I was presenting at a seminar in Brisbane last week, where Australian Property Data provider, PriceFinder launched a new offering to real estate agents.
Taking inspiration from the success of Zillow and Trulia’s web site widgets, PriceFinder has released its own range of agent website tools for the Australian real estate industry.
According to Kent Lardner, Chief Operating Officer of PriceFinder :-
“Your web site visitors can now search for recent sales that match their property as well as view sales and growth charts for free. We have several new widgets now available as well as banners to enhance both the look and the functionality of a real estate agency website”
“The PriceFinder SalesMatch widget will allow you to find and map matching comparable sales for any property. Add this widget to auto display the most recent comparable sales for every listing on your website or simply provide a great value add-on for your website visitors.”
Widgets are an easy way to enhance your agency website and increase traffic by providing property related information to online property seekers who seem to have an unquenchable thirst for real estate statistics, comparable sales, demographics, etc.
Click Here to see these new widgets.
Future plans for PriceFinder Widgets:
“The address searched will be presented in a prospect report, printed directly from within your PriceFinder subscription platform in a future release. As part of our widget and overall product offering, PriceFinder will empower the agent with products that are currently being sold to consumers. Great for agents, not so good for businesses relying on consumer revenue.”
These PriceFinder Widgets will not only provide easy to access FREE reports to consumers but should also help real estate agent’s improve their website conversion. By providing an opt in facility for buyers, sellers, landlords, tenants, etc to recieve the FREE reports, the Widgets will inturn generate online leads around the clock for those agents using the PriceFinder system.
10 Comments
Mac
No comments? Sensational! Wonder who will be first to use – Robert or Glen? 🙂
Mac
It’s not free, Greg! Having looked at it the cost is around $1200 per agent! it’s a commercial World but I don’t know why you seemingly focussed on the free aspect without mentioning costs to agents. Not advertorial is it….?
Nick
I checked it out briefly. For something your paying that much for, they have awfully large branding on it.
And if your website doesnt have a white background, dont bother. Fiddling with the background colour with Firebug produces some horrific results.
Greg Vincent
Mac, I’ve been writing for B2 for quite a while now & for you to even suggest that, I’m not impressed.
When they launched the Widgets I thought it was a good initiative & that’s why I wrote about it. I’m sorry that I forgot to mention that it’s not Free.
In reality, it’s a shame it’s not Free. It could get them some huge exposure across a lot of agents websites if it was.
Maybe, they could set up a Free plugin and then offer an upgrade price for those agents who subscribe to their Property Data service and want to have access to the leads.
BTW RP Data have recently made an announcement out to the franchise groups about some improvements that they have made to their platform. (To be launched in April). It looks to be more streamlined & easier for agents to use.
I believe that these improvements could be as a result of PriceFinder taking a large percentage of business from them in Qld & WA. Vic seems to be well covered with their property data by the REIV and RealEstateView.com.au and with RealEstateView’s imminent roll out into the other states & territories it looks like we are going to see some significant changes taking place within the Property Data sector.
Robert Simeon
I had a look at it yesterday after listening to RE Uncut – when I searched our demographic area I was unable to find any content so I’m unsure what areas they carry data for. No doubt RP Data and APM will jump onto this and roll out their versions.
Overall, I see this as a great tool and very useful on an agent website as vendors and purchasers would be able to gain greater knowledge from the experience.
Mac
Greg, did I ‘hear’ you correctly? Realestateview is rolling-out to other states etc I guess agents must be paying them good money for their uploading to other portals business because their portal is a waste of time, $ and space!
PaulD
Nestoria will beat the hell out of Realestateview
Glenn Batten
Technically Nestoria is different than Realestateview so it is hard to compare them. Nestoria’s model is more like Google Real Estate in that they are not a final destination. The specialise in providing traffic to other websites by being better at gaining eyeballs through SEO and stickier content and then passing them through to the destination portals. Realestateview could engage Nestoria to drive traffic to them.
Nestoria’s model has worked in other locations so it should work here in Australia too. Whats most interesting about Nestoria is that they offer tools for webmasters including widgets, search boxes and an api. The UK version has other widgets such as houses prices and average property values that are not ready here in Australia yet.
Greg Vincent
Who knows. If they can get enough agents taking it up we may end up with a National industry based portal, which is something that agents & readers of this blog have been screaming out for for years.
Previously, the state institutes have been all trying do something on a state by state basis. Both REIWA & RealEstateView have made some inroads but the rest of the states have had very little success.
If all the states can get their acts together & go about it the right way, they may just get the support from the agents. (who knows?)
I can’t see anything else on the horizon that looks like offering a solution to changing the duopoly within our industry. (I don’t believe that Google or Nestoria provide the answer).
Ed Freyfogle
Hi Ed from Nestoria here. A good discussion here.
@PaulD we’re not going to beat the hell out of anyone. We work together with partners not against them.
@Glenn great summary of our model. You get it.
@Greg I agree with you, we don’t provide all the answers. That’s not our goal – we focus religiously on doing one thing and one thing only: a simple and effective search.
In Australia we just launched so still have a lot to learn. We welcome all feedback – positive or negative. Thanks everyone.