With the ink just drying on the deal, realestate.com.au has purchased Clarke Computers Pty Ltd for $650,000. Clarke Computers provides trust accounting and rent roll management software to the commercial real estate industry and has been doing so for 24 years. With over 420 customers their Sales Trust, Rent Trust and Sales Tracker software will be integrated with REA’s ever growing suite of products to roll out to their 7,954 agents across Australia.My first thought was ‘wow’ this is a very, very cheap deal and after a quick call to CEO Simon Baker he did explain the deal, which is basically just the assets. To me however it still does seem awfully cheap!
This comes hot on the heals of the HubOnline application which is being re-developed from the ground up for massive scaling!
This sale also means that realestate.com.au has more competitors, with the many trust accounting package companies in the market.
The software currently is ‘client side’ which means it runs and stores from the personal computer and realestate.com.au are investigating a mix of client side storage with an integrated web based application!
To me all of these deals makes sense for the REA company. REA’s thinking must be that because they have nearly all residential agents in Australia, they need to provide more serivces and software to them and therefore generate higher revenues.
Out of the many established trust accounting packages on the market, this one would have to be the cheapest, which you may think would mean not being the best, but that is not always the case and I am sure the boffins at REA know a good deal both price wise and the best fit for their compan going forward!
8 Comments
dave platter
Nice post, Peter.
Part of the reason that Clarke Computers’ owner Mr. Clarke chose to sell to the REA Group is that we make a excellent fit for his software and his employees. Both fit in here and have a role and can continue to serve their clients.
I don’t know thhis for sure, but I imagine if Mr. Clarke had sold to a competitor, there’s a possibility they would have just taken his market share and shut down his operations.
That’s not a nice prospect for someone who has spent a career building a company.
John S
Well it seems Mr Clarke is the anti of most businesses these days, but you are right Peter, seems a small amount of money for someone with 420 offices using the system. My big problem with al of this is that realestate.com.au think that we are going to be happy about having all of the systems we use going through them. I use their site because they give me the best results. But I used to be on Domain until I my research showed me I got far better results from realestate.com.au, so I jumped ship.
Now here is the rub. Realestate.com.au seem to be more focussed on growing their revenues, rather than getting me more leads. So if someone came up with something better (and I do not mean some of the new sites here, because they have no volume) and I tested the site and found I got great results the I would leave them too.
Peter, thank you for this great site. I actually have got all of my staff reading this site now and we are having a meeting tomorrow to talk about our web site and how we can improve.
Do you actually do web design as well?
Peter
John, thank you for your comments and welcome, please do not hesitate to get you and your staff to comment here. This is what the site is about.
Yes I do web design for real estate agents. But I try to make sure that I keep this site away from self promotion so that it is an informative tool not swayed by connections or my own personal results. So I must tell you of some of my competitors here on the site.
I do think it is important to get your website developed by a dedicated real estate agency web development company.
So if you look at the menu on the right side you will see a link section titled “Agent Websites” all of these companies supply similar services to me!
robwales
I am interested in what the regulators may say about the potential for off site storage of trust account records when the requirement on the licensee (in NSW at least) is to maintain and store records on the premises for 3 years.
Do you see any issues here?
Glenn
Rob,
Far from a definitive answer for you I know but I recently looked at one of the digital storage systems for our property management department. Cant recall the name right now but the system allowed for all records to be stored digitally thus saving time and effort (which in truth was mostly offset by their huge cost).
I asked them a similar question to what you have raised and that is the documents specifically mentioned in the various state acts are now only represented in a digital form and no hard copy was kept. Those very acts stipulate that hard copies have to be kept for specific lengths of time and none of them seem to allow for digital versions.
The answer given to me was that there is legislation that in effect allows for modern digital record keeping practices in antiquated legislation that was written when the fax machine was considered the latest technology. I think the act (or acts) he was referring to was the Electronic Transactions Acts enacted by all the states around 2000-2001. The acts do this by “formally removing any presumption or suggestion that a transaction is somehow less valid because it is conducted electronically.”
I dont know if those acts will specifically deal with offsite databases (and thus offsite trust records) but it would be worth checking. It’s interesting to note though is that the data integrity and security is far better in this environment than stored in boxes in individual offices in paper form, or stored on a crusty old pc with infrequent or possibly even no backups at all.
The whole idea of web based trust accounting with the data residing in an offsite database is nothing new though. I know of solutions like Portplus Trust Accounting and Multiarray’s Real Estate Manager and I am sure there are plenty of others I have not come across yet.
In the absence of anybody else providing the answer your looking for I hope this gives you a place to start looking..
robwales
Glenn,
I have just had a scan through the NSW Property Stock & Business Agents Act 2002 and 2003 Regulations and it does allow for off site storage of backup data.
S104 (2) & (3) of the ACT says that records, including trust account records, S103.1(b), must be held for 3 years at the licensee’s premises.
CL 24 of the 2003 Regulations relates to computerised records systems stating in CL 24(a) that a backup must be completed at least monthly and (b) the most recent backup must be kept in such a place at a separate location that any incident (such as fire, or a power or disk failure) that could adversely affect the records would not also affect the back-up copy.
So it seems, in NSW at least, that records must be maintained on the premises and kept for three years with copies to be held offsite.
Therefore, a web based system that maintains the records locally and mirrors them remotely, either live or via a backup process would comply with requirements.
Glenn
Did you get a chance to check with the Electronic Transaction Act 2000 (NSW)… ? Maybe there is something in there. If still no luck try my next suggestion is to try and shortcut the problem by sending an email to the companies that provide this service asking how clients using their service can satisfy the requirements.
You could also try the state government body responsible for the industry (sorry, only know qld’s) and ask them what their take on the issue is. I think that just maybe the fact that an office can get access to the information from their office might suffice, but not technically follow the letter of the law. Remember all of those offices would be getting audited on regular basis so this problem should have already been raised somwhere by now.
Rob
Glen, I am sure you are correct in saying that this situation must have arisen before now. I will contact our Office of Fair Trading for their opinion and will get back when (and if) I receive a response