Salesforce sets a new standard in product rollout

It's common for business to talk about how they communicate with their users and listening to them, but the question is if anyone is doing it more then Salesforce.

With their upcoming Winter 07 release they have created a new channel, ideas.salesforce.com, where they "plan to release details of new features for you to view, vote and comment upon... our product managers will be on hand to read and respond to your comments, one-on-one".  (Read more about it at SalesforceWatch.)

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How do you communicate with your clients?

 

HemOnline - A Swedish Redfin is (to be) launched

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Today HemOnline, a Swedish version of Redfin, will be launched. (At 7 am it isn't....) 

Their offer is residential brokerage for a fix commission of 15 000 SEK (~2 100 USD). The average commission in the Stockholm area is 67 000 SEK. The aim is to have a 10% market share in the Stockholm area within one year. 

A 5 minutes interview at TV4.se. (In Swedish.)

The people behind HemOnline;
Lars Engelbert, CEO  -- formerly president of the The Swedish Association of Swedish Real Estate Agents (in Swedish Mäklarsamfundet) and, until june 2005, CEO of Bjurfors, one of the largest brokerage firms in Sweden.

Jan Carlzon, Chairman -- formerly President and CEO of Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS). Today the chairman of Ledstiernan, an venture capital company.

The investors behind HemOnline are Skandiabanken (25%), Bonnier (12,5%), Expressen (12,5%) and Lars Engelbert, Jan Carlzon, Michael Sohlberg and Thomas Rosén.

The US version
"Redfin is the world’s first online real estate brokerage. Customers can see redfin.giflistings, previously sold properties and neighborhood statistics on a map, and buy or sell homes online. Local Redfin agents handle the negotiations and paperwork, refunding two thirds of their commission to the consumer. Unlike other brokerages, we pay our agents only on customer satisfaction."

Started in the Seattle area earlier this year and is now also active in San Francisco. The blog "Future of Real Estate Marketing" has an excellent  The Real Estate 2.0 Market Leaders Interview  about their services. At Sellsius a video is found describing the Redfin service.

 

You can't excel using a spreadsheet

I strongly believe there is too much spreadsheets used in the real estate industry. (NO! Creating a DCF model in MS Excel isn't the perfect solution.) Don't get me wrong, you shouldn't stop using it everywhere, but if there are more than three people using the same spreadsheet based solution things will sooner or later be out of control.

Knowing this you could understand the smile on my face when Drew Meyers at Zillow told me that it was through the process of keeping track of comparable sales in spreadsheets that the founders of Zillow started to ask themselves if there wasn't a smarter way of doing this... Read more here.

 

"Is Real Estate Bust a Web Boost?"

Found an interesting post on The Real Estate Bloggers on how a downturn in the real estate market possibly could boost the real estate online services.

"And your present real estate agent is so mired in the toxic phrase “We have always done it this way” that you know how to better market your home than the “professional” does."

The post is based on an article in the Red Herring, talking about online brokers like Redfin and ZipRealty, and quoting Mr Inman; “Sellers never really migrated to the Internet, but now as they are disadvantaged they will use the Internet in ways that never happened before... demand for sites like these will increase as buyers become more powerful and need more analytical tools to assess the market.”

I strongly believe that Mr Inman is correct. Buyers are interested in doing more research themselves on the housing market. That's why the interest in Zillow is so great and why it is a brilliant solution (if you use it correctly).

 

Alma Media acquires Bovision.se

According to Dagens Industri (Swedens largest economical newspaper), the Finnish media corporation Alma Media has purchased the Swedish sites Bovision.se and Objektvision.se. (The news site What.se quotes unnamed sources that the price was between 20 to 30 million SEK.)

Bovision is a listing of residential houses with 130 000 visitors per week. The runner up on the Swedish market after Hemnet.se. Objektvision lists commercial properties for lease and has 8 000 visitors per week. The article states that the revenue was 17 million SEK (2,4 million USD).

The press release from Alma Media includes the statement "online internet sites for business and residential premises had a market size in Sweden of roughly EUR 150 million in 2005. Price levels of home-buying internet services are lower today in Sweden than in Finland and Norway".

Online listing for residential will be an interesting field to follow when Hemnet.se (owned by the brokers themselves through the brokerage organisations FMF and Mäklarsamfundet) surely will make the most of it to protect their position.

 

 

A backlog of reading

Back from a 2½ weeks of vacation (long? In Sweden there is a five weeks of holiday...) I've to catch up reading the blogs. Here are the post I found most worth reading.

An outsider look on the industry
It's always good reading when someone from 'the outside' takes an interest in our own field, like CNET sending a reporter to the Inman ConnectSF 2006. (Thanks Joel at 'The future of real estate marketing' for having a post on this article making me aware of  it.) The result is an article taking a closer look at the changing world for Realtors.

More on ConnectSF 2006 event in San Francisco
The Sellsius blog has an entry on the topic including a comprehensive list of related entries in the blog sphere. A good summary is also found at the Zillow blog.

The launch of a new home valuation tool
Through the 'Rain City Blog' I found out about a new AVM called HomeInsight. However, the best reading was the comments on the post.

SEO in real estate
At Mike 's Corner you find a great entry on the search engine topic.

Finally, The Carnival of estate
It has continued with three more weeks. The best about those lists are that you probably will find new blogs worth reading.
July 24th   -->  Searchlight Crusade
July 31st   -->  The future of real estate marketing
Aug 7th   --> Property Grunt

 

Carnival of Real Estate

Are you looking for good blogs in the real estate field?
Here is a good opporunity to get a great sample.

An initiative called 'Carnival of Real Estate' runs in The US under the summer.
The first post is from Zillow and could be found here.

"A Blog Carnival is a weekly summary of the best blogging posts on a given subject that appeared in someone’s blog during the previous week.  A different blog hosts the carnival each week, so it brings bloggers writing on a given subject together." www.carnivalofrealestate.com

Kungsleden takes the lead...

 ... and makes it easier to buy their services.

I believe that many companies make it too complicated to be interested in their services. For example, if a property company tries to attract tenants, why not making the offer as easy as possible to understand? 

Most companies are now days using the Internet to market their empty office space. However, few do it with more than a few lines of text, one (1) photo and contact information. Actually, 10% of the offerings on the listing service Objektvision don't have a single photo!

Anyway, for a long time I have questioned why not also put the rental rate in the offering. The response has been that it is impossible (?) . But I'm now delighted to notice a change. One of the companies that has started this is Kungsleden, a listed property company. Their new concept "Raka vägen till rätt lokal" (Direct road to the right space) is promising. The aim is to always include photo, floorplan and rental rate. Keep going!

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Using the listing service mentioned above I find that 10% of the 1038 listed offices in Stockholm displayed the rental rate. In Göteborg 4% of 871 and Malmö 17% of 449. (However, if you excludes the listings from Kungsleden, the number is 7% for Malmö!)

Compare that to the listings on Loopnet, a US based listing service, where 90% have rental rate displayed. Anyway, someone has to start in Sweden and that seems to be Kungsleden.