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Check out the video on the Zillow iPad App.
Looks brilliant.
And read the CEO Rich Bartons blog post about it.
I believe the iPad could be used extensively to display real estate listings (i.e. photos and maps) for clients. For example, in app like Zillows.
Furthermore, a great way to use it would be at conventions, seminars and so on to walk around among the attendees and show something online or just slide through a presentation.
In marketing, there is an unproportionally large number of 'market leaders' (normally never describing in what sense). The Swedish residential real estate search engine Booli has released a new functionality that will add some light on topic.
Direct link to the list above.
Booli is able to, based on all the data crawled from the real estate brokers websites, to calculate the market share for each brokerage firm.
The table shows:
* name
* number of listings & medium listing price in three property types:
- single family houses
- apartments
- other
Note! Development listings are excluded in the statistics.
Information per firm
The user is also able to click on the brokerage firms name in the list and see a summarization page for the broker per municipality (or county).
The graph displays 'apartment listing price per square meter' for the firm 'Örlogsstaden' (blue line) versus all listings in the county Blekinge. Direct link to the page.
Additional reading in English is found at Paula Marttila.
For the Swedish speaking crowd more insight is found at
* Booli blog
* Jardenberg unedited
* Martin Palacios
As a strong believer in a transparent market (and really tired of a market where the use of 'market leader' is used all the time) it's obvious that I like this service.
However, large is not equal to best.
But at least this data brings down the sales pitch to facts.
Also delighted to see that Booli push the development to create a great service for its customers.
MIPIM is the large global real estate event taking place in mid-march every year in Cannes, France. Two weeks ago, MIPIM 2010 brought together 17,300 attendees from 81 countries and 1,720 exhibiting companies.
The main topics among attendees are to present development efforts, market regions (my favourite region marketing effort (the middle photo above) was Invest in Mauritius), raise capital and network (an example, there were at least 1500 (?) Swedes in Cannes last week).
More general coverage, take a look at PropertyWeeks MIPIM page or CREOpoints (1 and 2). Or why not take a look at the Twitter feed #MIPIM.
Unfortunately (?), not to many attendees go to MIPIM to see the newest developments in the field of smart IT solutions to make their companies more efficient. However, the upside of having so many C-levels around is to good to not take advantage of. Even Though it is hard work to find the right top 50 prospects among 20 000 people.
Some of the IT companies taking the opportunity last week was CoStar, Argus, Real Capital Analytics, HBS Research, Qube Global, CREOpoint, Reidin, Investment Property Search, Global Arena, MRI and Datscha (full disclosure, I'm the Product Manager at Datscha).
Some of us even gathered for a glass of Champagne.
Delighted to see the energy and visions.
Keep up the great work.
Objektvision, one of the largest listing services for sale or lease of commercial real estate in Sweden, has hired a new CEO, Ulf Magnusson (press release in Swedish).
Ulf will also be the CEO of Bovision (the first Swedish residential listing service). Former CEO Marianne Olseryd Engqvist will stay in the company as Product Manager.
Ulf has a solid Internet background with 14 years of experience from mainly Eniro (Swedish yellow pages) and Passagen (Swedish b2c portal).
On LinkedIn Ulf describe himself as:
I've been working in different management positions with Internet services since 1996 - with search services such as Internet yellow pages, International B2B-services, residential directories, real estate services as well as portals, start pages and community services. The main task has always been to, in a profitable way, balance the needs of users and advertisers.
First of all. Ulf, welcome to the industry.
Delighted to see companies pushing their online presence.
I'm looking forward to see how Objektvision will "expand and create new brands" (as mentioned in the press release). For example, how to take on the newly released Hemnet Kommersiella (coverage here).
A follow up post on earlier written (see post 1 and 2) about the potential using GPS/mobile functionality in the real estate market
Chris Thorman, Social Media Manager of Software Advice (incl. property management), has written a great post on the topic geo-fencing in marketing residential real estate.
He gives an example of a couple, who earlier had signed up for the service and define their criteria, got a SMS when they walk close to a listing.
"How was the couple instantly notified of the opportunity, perfectly merging buyer requirements, location and timing? The answer involves a combination of “geo-fencing,” mobile phones and GPS technology.
If you’re a tech savvy real estate agent or property manager, this powerful combination of technology represents a great opportunity to gain new clientele. Many real estate buyers do not have the time to review new listings online, travel to viewings or patrol their desired neighborhoods for opportunities. But the vast majority of real estate buyers do have mobile phones they carry with them nearly all the time."
In the above example an SMS is used, but I'm convinced you could create the same functionality using push functionality in your mobile application.
For sure an interesting idea. I would love to see functionality like this on residential listing services like Hemnet, Booli, Bovision or Boliga in Sweden. But, it has to be opt in (in other words, you signed up for it) and very detailed when it comes to setting references.
Interested in going to Las Vegas?
Apply to be on the speakers list at Realcomm!
"Realcomm is looking for industry experts to speak at Realcomm Las Vegas 2010. If you are an experienced speaker on the topic of technology for the commercial and corporate real estate industry then we want to hear from you. Let us know if you have a story to tell about how to use automation to squeeze more productivity and efficiency out of a real estate organization. Our topics include, but aren't limited to: IT issues (applications, management, infrastructure, etc.), Building Automation, Energy Management / Sustainability. If you have a good solution to share that has demonstrated an ROI - come share it at Realcomm! For questions or more information, contact Howard Berger, Program Director, at 818.548.1818 or hberger@realcomm.com."
Find out more at the Realcomm site.
Realcomm is the largest conference in the world focusing on the intersection of IT & Real Estate. This year will be the 12th gathering. Every year over 1000 people are attending the show.
I've had the privilege to take part of the show in 2004, 2005, 2006 and at Realcomm Europe 2009. Unfortunately, I'll not be able to go over this year. Have to go next year. It's always a pleasure to meet up with other believers.
Maybe it's my background as orienteer that makes it difficult for me to look the other way when I see a map, but this new augmented reality mapping is just amazing. Imagine what I will for the transparency of the real estate industry.
The video is from a TED presentation where Blaise Aguera y Arcas demos new technology from Microsoft.
(If you're in a hurry fast forward to 3m20sec.)
The technology used in the demo is from Seadragon and the visualization technology Photosynth that gives amazingly smooth digital rendering and zoom capabilities. Blaise Aguera y Arcas' is the architect of Seadragon, and the co-creator of Photosynth, and today an architect at Microsoft Live Labs (Microsoft acquired by Seadrgon in 2006). See the original Seadragon & Photosynth TED presentation from 2007.
This is how you will use a map to find out more about commercial properties in 5 years. Period.
The annual IT event focusing on the real estate industry, FastighetsIT 2010, is this year to be held on the 17th of March in Stockholm. (Unfortunately, then colliding with the MIPIM event in Cannes, France.)
The event is organised by SeminarDesign with the programme (PDF).
Being a one day event covering the topic "IT" for an entire industry one has to realise that the topics of the presentations are (unfortunately) to be all over the place. This event will cover everything from social media and "the cloud" to the status of the standardisation efforts regarding property data and property automation.
See coverage from the event previous years 2007, 2008 and 2009.
The list of speakers includes;
Two business consultants; Rikard Lindberg (LinkedIn) from Meta Fastighetsadministration and Timo Murberger (LinkedIn) from Computence.
A famous trendforecaster in Bengt Wahlström (LinkedIn) from Trender.net.
Representatives from property companies in Johan Thorberg (LinkedIn) from Jernhusen and Alf Pettersson (LinkedIn) from Uppsalahem.
Solution providers in Peter Löfgren (LinkedIn, Twitter, blog) from Redpill Linpro, Anders Moberg (LinkedIn) from CAD-Q Fastighet and Stefan Ledenstam from High Performance Systems.
Finally, Mårten Lindström (LinkedIn) from the standard initaitiv OpenBIM.
I'm delighted to see that there is interest enough in the market from both customers, suppliers, thought leaders and organisers to run an event like this. Hopefully, the event will have a positive energy (like last year).
IT in the real estate industry has a tendency to quickly focusing on property systems and automation. Sometimes I would like to also see focus on topics like marketing (trends in website creation & newsletters), sales (CRM) or just plain normal 'office IT' (mobile solutions, wiki and so on).
Unfortunately, I'll miss this years event since I will be down in Cannes focusing on the marketing side of the business.
The Swedish residential search engine Booli has released Layar data for the iPhone & Android devices bringing Augmented Reality to Sweden.
It for sure looks great.
(Now I really have to upgrade my iPhone...)
Further information is found at Booli's blog.
See the following older posts 1 and 2.
The RICS has published a great paper on Social Media in Commercial Property. It's written by my friends Andrew Waller (top) and Bob Thompson at REMIT Consulting. (RICS is 'Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors')
The primary reason to read this paper is not to start using Social Media, but to better understand it. A big step since the word 'Social Media" has been described as “I have rarely come across a word that has more negative connotations to managers in enterprise organizations”, read more.
Whats great with this report is that it doesn't advise everyone to start a fan page at Facebook or start using Twitter. On the other hand, it shows examples of where social media is (and can be) used in the industry.
Andrew and Bob writes "This report seeks to steer a middle path between these two extremes, recognising the intense individuality of social media while keeping an open mind about the opportunities it presents for the company, pointing out the threats that it may pose and suggesting strategies for dealing with both".
The report of 26 pages consist of chapters like:
The authors go through the different aspect for agency, professional services, development, property management and marketing.
There are many aspects of social media and one is how to handle the use of social media within an organisation. A not uncommon solution is to make it impossible to use sites like Facebook or Twitter.
My opinion in this is ok if you also remove coffee breaks, lunches with your colleagues, make it forbidden to use the phone and email for private use! Those are also ways of communicating. (Not saying that it is ok to spent 2 hours a day on Facebook, but you don't ban all mobile phones just because someone is calling way to many private calls...)
Or as the Andrew and Bob puts it "In much of the world of property, status is measured by the ability to attract work and successful projects from a network of contacts. We, as an industry, encourage graduates to “get out into the market” to make contacts because we know that improving their personal brand will enhance the chances of them earning revenue for the firm. We then set up our computer systems to stop them accessing Facebook, mySpace and Twitter – the methods they have been using at college to network."
The use and possibilities of social media is interesting. But it's a challenging area to move into, especially if you're in the area of B2B.
I believe companies should focus on:
Please, do not start a blog or fan page on Facebook just because your PR/advertising/web firm thinks that is a great idea... That will never work!
