Yesterday I met with domain.com.au State Manager John Beshara and we had a lively passionate conversation about the real estate industry and the direction of domain.com.au . I have met with John before and we both enjoy a passion for the industry. John is a former agent who has been working with Domain.com.au for a number of years now.
ZONED PRICING
John explained his companies policy of zoned pricing with me and whilst I can understand in principal what they are trying to do, I still have reservations about how it will effect agents. In simple terms agencies in built up metropolitan areas will pay a higher fee than agencies in country areas.
All areas pricing will rise nominally and he did explain how a very small percentage of companies actually had not had a price increase for a number of years and these companies will think they have had a large increase, however he took time to explain to me that this was a rare occurance.
QUALITY OF LISTINGS
We spoke about all manner of things effecting the industry and one of the main topics of conversation was the quality of listings. I believe that many real estate agencies need to improve the standard of advertising online both with text copy and also photography. This to me will be the key differentiator between agents going forward in an online world. It is easy to show a potential vendor the difference in quality between you and your competitor, with text information and photography. Many agents today contract outside photographers to do all their images and virtual tours at about $300 a pop! However for some this is just not feasible, but giving your sales or property management team training for use of digital cameras is!
I had a number of ideas on how portals could lift the quality of agency listings, possibly a ratings system for web site users – if you look above this post you can rate my articles from one to five, it could be something that is not seen by the public but effects the order that the listings appear in search results. Agencies could also receive a weekly email with the amount of ratings and the average score for each listing. A simple system that works – the higher the rating the higher these listings will appear in search results.
This makes it hard when you have agents paying for their listings to be higher in search results but in my opinion this would lift the quality of listings immediately and provide a far better user experience both for consumers and for agents.
I WAS WRONG – SO FAR
We spoke for over an hour and I appreciated John’s openness in his discussions with me and I have changed my position somewhat on domain.com.au new pricing system. However I do not want to see prices rise even further and as long as it is clear and easy to understand for agents, I think it will be fine.
Whilst I understand that I am a sometimes writer and he may have been a little guarded, he did open up after a while and we did have some passionate volleys back and forth. John is very confident about Domain.com.au’s position in the market and how they have great strengths in the Sydney and Melbourne markets alongside their classifieds news prints.
PRINT ADVERTISING
John is also confident that print will remain a strong driver and I am not. I think print advertising is close to finished as far as advertising vendor listings, it is fun to sit down and read, but the far greater majority of enquiries now come from the Internet. So the future of print in my opinion has only a few good years left in relation to real estate and from there it will all be about branding for agents (as it is now)
DEVELOPMENT
One thing that amazes me with all of these large companies is the amount of people they have working on these sites. I have always been of the opinion that the more developers you have – the more problems you have. Small dedicated teams makes so much more sense. As an example, you could easily run a nationwide real estate portal with as little as 6 developers. 4 for systems and 2 for the actual website. Having a great interface designer would also be a boon and domain really do need one (and that is intended to be an offence)
One problem all of these real estate portal companies have is developer retention, developers get pretty bored quickly and in recent times have always in demand, so they do tend to lose many of their developers to other companies.
Expect to see a few new features to domain.com.au over the coming months some of which sound very good – time will tell if they work and domain.com.au can start to close the gap on realestate.com.au
So thank you John for taking the time to meet with me and I look forward to hearing more from you!
11 Comments
Sam
The higher the rating the higher the listing in the search results ?????????????????????
You must be joking, some agents will just vote for their own listings all day to move up the list.
AND –
Searchers aren’t interested in voting for listings they just want to find what they want and get on with it, they won’t play silly games along tha way.
A pay per listing type system will happen sooner or later, the present way of doing it is unfair to most agents.
Agent A has 600 listings pays the same as agent B who has 10 ???? No way.
Peter
Hi Sam
In relation to voting on listings – I am not joking. Try to vote on my article, you can only do it once per day. I am sure agencies will not have the time to do this. I think you should have placed a few more questions marks at the end of your comment for more effect.!!!!!!!!
As for pay per listings, these have been discussed before and I think this may be the way of the future.
however, if I think will happen – happens and Google, Yahoo and MSN all get into a dedicated real estate site then within 6 – 18 months all listings will be free on all portals.
Thanks for your comments, keep them coming.
Alex
“You must be joking, some agents will just vote for their own listings all day to move up the list.”
There are fairly simple ways to get around that, such as only counting one vote per property per IP address.
“Searchers aren
Sam
Voting on listings is not worth consideration unless think your audience is under 12 years old. You’ve missed the point about usability and how it should match your audience entorely.
Blocking multiple votes by IP address won’t work, some property owners have a wide range of friends.
AND if agent A is getting 10 leads a month from 600 listings he’s an idiot and should be made to pay double anyway for clogging the portal with useless rubbish that no one is interested in.
dave platter
I’m surprised no other commentors picked up on Peter’s statemtent that “print in my opinion has only a few good years left in relation to real estate and from there it will all be about branding for agents (as it is now).”
Just look in the UK where propertyfinder.com purchased print publisher London Property news just to drive traffic to its site.
Or look in this week’s Classified Intelligence Report. On page 9 there is news that in Germany the jobs classifieds site Jobware.de has launched a quarterly print magazine to drive draffic to its site, too.
I still love to read a newspaper or magazine, but when I want to find info of some sort, I always reach for the laptop. So, I think Peter’s right.
Alex
“Voting on listings is not worth consideration unless think your audience is under 12 years old. You
Sam
Price should be based on locality, ie: traffic, and secondly listings with a base number included in the sub and extra charges beyond a certain point.
Voting for a particular listing proves nothing, people, if they vote at all, will vote for a property they like, not nessessarily the listing that presents the best. It’s a waste of time and a diversion from the core task of the site. People looking for houses won’t bother with it nor should they be expected to.
The reference to age was that voting, except in elections, is the passtime of minors in the main, look at the NineMSN web site and the inane questions that appear in their polls, only a child or young person would even bother to respond. They know their audience and target the questions at those who will use the feature.
If this was to be included in any of the major portals they would get a lop sided result because only a certain type of user would vote. The people that matter, the serious user wouldn’t bother.
Alex
The real problem with this particular voting system is that there is a *disincentive* for the user to vote up properties they like, as this would give them more exposure to other potential buyers. This applies whether the user understands that they are voting on the quality of the listing information, or if they misinterpret the vote to mean a personal favourite. Good quality listings might also be voted down for the same reason. On this basis, I don’t think voting on real estate portals would work.
Elizabeth
Alex you have hit the nail on the head.
Why would potential buyers register how great a listing is, only to have more people recognise it and out bid them at Auction.
If ‘DoPLAIN’ want to get greater interactivity on their site – they should stop looking at sites like http://www.amiuglyorwhat.com
Seriously? Voting for listings?
Maybe this is geared towards all the private sellers they have on their site.
Peter, what did the domain guy have to say about Private Sellers and what appears to be DoPLAINs current push to get more from that market?
Peter
DAVE: thanks for your comments. Online Portals are picking up print for one reason, control! If they can own the best print and online media in particular markets then they have the power to charge Agents what they please!
Print advertising is just about finished from a consumer perspective, it is good for branding and chest thumping but it is money wasted. More and more vendors will ask just to be listed online and not in print.
ELIZABETH
Yes I did mention this and I was told it makes up such a minuscule revenue base that it should not be a problem.
Agents must clearly be able to identify why a seller should use them rather than list privately. This will be a growing problem going forward. However I have a site that private advertisers list on and I can tell you there are a number of factors that limits their success.
1. Being able to negotiate – so many private sellers have no idea how to negotiate a sale.
2. Marketing Reach – Agents can list on realestate.com.au and domain. Private advertisers can list on domain but it is expensive and ads only last for 30 days.
3. Pricing Properties – If you look at the majority of private ads they are well overpriced. The thinking is get them to enquire and you can come down, but I remember a guy in Tasmania listing his 1 bedroom unit for $270,000 and when I asked him what he would sell for he said $130,00.
His reasoning was that he would get interstate buyers and they pay allot more!!!
4. Legal – Many of the Private sellers do not have the correct paperwork prepared and this could lead to legal problems down the road.
However you will find that many private sellers will end up selling through an agency.
What you have to understand is that many more will also try. I estimate the private selling market to be about 2% of advertised sales properties but this will grow in the coming years to over 10% and even more if agents cannot clearly demonstrate why they should sell through an agency!
Peter
Dave – Another thing on Print: For the last 20 years News Limited has tried almost everything to take market share from Fairfax in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age Newspaper in relation to real estate listings. Tens of millions of dollars have gone down the drain in this attempt to take market share.
For the first time in years revenues are dropping, even with rising $ rates classified advertising is on the wane. Just look at Jobs, Cars and Houses, these are all covered perfectly online and instead of a few lines of text and maybe a photo for $400, you can get allot of photos, unlimited descriptions and the ad lasts more than 1 day!
The great thing about it is that it did not take a competitor to do this and did not take money, it took the Internet!
You will see in the future newspapers given away for free just to keep demand up and advertisers happy.
A great example of this is magazines in the states. You can subscribe to many of the most popular magazines for $9.95 a Year delivered right to your door! Why? Because the companies that own these magazines need readership and high subscriptions to charge the rates to advertisers so they can make money.
Within 2 years there will be a huge change in newspaper distribution here in Australia, first will be massive cost cutting and then massive price drops!
Of course all in my humble opinion!