Hemnet's new commerial listing service is launched

Hemnet's new offering 'Hemnet Kommersiella', a listing service for commercial properties on sale (or space to lease), was launched yesterday. See press release. (Google Translated version)

Background

It's actually more correct to say 're-launched' since the site has existed for a number of years (see screenshot below). Originally created by Svensk FastighetsData, a company that in late 2007 was acquired by Vitec (both Swedish IT firms focusing, to a large extent, on the Swedish real estate market).

 The older version of kommersiella.se 

However, in 2009 the domain was 'transferred' to Hemnet. Read more at an earlier post. The new version of the site  is now running on the same platform as the originally Hemnet (residential listings). Very much the same functionality and also linking between them. Actually, just one way.

I guess just to keep the traffic down in the start. Otherwise, it will miss a lot of opportunities.

The business benefits

The aim with the service is clearly stated in the press release 

"There is a clear need for a platform for commercial real estate in Hemnet auspices, which has been lacking. Today, if a company is looking for a property or space to rent it has to use a number of platforms to get an overview of the overall market. The ambition of Hemnet's investment in commercial properties and real estate - www.kommersiella.se - is to eventually offer a platform that gives speculators a fast, precise and reliable overview.

The commercial real estate brokers have long called for a pure business for commercial properties. When we rebuilt hemnet.se we took the opportunity and created a separate site for commercial premises and buildings, and we are delighted to now be able to launch, says Carl-Henrik Borg, president of Hemnet."

A press release that got a quick reply from Objektvision's CEO Marianne Olseryd via Twitter. 

Objektvision is the largest (so far) listing service for commercial properties on sale and space to lease. In competition with services like Lokalnytt och Lokalguiden. 

My thoughts

First of all, I'm delighted to see an initiative to bring better efficiency (using IT) to the process of selling a commercial property.

Secondly, I believe that Hemnet has a great opportunity to provide more traffic to those listings with an integration with their residential listing service. There are many high end buyers that interested in finding a (smaller) commercial property to invest in.

However, I was surprised to see that 'Hemnet Kommersiella' also will include space to lease. My thought is that in the longer run it is better to separate those two different markets. Especially if one is aiming for the 'real' commercial properties in a range above 100 million SEK (15 million US dollars).

Another, interesting fact is that, as far as I'm concerned, only registered commercial property brokers are allowed to post their listings on the site. With an extremely high market share in the residential field that is enough to be the biggest site. However, on the commercial side that number is lower, not to mention letting out space for lease, which in Sweden is done largely directly by the property owner.

Furthermore, the listings are imported from the two largest 'brokerage systems (CRM)' used commonly among residential brokers, but not that often among commercial brokers. To be successful there needs to be alternatives. On the other hand, the question is if the commercial brokers are eager to make all their larger listings 'public'. I doubt it.

To sum up, an interesting move with a lot of potential, but also some great challenges.

Fasticon launches a new HR web-service at Business Arena Real Estate

It's not to common that a new IT system is launched at a Swedish real estate fair, but it happened at Business Arena Real Estate (a event with 1500 delegates in Stockholm on the 16-17th September). 

 

The company 

Fasticon, a leading management consulting firm for real estate companies on the Swedish market, has over the years increased their services in the area of Human Resources. For example, providing services for recruiting and replacement.

The solution

Their newest offering is 'FastiKompetens', a web-based system for competence management.

  It has been developed in close partnership with StockholmsHem (a large municipality owned residential property company) over the last year.

The aim of the solution is to make it more visible, for both the employee and the management, what skills are present within the company, what is needed, the plan for training and a list of preferred courses.

Each employee has its own 'page' with the CV and competence plan.

The aim has been to create a system that both is easy to start using and specific for the the property industry. The technical development has been done by the IT consulting firm Sajtkonsulterna.

Next step

The system will go live at the first client on the 1st of October and the plan is to add new clients in the beginning of 2010.

Additional reading

Further reading, there is an article in Magasinet FastighetsSverige (2009, Nr 6), the press release and the site of Fasticon.

Is Hemnet going for commercial listings?

Yesterday I stumbled upon an interesting article in the magazine FastighetsMäklaren (Issue 1, 2009, just in print). It was an article about Hemnet (the leading residential listing service in Sweden) where it was mentioned in one sentence that Hemnet is creating a listing service for commercial properties.

That's quite a development.

What is known?  

There hasn't been any press releases regarding this, but according to this page (Hemnets Extranet?), Svensk FastighetsData (a software company for brokers, owned by Vitec) has "transferred" their commercial listing service kommersiella.se to Hemnet AB.

According to the page above it is supposed to be released in the autumn using this logo.

This could also explain why there currently is a navigation at Hemnet which only has one choice; 'Residential'. I guess they will be adding 'commercial' in the near future.

To be released in September? 

According to the agenda for the 'Storhusseminaret', arranged by Mäklarsamfundet (The Association of Swedish Real Estate Agen) in late September, there will be a presentation by Eva Sjögren and Andreas Löwgren from Hemnet on the topic "Launch of Hemnets kommersiella.se".

Interesting development

It will be interesting indeed to follow how Hemnet will be approaching the market of investment properties. Which, according to me, differs greatly from residential listings. The main difference is that (as of today) it is not too common to use any of the listing services around. Especially not for larger investment portfolios.

In Sweden there are two listing services for commercial properties. The mentioned service Kommersiella.se has been around since 2001 and Objektvision was released in 1998. The latter is the biggest and owned by Alma Media which also runs the site Bovision which is competitor to Hemnet in the area of residential listings.

Update

Carl-Henric Borg, CEO at Hemnet, confirms (over Twitter @HemnetVD) that they will release a commercial listing site later this autumn. 

 Interesting, very interesting.

Hemnet.se launches an iPhone application

The pick of the season among real estate listing services is to launch an iPhone application (1, 2, 3 and 4). Yesterday it was Hemnet, the leading Swedish service, turn to put their services to the table.

First impression 

Impressed! Not bad at all.

You're able to search both using the built in GPS or by choosing any municipality. Easy to use map. Multiple photos. Save listings to 'My Hemnet'. Calculate monthly costs. Able to contact the agent through a call or email.

However, the best thing is the ability to take your own photos from the open house and store them together with the listing.

Room for improvements

The search is a bit confusing in the beginning. Took me a while to find the detail search page (first do a search, then click 'filter') and understand what types of listings that are presented.

But the biggest disappointment, after 15 minutes of hard search on the Internet version of Hemnet, was to understand that their is actually two different 'My Hemnet'. One on the Internet version and one on the iPhone. The highlighted listings are synced but not the photos I've taken on a listing. Confusing and takes away the benefit.  

One functionality that I don't understand why they put into the application (both versions) is the register of building suppliers, removal companies, storage and so on. There are 'yellow pages' services doing this much better. Instead I would like to see more statistics and tools for handling the process of buying a home.

Finally, the video from Hemnet showing their new iPhone application.

The new Hemnet - version 2.0 or 1.4?

In the web industry the use of term '2.0' comes with a large responsibility.
There has to be a significant update.

 

Therefore, I was a bit disappointed today when the indeed anticipated 'Hemnet 2.0' version was launched. (Hemnet is the largest residential search engine in Sweden, more here.) I was expecting more. (So did 100s of people on Twitter.) Anyway, let us go through the new version. 

  

Faster and better search

In the earlier version the search was divided into three different pages. In the new version it's done direct on the starting page.

 

It's also easier to do changes to the search options and start an new search when the search bar is always on the top of the page. (However, it would have been great if you were able to minimize the search bar if needed in order to scroll less.)

    

     

An improvement is that the search parameter 'size of land' has been added.

 

Better 'account'
The biggest improvement has been done to the functionalities in the account area 'My Hemnet'. You're now able to easier create 'default' searches, save listings of interest, get updates through RSS and see changes done to a listing.

  

  

More data
One thing the new services on the market (like Booli and Boliga) has forced Hemnet to do is to be much more transparent about data like number of days on the market. Over the last weeks this data has been added to Hemnet and this continues.

 

 

The graph below displays a specific listing (in blue) in comparison with sold (red) and listings (green) regarding number of days on the market (Y-axis) and asked price in million SEK (X-axis).

 

 

  

 You're also able to see the price for listings in the area that has been sold.

  

   

      

       

The not so good

First impression isn't great. The starting page, with all flashing banners about Hemnet (?), is very confusing. Nothing new with the map (or have I missed something?). The usability and design has lot to ask. It is confusing how to find the detail statistics. And so on...

 

However, the biggest disappointment is that Hemnet is not able to make an overall better solution. The possibilities are endless with their position and all their data.

 

To sum up 

A great initiative to make improvements, but in my book it isn't a version 2.0.

More a version 1.4.   

 

 

Additional reading 
Is found here (all in Swedish): 1 (article at IDG), 2 (OhSoHighTech), 3 (MKSE), 4 (Norén), 5 (Bostadsknarkaren) and finally the press release 6.

 

  

Information portal at property companies

Attended a few days ago a seminar at Hypergene's office in Stockholm about the use of their business intelligence solution among property companies. (They have 20 property companies as their customers.)

Below is a screen from one of their installations at a large property owner. When the user log in to the portal a unique set of information is displayed for that particular user.

In this example it is the start page for a property manager with through the dashboard directly is displayed how he is doing compared to budget. Impressive and user-friendly!

 
           Jonas Leisvik from Hypergene is presenting their product. 

The product
Hypergene EOS is a 'complete product complete product for advanced and user-customized presentation of information'.  It starts with importing data from, for example, property management systems, financial software and energy systems. Then displaying it a user friendly way. Making it possible to drill down to the lowest level of information for example see an unique invoice.

During the entire presentation it was stressed how user-friendly the solution was. And trust me it is. According to a research by University of Cork (see the graph below) it scores higher than other major BI solution out there.

The evolution is clear.
The specialised software is only used by a handful of people (for example the property management system) and then the waste majority of the users are using a web-based portal where the most important data and the simplest functions are built in.

See it yourself?
Hypergene are running another set of ½-day sessions in the beginning of April in Stockholm, Göteborg and Malmö. Find out more here.

Reflections from Realcomm Europe 2009

Earlier this week I spent a couple of days in London attending the second Realcomm Europe event and meeting up with great people from the RE.net world.

First of all, congratulations to Jim Young and Howard Berger for putting this event together. I very much believe there is a need for such events. The 'IT-in-real-estate-industry' can't complain that no one sees the benefits of our solutions if we are not creating/supporting as many channels as possible to communicate our offers. It's like Christmas, if you don't give, you want receive. 

So the Realcomm team; it's we that say Thank You.

The size
There were some 140 people attending the conference, which of roughly half were from property companies. The rest were software suppliers, consultants and media. In addition there were some 10 exhibitors.

A rather small event considering that an IT-in-property-day in Sweden a few months ago also attracted some 100+ attendees. (Sweden is one 6th of UK in terms of population.)

The content
A challenge in organising an 'IT-in-the-real-estate-industry' event is that the area covers everything from Intelligent building to board room reports (including CRM, tenant reporting, marketing, property management, valuation, market information and so on). Which makes it extremely challening to put together a compelling set of presentations.

From my perspective the most interesting reflections of the day where;

'Boardroom quality dashboard online and update'
An interesting discussion took of regarding why the 'upper' management doesn't push the reporting to be more up to date than a paper report that has data that is maybe up to a month old. "Why not a screen with all the up to date data?".

The battle of an XML standard in the industry
The standard is there. Who is stopping it? The lack of interest from the clients or the software suppliers defending it's market shares? There seems to be some differences why it takes so long..

... but the banks will solve the standard issue
Stephen Spooner, Executive Chairman of PISCES, had a great presentation pointing out the current financial crisis will have "a number of regulations coming in" and "lenders need data to analyze the tenants". All this detailed data will then also be requested to be updated. In other words, "the lenders will push the evolution!".

Innovation... finally
The biggest innovation at the event didn't come from the presenters, but the organisers.

 At the final session, the Realcomm team gave out TurningPoint audience response system devices and ran a series of questions. That really sparked the conversations.

Great innovation!
Next year maybe the attendees will push it start using Twitter as a backchannel... Well, one day it happen. (Like for the standard format!) The residential brokers are already doing it.

While I was in Costa Rica...

... quite a few things happened.  

I spent January in Costa Rica surfing some of the best waves on the planet (Santa Teresa). It was a brilliant.

The first three weeks was offline and then I worked remotely the last two weeks. Combining a Swedish lifestyle (6 weeks vacation a year) with the possibilities of the web is great.  (Also happy to give Michael Arrington more fuel...)

Hemnet - Major changes in the management
The largest search engine on Swedish market is looking for a new CEO after that Björn Dietmann has stepped down. The news was picked up by PropertyPortalWatch. Impressive. The press release is found here (in Swedish).

There are more changes at Hemnet. After seven year as chairman, will Lars Kilander be replaced by Per Johnler(who also is CEO of Fastighetsbyrån, one of the largets brokers in Sweden). However, Lars will still be on the board. Finally, Hemnet also has a new Director of Sales; Andreas Löwgren(an article in Resumé).

The question is; has the pressure from Booli and Boliga forced those changes to occur?

Boligan launched in Norway
The Danish residential search engine is continuing its Nordic growth. On the same day as Inman, they entered the Norwegian market. Press Release is found here. More is found at PropertyPortalWatchand an earlier post on this blog.

The Inman Conference New York 
Early in January the Inman event Real Estate Connect NY 2009 took place in New York. Read about it at Inman, Mike's Corner, Notorious Rob, Jay, Matrix and Dustin. 

I had the opportunity to visit their event last summer in San Francisco and it is for sure an energy boost. (Even though I prefer more commercial real estate focus.)

If you are Premium member of the Inman service you have a great source of information from event on their site. Including for example a 25 pages summary paper and video of quite a few of the speeches! Way to go.

For the first time ever (I guess) there was a Swedish firm represented on the stage, Booli (a residential search engine, covered here). Unfortunately, they haven't put this video on the web yet.

Zoopla raised more money
The UK based residential property information and valuation service has raised another £ 3,75 million. Great coverage at the Renthusiast.

Morten Lund was declared personally bankrupt
Not much real estate connection (more than that the bank took his house), but what a believer in the web Morten is. This story is a must read for any entrepreneur. Don't miss the video (at the bottom) of his speech at Le Web a few months ago. Read more at his blog.

An IT supplement in a CRE magazine

In Sweden there is no publication focusing on the use of IT in the real estate. However, one of the largest CRE magazines, FastighetsTidningen (owned by The Swedish Property Federation) has at least a IT supplement in one of their yearly issues.

It is named IT & Property and it's 52 pages covers a wide range of topics.
The ones that got my attention were;

The customer satisfaction is rising
A survey, conducted for the paper, among clients of Property Management Suppliers shows three large conclusions:

• Most clients are satisfied with their suppliers (but wasn’t from the beginning)
• The area with most complaints is the user interface (especially to make it easy for non-hard core users)
• The suppliers are moving online (finally... if you ask me...)

Status among the Property Management suppliers
In two articles the status of the 15+ suppliers of Property Management Systems are analyzed, with the highlights of:

• DinaFastigheter has been around for 2 years and has 250 clients
• Estatus which in 2006 was founded in 2006 has now a complete web-based system with 10 clients (and has been acquired by SoftOne Fastigheter)
• Modus which has, since 2003, been developing a brand new system together with MKB (large property owner in Malmö) is still some time from a public release
• Fast2 is developing SMS service for renting of student housing
• LEB is working on a complete new code version which will make their system much easier to personalize
• VITEC has created a much more customer focused organisation
• 5D-system is focusing on integration using XLM standard
• PONDUS has released a web version

BIM is moving forward, but it’s a long way
The topic of BIM (Building Information Model) is covered extensively.  Especially the academic research conducted by Rogier Jongeling. You find all his publications here. An additional article here in Byggindustrin (in Swedish).

More about the supplement
It is written by Björn Åslund, a freelance journalist and among other things a blogger about environment topics.

The entire supplement could be downloaded as a PDF version here (5 MB).

Brilliant wish list from Remit Consulting

Got a 'Merry Christmas Greeting' today that included a list to great to spare.
It is Remit Consulting in the UK that put together a wish list for the property industry.

10. We would like one standard reference code for every individual property so that all systems can add information to a property accurately – perhaps searchable on Google?

9. We would like completely standard form, web-based leases so that negotiations for new premises can be swift and cheap. And, in the UK, we would like standard 5 year terms.

8. We think “Black-box” property trading (e.g., I want to buy 3 shops at 6%) would reduce the cost of trading property and commoditise a whole class of property investments. An alternative to derivatives?

7. We would like to see Google Earth updated by live satellite images – perhaps even zooming in to see truck or car movements on our managed sites;

6. We want listed companies to agree a standard of reporting on publicly accessible reporting dashboards – online detail which would make investing in property companies more transparent;

5. We would like to see the last of chasing cheques from tenants – let’s enforce the use of direct debits and monthly rentals in advance – an end to collecting rent on horseback, as Bob puts it;

4. Why can’t we have daily property revaluations? Whole swathes of the residential property market relies on automated valuations – surely there is a mid-way point between a full inspection with detailed analysis of scarce comparables and no valuation at all;

3. Wouldn’t indexed rents be a step forward? Our apologies to the UK rent-review surveyors but this would modernise UK property leases at one fell swoop;

2. Longer lunch breaks to give more time for discussing how to make things better – we are working more remotely, and with tighter deadlines; let’s take the time to consider how things could be done;

And, at number 1 position:

1. We want banks to start lending to each other again. ‘Nuff said.

Brilliant! 
It also make you understand the differences that exist between countries; like 10, 5 and 3...   ;-)   

Keep up the great work and Merry Christmas to you Andrew, Mark, Melita and all of the rest.