Rightmove's secrets revealed

Rightmove's news on Monday that average asking prices actually rose in July spurred me to do a bit of desk research into property prices in my own neck of the woods. Following an hour or so of nosing around, I am pleased to report that I found 3 houses similar to mine for which the asking price has been increased in the last few weeks. A small anecdotal endorsement of Rightmove's figures. I also found price reductions, increases, then reductions again, carefully crafted modifications to property descriptions, and various other changes which equate to a big sign saying "DESPERATE TO SELL" on many properties. And I also found a number of properties that have not reduced in price at all, despite having been listed for well over a year.

At this point, I must point out that I am not an agent and do not have access to Rightmove Plus or the various other tools that agents can use to monitor these things. Yes, I do have a healthy interest and involvement in the industry, but for the purposes of this exercise, I was quite simply a homeowner with internet access...

My accomplice for this exercise was a utility called Property Bee. This innovative little utility for the Firefox web browser tracks changes made to the database of properties on Rightmove and a few other portals and automatically displays the information as part of the listing on Rightmove. The facility of having all the info appearing right there in the listings of the big daddy of the portals is a useful tool which puts a lot of data in the hands of the web-savvy house hunter. Property Bee came into being in January 2008 which means that it's database is an almost perfectly complete record of the crash. The chequered history of many a property for sale throughout the last 18 months is laid bare in Property Bee.

I have written about ways in which online utilities can empower the buyer with information they would not have previously had before, but I am surprised this one has not caused more of a stir to date. You may be concerned about this information being publicly available for your listings, I'm sure some of your sellers would definitely not like it, but this level of transparency actually helps to dispel myths, allay fears and help those wishing to move (of which there are undoubtedly many) to make really informed decisions on what is happening in their local market. No spin, no national statistics. Whatever happens to prices, I think we'd all be behind anything that helps get more people active in the market again.

Charlie Wright: Choosing Your Estate Agency Software

In this lesson Charlie highlights different options for your agency software and shows how you can ensure your technology is helping not hindering your business.

Where are your customers?

Measuring the effectiveness of your marketing activity is a fundamentally important job for every business, but there has always been a danger that anecdotal evidence and long held opinions can undermine proper data and analytics. Even companies that religiously track the source of every enquiry can have their figures cast into doubt by the simple fact that some staff and customers will always just tick the first option on the list of enquiry sources.

The internet and, more specifically, Google has helped to dispel a lot of myths in this area by providing proper analytics on visitors to your website, but in doing so, it has also created a myth of it's own; "the website is where we get all our customers, other marketing doesn't really deliver much."

Consider your own actions as a consumer: If you see or hear an advert for something of interest, do you immediately phone the company or do you go the website to find out more. Do you use the special URL on the advert or do you just Google the company name. If you decide to call having looked on the website, do you go back to the advert to get the number or do you use the one on the website. We often oversimplify the customer journey assuming that direct action has resulted from a single marketing medium.

It may have, it may not, but our ability to gain insight in this area is about to change with the arrival of the location aware web browser. In the recesses of Google Analytics is the ability to map the location of visitors, a great idea that has thus far been poorly executed because of the difficulty in establishing the exact location of a computer. The latest versions of Mozilla's Firefox and Google's Chrome browsers include a Geolocation API which allows websites to know your location. Geolocation is part of the latest specification for HTML (the language of the web) which means it will become a standard feature that can be used on any website.

We have already seen plenty of innovation in location aware applications on mobile phones (see our previous posts on Zillow's iPhone App and Layar's Augmented Reality) and Geolocation will help to deliver a better web experience on your desktop or laptop too by automatically delivering content that is relevant to your location.

In improving the user experience, Geolocation will also improve the analysis. The browser effectively tells your website where you are when you access a page, and by collating this data and examining it, you will be able to determine what is driving traffic to your site in the real world as well as the online one.

You will be able to overlay leaflet distribution data with the location of website visits. You will be able to see if For Sale boards cause interest from the neighbours. You will be able to track where interest in a particular property or development is coming from and then adjust your marketing activity accordingly. You may even be able to pinpoint specifc properties that have read your web pages on 'selling your home'.

With better understanding of where your customers are, you will make better decisions on how to market yourself more effectively. There will no doubt be privacy issues to contend with as this technology gains interest, but the benefits of providing relevant content based on location will surely appeal to the majority.

NAR Conference 2009

The Academy will be at the National Association of Realtors conference in sunny San Diego from 13th - 16th November 2009. Find out more about this world class event here.

Consistency in Customer Service

In this lesson, Adam J Walker takes you through his 12 stage process to help you and your team achieve more consistent customer service.

Share your expertise on Zoopla

Last week, whilst raiding their venture capital piggy bank to buy Propertyfinder, Zoopla launched a new feature on their site called AskMe Q&A.

This new feature is basically a forum to ask or answer any given question on property. Zoopla's intention is obviously to add value to the site and make it sticky for consumers not yet fully in the market, ultimately building towards the all important request for a valuation.

Forums with a singular purpose are not always a success because their focus is too narrow, but there are 2,800 questions posted on the site, so there is an audience willing to ask, although I would like to understand how a service launched last week has questions posted in 2007.

The vast majority of the questions remain unanswered at present. Some of them are daft and should simply be answered; Google it and you'll find out, but there are plenty of less daft ones which any agent worth his salt should be able to offer insight on.

The fact that the questions are indexed geographically and by topic; renting, selling etc, means that it would be really easy for an agent to answer questions posed in their area of operation and establish their authority with buyers and sellers from Zoopla's growing audience. What's more Zoopla provides a rating system so that those who answer lots of questions wisely will be highlighted.

I am a little sceptical about the way the AskMe service has been populated to date, but the idea of creating a forum for consumers to get advice from agents leading up to an opportunity to sell the property is a sound one on face value. For those who recognise the value of giving a little bit of free advice, this could go a long way to getting some lucrative listing opportunities...

New Property Search in Google Maps

Google Maps have rolled out a new and improved search function for property. The new functionality went live in Australia and the US yesterday, but will display UK properties if you search accordingly via the introductory page here (try "Epsom" if your location has a namesake elsewhere).

The fact that it is all labelled "Real Estate" is one indication that Google is not quite ready for the UK property market yet, but it won't take them long if it proves successful (i.e; generates PPC revenue) Down Under and Stateside.

Google have dabbled with property listings since introducing Google Base in 2006. With next generation portals like Globrix having proved the concept of generating traffic and in turn revenue from property search and agents websites now geared to providing direct links to listings, it is actually quite surprising that they hadn't upped their game in this area before now.

However, despite the familiarity of the Google Maps interface, the user experience and functionality of the new property search is actually quite inferior to what others have done to provide map based search facilities. Thinkproperty and Nestoria still set the benchmark in this area and despite Google's inclusion of Streetview with results, it lacks their usual 'wow' factor.

This may be of little consequence if Google's index of properties proves to be vast enough and tidy enough. To have every listing (the golden chalice of portaldom) is probably quite achievable for Google and the look and feel often plays second fiddle to depth of content in the world of classified listings (think Craigslist and Gumtree).

The UK portals will undoubtedly watch Google's development in this area pensively. It has just as much potential to help as to hurt them. For agents, it is yet another reason to improve your listings on your own site.

Charlie Wright: Avoiding Hardware Problems

Computer and hardware problems can impact on productivity and profit margin. In this lesson Charlie shows you how you can invest wisely in technology to increase team productivity and save your business time and money.

Chapter 3 - More Advice for a Tough Market

In the concluding chapter of “Actions for a Tough Marketplace”, Richard explains ways to identify your best customers and how to engage with them.

A great little utility called Aviary

If you've ever struggled to get the PrintScreen button to do what you wanted, here's a great little utility for printing web pages...

If you add aviary.com to the front of any URL in your web browser (e.g: aviary.com/www.estateagencyacademy.com) you will be able to save a perfectly rendered version of the web page as an image to your desktop.

What's more, once Aviary has rendered your web page, it gives you a range of simple yet powerful editing tools. This is perfect for capturing portions of a web page like a map or set of images. Fancy an alternative to a Rightmove comparables report, why not try using Aviary to capture a list of properties and the great looking maps from Nestoria to put in your vendor pack?

I'm sure you can think of your own reasons to capture web pages, but Aviary makes it really easy and really flexible.