2006 – My Awards

Here are some awards on the real estate portal market in 2006!

BEST REAL ESTATE PORTAL
Realestate.com.au has proven time and time again they are the leaders. they know agencies habits and have built an empire around this knowledge. The site is far from perfect but it is the best there is. It sees threats from ideas and adds them quickly and efficiently to their mix. It knows that it cannot get too much more money from agents, so it looks to new markets to increase its revenues. Added Hubonline and is now heavily promoting this tool to agents to further strengthen its relationships and revenues. Will be tested in 2007 but will still remain the market leader. Look to see further acquisitions in 2007 to strengthen its already commanding position.

BEST NEW INNOVATION
Have to say that Spyk came out of left field with a great little innovation where it grabs data much like and search engine and publishes the results using Microsoft Mapping. A great showcase of the talents of these developers. Mapping is the number one tool going forward and we will see even more offerings in 2007 from the likes of realmap.com.au and others.

DUMB & DUMBER AWARD
Justlisted again has sat on the worst real estate portal from a major company perhaps ever! The listings have no information for property hunters, the system for agents is just terrible and has so many faults that need fixing. They seriously must be doing a new website or they are finished. The company 30 months ago sprouted a national site and still nothing!

PARIS HILTON AWARD
For releasing more press releases telling us how wonderful they Realestate.com.au and Domain.com.au cannot be separated. They are both now using different metrics and publishing results to suit themselves. Clearly realestate.com.au lead, but really who cares at the street level, agents can judge for themselves and informed property hunters who are spending millions of dollars just don’t go to one site!

PERSONAL RANT AWARD
For becoming increasingly irrelevant in the world today, newspapers and commercial television news media win this award. News is not a friend of a friend of Brad Pitt nor is news Ian Thorpe’s latest underwear range (what men would wear his clothes, cologne etc?) or whether Harry’s girlfriend has accepted an invitation from the Queen to a freaking Christmas party at Sandringham. If I want my news I go to SBS or ABC for television or Google News on the Internet! Just another reason why traditional media is done!

THE KYOTO AWARD
See those Yellow pages books in that picture on the right? Count them, if your maths are as good as mine you will count 10. These were delivered a month ago. We have 12 apartments. Next week like hundreds of thousands of housholds across Australia these will be in the paper bin for recycling. So next when you get told how great the Yellow Pages are by a sales representative from Sensis – try this little equation 12 minus 10 = 2. Still it is only about $15,000 a year for half a page in Sydney! (don’t know this for sure)

FORREST GUMP AWARD
Stupid is as stupid does. Truelocal and MyLocal are two great reasons why companies with lots of cash should not be allowed to spend it on technology without getting approval from their parents. These local search directories are useless fodder that get little to no results for businesses! Fees range from $700 per annum up to $800 per annum, but if you were one of the lucky ones to get in early you might have saved around $50 of your wasted money. One client of mine has paid $795.00 and had 4 visitors in six months ……oh…..and I was one of them!

So tell me your awards for 2006? The best and the worst!