed at users who are searching for properties Australia-wide.

For real estate agents and property vendors, the app aims to offer greater exposure for property listings, particularly while house hunters are actively in the process of ‘pounding the pavements’.

The application will give users the ability to view property listings and photo galleries, shortlist favourite properties to view online or offline, check open for inspection times as well as auction dates and times, view mortgage calculations for each property, and contact the agent/advertiser directly from their iPhone.

This is Fairfax Digital’s first iPhone app developed in-house, created by the company’s newly-established ‘Future Services team’, which will be used to expand Fairfax Digital’s other sites, such as smh.com.au, theage.com.au and its online classifieds.

Anna Cicognani, chief product officer, Fairfax Digital, explained, “This first product from the Fairfax Digital Future Services team is a sign of things to come. We are actively investing in innovative technologies to meet immediate and future consumer needs, as well as add demonstrable value to our partners’ businesses.

The Domain app is free to download via Apple iTunes and the Apple App Store, though the real estate site indicated users may incur fees as per their standard mobile or internet network charges for ‘data retrieval’.

Online media cements the future of Australian real estate

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Nielsen Online recently released its second edition of its Australian Property Search Report showing the impact of online accessibility on the real estate industry in Australia. The report explores the way in which Australians search for and research real estate and what resources are vital for this search process.

The findings reveal a strengthening in the importance of online media for all three property consumer segments – buyers, sellers and renters. Just under nine in ten (87%) property buyers head to the internet to support their research and search process, and a similar proportion of renters (85%) do the same. And while Australian property sellers continue to list ‘contact with agents’ as a key resource (79%), they are now far more likely to make use of online resources than they were in 2006.

Despite a notable financial market slow-down since the last such Nielsen Online survey, property buyers’ perceptions of online media’s usefulness have increased over the last two years. In that time, Realestate.com.au has also further cemented its position as the leading resource for property buyers and is listed as their most likely first port of call when it comes to property research and search.
Sellers are also far more likely to complement direct contact with agents with online research – a shift since 2006.

Report findings show that Realestate.com.au and Fairfax Digital’s Domain.com.au are the most prominent online property brands, with a significant gap to the next most-cited websites – LJ Hooker and Ray White. It is interesting to note that sellers are far more likely to have their property listed on Realestate.com.au over Domain.com.au, despite the two sites being on par as a research resource among sellers. Google is sellers’ third most popular online research resource, and the importance of search engines as a source of awareness of property websites has further strengthened in the last two years. 

The importance of word-of-mouth referral has also grown over the past two years, notably among renters. The report concludes that this bodes well for an expansion of property classifieds into social media, taking advantage of the large social networking sites that can be tapped into online.

Overall results from Nielsen Online Market Intelligence service show a 14% increase in web traffic to real estate websites since September last year and a 2% increase in the time spent on those sites.
In addition, Nielsen Online’s BuzzMetrics analysis of consumer discussion on message boards, blogs and forums indicates that there has been a significant spike in Australians’ chatter about the property market over the past few weeks, most likely driven by the increase to the first home owner’s grant and reductions to interest rates.

Melanie Ingrey, executive research director for Nielsen Online, said:

“The ability to research and search for homes and investment properties online continues to fundamentally affect the way the real estate industry does business with home buyers, sellers and renters in Australia. Online media has gone from strength to strength in this space over the past two years and it looks nowhere near slowing. And there are clearly still further opportunities for the online players – the aggregator sites, the agents, search engines and the relative newcomers, online social networks.”

Google Street View launches in Australia, giving marketers new engagement options

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To see how Domain.com.au are using Google Maps Street View, read our related news story, Domain.com.au leads the charge for real estate companies using Google Maps Street View.

Google Australia today announced the launch of Street View for Australia. Street View is a new feature for Google Maps that enables users to view and navigate 360 degree street-level imagery of Australias cities, towns, regional and remote areas, in all eight States and Territories.

For Australian marketers, especially those in the tourism, real estate and hospitality industries, Google Street View is yet another potential touch point for customers with their products and services, and provides another opportunity for brands to represent themselves favourably to their target market.

By clicking on the Street View button in Google Maps, users can check out a restaurant before arriving, make travel plans, arrange meeting points, save time at open houses on Saturday morning, or just explore both well-known and isolated parts of the continent.

Andrew Foster, product manager at Google Australia, commented: Google Maps has its origins as an Australian invention so were thrilled to bring Street View here as one of the first countries in the world.  A lot of remote and regional Australia is now available to explore virtually – Tom Price, Gundagai, Longreach, Esperance, and so much more.  Street View will allow people to visit places in Australia they may not have had a chance to experience before.

Tourism Australia is already using the Street View service to showcase some of Australias best tourist attractions and locations to the world, a great example of how marketers can try to extend the experience for the consumer.

Tourism Australia managing director, Mr Geoff Buckley, said Travellers to Australia often have a high
awareness of Australia as a country but are interested in learning as
much as they can about us before they come.  Our target market, who we
call Experience Seekers,  are interested in connecting with our people,
lifestyle and environment and want to experience the best that a
destination has to offer.  Street View will offer them a whole new way
to research Australia as a holiday destination and will help them plan
their trips by taking in-depth virtual tours – not only of our cities
but of many regional areas and places off the beaten track.  Street
View is going to make Australia more accessible by giving people a
glimpse of what we have to offer and it will be just the start of the
journey of discovery.

Take a look at Tourism Australias image showcase – http://maps.google.com.au/help/maps/streetview/. Many other Australian organisations have already identified significant opportunities for Street View to be used in travel, tourism, house buying and renting, education and helping make small businesses easier to find.

To coincide with the launch, Google and the Sun Herald City2Surf today launched a flipbook video, which uses still images from Street View to create a video of the race route, taking place in Sydney on Sunday 10 August 2008. Watch the video below to see how this new tool from Google could be used in the future to allow users to follow a route or provide more specific directions.

Simon Dulhunty, editor of The Sun-Herald (city2surf.sunherald.com.au),
said With the help of Street View, this years Sun-Herald City2Surf
runners can take a virtual tour of the course before race day. Mapping
from Hyde Park to Heartbreak Hill to Bondi Beach, the flipbook video
will also allow spectators to find vantage points and give City2Surf
Charity Challenge supporters the opportunity to see what runners will
tackle on Sunday.

There are obvious ways in which real estate companies might be abvle to take advantage of the technology in Australia. Noel Dyett, president of the Real Estate Institute of Australia said Street View will save Australians time in the house buying or renting process, and will provide useful added information to inform their decisions.  Street View enables consumers to plan and select the right properties to visit, and check out the location of nearby public transport, parks and facilities. Real estate agents will also welcome the ability to incorporate Street View on their websites to provide an additional resource for buyers and renters.

Domain.com.au leads the charge for real estate companies using Google Maps Street View

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Within hours of Google Maps Street View being launched in Australia, Domain.com.au have anounced that they are using the service to allow their customers to ‘virtually’ explore a neighbourhood and see a property as if they are standing in front of it. For information about Street View on Domain.com.au, visit  http://www.domain.com.au/streetview.

Domain.com.au property listings now allow users to take a virtual walk down the street, view what the neighbours’ place looks like, and even see how close the property is to shops, schools, parks and more. With Street View on Domain.com.au ,users can:

  • View street level photographs of properties in selected cities;
  • Explore the areas surrounding a property of interest by panning, rotating and zooming; and
  • Look at the property’s proximity to amenities and utilities.

If a listing does not have an exact street address, then Street View on Domain.com.au will show the street itself, for the viewer to explore.

Graham Perry, managing director – Classifieds for Fairfax Digital, comments, House hunters, investors and renters will love the convenience of Street View. It means they can take their research to the next level, while browsing Domain.com.auin the convenience of their own home.

The addition of Street View gives Domain.com.au users an unrivalled wrap up of property listings – which ultimately means they waste less Saturday mornings pounding the pavement, because their searches are as relevant and informed as possible.

Scroll down to view a video of how Domain.com.au will be using Street View in their service.