Recently at the Real Estate Connect San Francisco show I had the pleasure of catching up with Simon Baker from www.listglobally.com (amongst other ventures) and had a chat with him about his new global listing service. Simon seemed very upbeat about www.listglobally.com which allows real estate agents to list properties for sale across the leading websites gloabally – hence the name list globally.
The Video
ListGlobally.com Simon Baker from Peter Ricci on Vimeo.
Overview
There is a little more to this product that warrants more than just a first glance. The software allows any agency to list properties for sale on www.listglobally.com for a fee of $90 per listing for 90 days Listglobally.com then feeds (pushes) those listings to many of the most popular real estate websites in the world automatically including Canada, Germany, Great Britain, Japan, Russia, South Africa, Spain, United Arab Emirates, with many more in the pipeline.
Here are some of the websites that www.listglobally.com pushes to:
- rightmove.co.uk (United Kingdom)
- immobilienscout24.de (German)
- enormo.com (World)
- realestate.co.jp (Japan)
- iproperty.com.my (Malaysia)
- iproperty.com.sg (Singapore)
- propertyfinder.ae (United Arab Emirates)
- canadahomeguide.tv (Canada)
- gohome.com.hk (Hong Kong)
- 99acres.com (India)
The software looks to be very clean and efficient, the website looks the same, only information needed is presented and I like this approach. if you wish to join you have two options for adding your listings, you can join for free and then add each listing manually or you can feed your listings (talk to your IT people) to listglobally.com and then login and select which listings you want to activate for a fee of $90 per listing for 90 days. Most of these sites are the most popular in their country and the global ones like Enormo.com (which is really the only international portal available) should give your listings some decent exposure.
Listglobally.com have a number of country specific sites that have actually added on an “International section” for your listings to appear on and I understand in some cases listglobally.com have actually built in some of these international sections for portals.
If there is an inherent weakness in the product, it is this – I have real doubts that anyone would go to a site like realestate.com.au to search for listings in Japan , UK, India etc. If you were a serious buyer, you would seek out sites that had all the listings for that country. So just keep in mind that the figures quoted (around 40 million eyeballs) are actually not very accurate as far as the sections of the portals we are talking about with Enormo being the only true global website. Realestate.com.au may get 5 million visitors per month, however the International section may only get a few hundred thousand – so just keep this in mind.
As for the cost, $90 per listing for 90 days does sound pretty cheap but if you are going to market your whole portfolio, this can get quite expensive (10 x = $900, 100 times = $9,000), I am never a fan of time-limited fees, I would hate to see a realestate.com.au or domain.com.au do this in Australia although it will only be a matter of time before agents are charged per listing as more and more agents become mobile and offices begin declining in numbers (and they will).
All in all Listglobally.com should be a decent offering, but it will take time a few years to mature. At the moment the offering is fairly limited and probably will only be used by agents to attract more vendors,as with anything, the longevity of products like this does come down to the value it provides real estate agents.
I suggest you give it a go with one or two listings, you can jump right in now and give it a run with a property or three!
Simon is a pretty astute fellow and his reputation alone will get him off to a decent start in the market, long term – if they stick at it – I expect Listglobally.com to be a winner!
As a note for disclosure I am a shareholder in www.zooproperty.com which in some small way competes with Listglobally.com, although on a different level.
16 Comments
Nick
You kind of have to ask yourself, is it worth it?
There is of course a chance that someone would buy a house while they are overseas.
But what is the chance of them going to rightmove.co.uk, finding the hard to find ‘Overseas’ link, selecting ‘Search other countries’ and then clicking Australia just to begin searching?
Probably nil. They’d just go to a Aussie site if they were looking for a Aussie house.
Simon Baker
Peter
Thanks for the write up.
A couple of comments.
Firstly, people do go to the international sections of local property portals to look at international listings. For example, each month, 1.6 million searches are conducted in the overseas section of rightmove.co.uk in the UK. What is interesting is that the 6th most searched country on rightmove is Australia with 4.6% of the searches – that is 75k searches each month. The funny thing is, there are only 157 Australian properties that these 75k searches are looking at.
The top 5 countries are Spain, France, USA, Portugal, and Italy.
Secondly, I agree that the pricing is very cheap, that is why it is actually US$90 for 90 days, not US$30 for 90 days. However, compare this to a feature property on realestate.com.au, and this is potentially better value for money.
Thirdly, your comment about readship is interesting. Yes REA quote 5 or 6 million vistors each month but they are not looking at each and every suburb. The visitation to one suburb is far less than the total visitation to the site. We dont have the figures for the visitation to each of the international sections on all the sites, therefore we can only quote the total visitation to the sites we distribute to. For clarity, this is 25m total visitors.
Finally, we are currently distributing to 10 different market leading sites. This will expand to 13 over the next 2 weeks. We are also finalising contracts with 10 other sites and by the end of the year, we will be distributing to over 20 different market leading sites in key markets.
Thanks for the write up
Simon Baker
CEO
List Globally and Classified Ad Ventures
Simon Baker
Nick
Thanks for the comments above … however, the facts tell a different story. Please see my previous entry re the searches of the rightmove overseas section.
We have been trialling this product for the last 6 months and we have been receiving legitimate leads from rightmove and the other distribution partners.
Thanks
Simon Baker
Vic
Peter,
I can see this working well. The GFC is going to open up the world’s real estate market more so than anyone would have anticipated, even two years ago.
The money awash around the world will eventually, if not already, look for economically perceived safe havens like Australia and New Zealand and Canada.
Smart real estate agents will pick up on this opportunity, they will not be deterred by a manual uploader process and how easy it would be to recoup the small cost from the vendor. It will need a bit of marketing rethink by many agents who have “grooved” into bulk uploaders dictating where their property listings will go.
Power back to the agents if they take their own advertising/marketing strategies seriously and begin looking for international choices and niche market choices.
Not all properties will benefit from this listing approach; it will be trial and error process for a while, but for those agents who keep an eye closely on what sells to whom and from where the buyers come it will be a winner.
We are currently investigating a relationship with a new private international free to lister to do similar for our agent clients.
Peter Ricci
Simon, sorry I have just updated and corrected those figures.
I still stand by claims about overseas websites even if they attract the figures they claim on these sections – which seems dubious to me.
Nice try about being cheaper than REA Featured Listings Simon 🙂 Also I didn’t say it was cheap, I said it sounds cheap but to be careful about pricing for multiple listings. An example of an agency with 100 listings ends up being 5 x the cost of an REA subscription. Not so cheap.
I do understand that this is marketed to a selected amount of listings per portfolio, but we have to be open and honest in our opinions here.
Simon Baker
Peter
Thanks for fixing up the pricing.
Of course we are open to negotiation in pricing. It just comes down to volume.
We have already have enquiries from MLS’s in the US and other intermediaries in Portugal, Spain and France – all of whom are interested in purchasing 500+ listings.
The challenge in pricing is that we have to pay the distribution partners (Rightmove, Immoscout24 etc) to have the listings on their sites. We have negotiated great deals but it is not free.
It costs us around USD$40 per listing to distribute them on the partner sites.
Therefore we have to be careful of our margins.
Thanks
Simon Baker
CEO
http://www.listglobally.com
Wanida Patpung
Listing on enormo is free.
Do not need to pay for it… no $90!
Peter Ricci
Wanida, good point, however, agents today need a system for managing this data. If they manually have to do it to multiple websites it takes time, therefore money and memory.
Systems like http://www.listglobally.com and others save this. So a fee is fine. I do agree however, if you can do it yourself and manage this to begin with – especially if its only a few listings, then it is worthwhile
Thanks for contributing to business2.
Regards Peter
Vic
Peter,
This issue of time cost, vs direct fee cost is something that needs a closer analysis than simply a broad brush statement.
For example we have a simple and fast manual uploader. It takes less than 5 minutes to upload and take listings direct to our site listing pages. An agency admin officer would normally do this and it would take roughly one hour to up load/list 12 properties. At $30per hour wage factor 12 properties could be up loaded. Compare this with the cost of 12 X $90 = $1080 for cost to up load to a pay per property site.
Before anyone chimes in, clearly I’m not trying to compare the reach of my site to any of the international sites mentioned, list globally and enormo. The reach factor for enormo and list globally is a where the comparison needs be made when debating cost/time.
But it is a fallacy to compare pay per property listing, on an individual property, to a free to lister and suggest the fee component offsets the time cost to manual upload
.
Also in real life, as it is highly unlikely that the average agency would have 12 properties a day to list.
The other aspect to consider is that not all properties in a portfolio would need to be marketed world wide. A little research needs be done by agents on what is likely to be purchased by whom and from where in the world they would come. A rifle approach rather than shotgun would propably be a better option.
So, the world is changing and an agent needs to do more research. This research and decison time is where the cost to do business needs to be closely monitored and not so much a no brainer comparison of manual up load to free sites vs multi list up loads to at $90 per property.
Cheers
ps we are connected to 4 national bulkuploaders and a coming on line with two franchise up loaders. 30% of our up loads come from our manual up loader.
Sal Espro
To get this in perspective, I think ‘Listglobally’ would be aiming at gaining global listings i.e. Not just from Oz. The size of the global listings market will be very large resulting in large fees (@ $90ea per listing).
Ps I have tried to list properties with some of these sites mentioned and can’t do it as Simon’s guys have tied them up.
So, I’m narky that they will let someone but not me do it and as a result I won’t use Simon’s offering – I’d take them to the ACCC in Oz! (My few listings aren’t going to matter in the scheme of things but a man has gotta stick to his (strange) principles! 🙂
Sal Espro
Ps Reminds me of the old “Submit Wolf” type multi-search engine submission systems of the “good old days”….until Google came along and wiped them out!
real estate website design
Wow, this is quite surprising. I wouldn’t have thought there would have been much interest in international properties, but Simon has dismissed this belief. Quite interesting really. I’m curious though, can someone in the UK legally purchase a property here? And if so, what do they do with them? Rent them out?
Vic
Hi real estate web design,
Not so hard to purchase an Australian property. Recently sold my waterfront Olive grove to an American as his holiday/ business opportunity. He still resides in the States. The sale was subject to Foreign Investment Review Board submission. Took 60 days to get approval.
I had the property on the market for 2 years, so a good advertisement for international portal eh?
For some countries it’s a piece of cake, UK in particular.
If you are interested in who can buy and for what purpose, just google FIRB Australia and you can get all the info you need.
In fact all Australian Real Estate Agents should have a working knowledge of these requirements if they are considering listing on an international site.
Hope this helps
Simon Baker
Thanks everyone for your comments.
Let me answer them in turn.
Wanida Patpung, you may be able to advertise a single listing on Enromo for free, however you will be reaching only 1m people. This is the traffic to the Enormo group of sites. With http://www.listglobally.com, we are giving you access to over 20m people. Many of the sites we advertise on you have to pay for as they are not free – e.g. Rightmove, Immoscout24 etc.
To reach all of these other sites, you would have to do a deal with each of them and the total cost will be higher on a per property basis than advertising through http://www.listglobally.com as we have negotiated good deals with many of the players.
ListGlobally also does all the hard work for you. You dont have to deal with different upload engines – just one simple upload and we send the listings to all the sites for you.
Sal Espro, i am not sure what sites you are referring to. The only sites we are the exclusive provider of international listings to are propertyfinder.ae, realestate.co.jp, 99acres.com and candapropertyguide.tv. The reason we are the sole provider for these sites is that they didnt have an international section and we build one for them free of charge. All of the others have an international section and you are able to advertise with them directly.
Thanks for the comments and please keep them coming
Simon Baker
CEO
http://www.listglobally.com
Vic
just to accentuate the shift to global marketing I commend all to read the latest article on http://www.sold-magazine.com.au/Articles/beachfront-properties-an-agents-holy-grail
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