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.

Kungsleden uses social media to create a better office product

Kungsleden, a listed property company in Sweden, is displaying an innovative approach to interact with clients using social media.

 

An initiative that includes a dedicated site (www.lokalamojligheter.se), two Twitter accounts (@kungsleden and @mojligheter), Flickr account and a YouTube channel. Here is an article about the initiative at Resumé. 

 

The new site

Focuses on how the office environment could be better.

   

 

One feature on the site is that one can add suggestions on how to make a better office product and then let people vote on those. (Very much like this famous example by Starbucks or Salesforce.) The highest ranked suggestion after 5 days is a central switch to turn off all lightnings in the office. 

 

My thoughts...

I'm delighted to see a property company taking on new possibilities and give them a serious try. All of them will not work, but a least you have tried. 

 

When it comes to property owners communicating to end users at an office it has always showed to be tricky since very few no which are the owners of 'their' office space'. On the other hand, there are millions of office workers that for sure have opinions about their physical work environment (another question if they find their way to this site). 

 

Finally, I wish that Kungsleden gives this initiative a real try (And not just something a PR firm has convinced them to do.) Unfortunately, their start of Twitter use could have been better. 3 tweets at 2 accounts since the start 3 months ago isn't much of communication...

 

Augmented Reality Real Estate Valuations

Joel Burslem who writes the blog Future or Real Estate Marketing has a great story about a French residential brokerage firm that has developed a valuation tool using augmented reality technology.

See the video here.
Looks great!

More on Augmented Reality

For further reading on the topic see an earlier post.

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.

Increasing online presence in the Swedish real estate industry

I've updated my page 'the list' with a few more real estate focused blogs (and Twitter feeds) in Sweden. A few highlights:

Skanska 
Blogs as part of their students programs like Global Trainee and P3. Also find on Twitter@SkanskaSverige and @SkanskaUKplc,

NCC
Studentblogs and on Twitter @NCC_AB.

SkandiaMäklarna
One of the larger brokerage firms in Sweden are using Twitter to display their listings and also a channel forquestions. Their CIO Karin Fribergis blogging about IT in general. Also active on Twitter @karincfriberg.

FastighetsByrån
The brokerage firm that sells most houses in Sweden are quite active online. Mäklarvardag is a blog where four agents write about their work (Pressrelease). The company is also on Twitter, like CEO @Per Johnler, PR Manager @JohanWesterberg and Region Manager Stockholm @PontusTW.

DagensHem
A must have RSS feed that daily displays one extraordinary listing from Hemnet.

FastighetsÄgarna (The Swedish Property Federation)
Have a number of people writing about different topics for the commercial real estate market. Also a Twitter account @Stofast.

But... the Norwegians beat us with...

Petter A Stordalen
The charismatic owner of Home Invest and Choice Hotels Scandinavia is blogging and found @petterstordalen

Veidekke  
The Norwegian construction company that has a blogging CEO (translated to English) and where the Swedish organisation is found @veidekke_se.

GPS - the killer app for mobile services in real estate

In the real estate industry there is a saying that it's all about 'location, location and location'. If that is true, then the possibilities are endless when GPS functionality is coming to the mobile devices.

Here are a few examples of the applications that have been released over the last 6 months.

Layar

This is a very impressive solution where you point your mobile phone's camera on the buildings and get information about apartments for sale. You've to see the video below.

From the Techcrunch blog post:
"Layar is a so-called ‘augmented reality browser’, an application that turns you mobile phone’s camera viewer - only on Android-powered phones for the time being - into a full-fledged information portal and local business search engine. It essentially puts an information overlay on top of your camera view, bringing digital data of various sorts into play whenever you’re looking at or for something in the real world.

Imagine being on the look-out for a great new place in a street nearby your current apartment or house and seeing all the real estate listings, with some details and pricing included right from your mobile device as you’re walking down the street. Imagine watching status updates your friends pushed to social networks roll in with location information attached to them (e.g. ‘Tweets Nearby’). Imagine finding information on ATMs, public transport etc. in a city you’re visiting just by starting up the camera on your mobile phone. And thanks to an integration with Google Local Search, how about being able to look up contact information and reviews for businesses (e.g. restaurants, bars, etc.) in your direct neighborhood with one-click dialing capability?"

It's created by the Dutch company Layer for the Dutch market. More about the service at Techcrunch, weconverse (swedish), Engadget and ReadWriteWeb.

Zipcar

The US based car pool service (also in London) showed off a great iPhone app at the latest Apple keynote. Below is a CNET video from the event.

I like the quote in the beginning "25% of our Zipcare members he says that his life is on their iPhone". Additional reading at Springwise and Wired.

Zillow

The famous US based automated valuation service for single family houses has released a great iPhone app using the GPS functionality.

More reading at Zillow, PropertyPortalWatch, and Drew Meyers (Zillow employee).

Taxi Madrid

"Taxi Madrid is an useful tool for taxi cabs travelers to calculate routes, distance, time and fares on map.It will use GPS to determinate your actual address and calculate all the taxi ride cost to the point you want to go." From the blog.

Further reading at TechCrunch.

To sum up

Those where just a few teasers on what could be done using the GPS functionality in mobile devices. More examples could be found in the Wired 'Inside the GPS revolution' article.

I believe there will be great efforts to create location based applications for the real estate professionals in the near future. Just wait and see... 

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.