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Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category

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The smartest agents recognise the power of technology – how we are helping

Posted on: August 30th, 2010 | Filed in Featured, International, Online marketing, Real Estate Industry News, Technology, Website news

fore-logo-homeLater this week Realestate.co.nz will host its first ever conference focused on the role that technology in all its forms is having on the real estate industry. Titled the “Future of Real Estate” the conference to be held on Friday 3rd September at Waipuna conference centre in Auckland and will feature both domestic and international speakers as well as workshop sessions focused to the key business tools of the web – Facebook, blogs and Twitter.

The conference is very much influenced by the experiences I have encountered in attending the Inman Connect conferences in the states each year. Coupled with the style and richness of the Inman conference the NZ conference echos a quotation which I first heard at least 3 years ago and still to this day rings so true:

“Traditional agents will not be replaced by technology.. they will be replaced by agents with technology”

The quote comes from an Australian real estate conference and every time I use it; it reinforces to me the critical requirement of real estate professionals to recognise that technology is not the threat, but rather it is the means to take a giant step forward and surpass all those in the industry who believe technology is the threat. Over these past years I have been keen to get together an event in which we can help those in this industry who want to move ahead and who are keen to meet like minded individuals and listen and collaborate with the best in the business. This conference is the realisation of this ambition.

The event features some great contributors:

From the US we have invited Joel Burslem. Joel is a respected expert within the real estate industry. He is a blogger, real estate marketer and consultant. He founded the Future of Real Estate Marketing blog whilst working at Inman  News and now is a key part of the consultancy firm of 1000 Consulting. Joel will be providing an overview of the trends in digital marketing around the world with detail around the role of social media in this industry.

From closer to home we have Nicholas O’Flaherty who is MD of Bullet PR, a respected specialist media consultancy company whose clients value the skills and innovation Nicholas’ company brings to the implementation of social media. Bullet recently hosted the enormously popular Social Media Junction conference with outline plans for a further event later in the year. Nicholas will be picking up on Joel’s presentation and bringing the local perspective as well as the practical examples of the best in the marketplace today in NZ using all forms of social media.

Addressing the ever present question in relation to the web – that of search we are very pleased to have Charles Coxhead joining the conference. Charles has a long and distinguished career specialising in search. As an online search and marketing consultant he has worked with clients such as Air New Zealand, Expedia as well as Realestate.co.nz. He will bring some focus to the ever evolving search landscape that nowadays transends beyond just Google into real time search as well as hyper local search and in so doing will apply the test as to the relevance for the real estate industry.

Our final keynote speaker is Simon Baker. Simon is well known and highly regarded within the real estate industry primarily in Australia where for 7 years he lead the stellar growth of realestate.com.au into the substantial ASX listed company with revenues exceeding A$160m. Since leaving the REA group, Simon has persued a strategy as an investor and consultant, his focus in online classified businesses with international scale and within that area he has investments in a number of Asian real estate portals. He brings to the conference a reflection on the criticality of the real estate portals and the heart of the business which is exposure to real estate listings through online marketing. He will also provide some interesting insight into the comparison of development between Australasia, Europe, US and Asia when it comes to real estate online.

The event promises to be a fast paced, rich content experience which in addition to the keynote presentations will feature workshop sessions on Twitter, Facebook, blogs and online etiquette. The day culminates with a panel discussion on the topic of the future of real estate and its implications for all involved in the industry.

The event is for the real estate industry and anyone involved in the industry at whatever level or in whatever capacity is welcome to register. There is a limited number of spaces still available so if you are interested please register before the event as registrations need to be made online prior to the event.

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The touch screen – transforming our consumption of media

Posted on: July 26th, 2010 | Filed in Featured, Technology

touch screen croppedI sense that we are reaching a tipping point (to quote the title of the excellent Malcolm Gladwell book) when it comes to our engagement with consumption of media.

I have just spent a week in the US at admittedly a technology conference for real estate, but my overwhelming sense is that we will witness within a year (maybe two at the outside) the transformation of our media consumption

We are at the dawn of the transformation where our simple finger(s) will drive our actions.

It started barely 3 years ago with the launch of the iPhone and as ever the adoption curve has become exponential. The iPhone was followed within a year with a couple of other smart phones all using our simple index finger to drive a complex computing platform in the palm of our hand. That couple of mobile devices (calling them phones is misleading) has grown into a flood as the Google Android platform has provided the open-source option to Apple’s proprietary system.

Adding to the smart phone platform has come the iPad, with a a staggering 3 million iPads sold in the first 100 days – far exceeding the initial sales of iPhones 3 years ago – this for a product costing over US$500 of which the majority of the first quarter of a million buyers had not even seen let alone touched the device before they typed in their online credit card order. A staggering US$1.5 billion in pre-order sales has to be a record for a brand new piece of complex technology.

This pervading wave of new hand-held mobile computing devices radically changes our engagement from the humble keyboard to the screen. For anyone who owns or has used a smart phone or an iPad (of which there are reported to be several thousand in NZ already, yet it is not officially on sale) the user experience is both intuitive and instantly engaging. You are drawn to “click” (touch) and swipe; you pinch to zoom and rotate to change perspective – the keyboard suddenly seems part of the typewriter generation.

The comment was made to great amusement at the conference that the 3 year old son of one of the presenters went up to the TV the other day and tried to swipe the screen to change channel!

Having said that I am still typing this using a traditional keyboard, and that is where the demarcation exists. The touch screen mobile devices are consumption devices, whereas for content creation the traditional PC with a keyboard still retains a functional efficiency. There is a blurring of the edges admittedly when you attach a blue tooth keyboard to an iPad, but that reinforces the point that our adopted manual dexterity for the keyboard is hard to supplant with a touch screen – some how the physical keys depressed to reinforce typing is too ingrained in our psyche, or at least it is for our current generation.

As a point of clarification the expression “media consumption device” does not imply a restriction to just reading magazines, viewing music and movies or playing games – just take a look across the endless aisles of apps for the iPhone or iPad, now totaling close to 200,000 and you can see almost every conceivable concept presenting every conceivable form of data.

So where does all of this take the real estate industry and the property searching process. As I stated in the summary from the Connect conference, “Location is context” and mobile computing devices are location aware devices so this tipping point will be critical for real estate. Being mobile to be able to view property information will benefit both buyers, sellers and agents. The insatiable demands of buyers and sellers to be better informed in the data that lives behind property transactions will be forthcoming at the point of decision making – inside a property, for as much as rich media can provide great insight to a property nobody is going to make that buying decision without doing the walk-through, well almost nobody!

Full Disclosure

I have both an iPhone and iPad – my experience with the iPhone was instantaneous (although I was a late adopter), it is both intuitively simple and yet so staggeringly valuable and versatile. As for the iPad, I have had it for 2 months and I had an initial passion as part of the novelty; this waned slightly, however once I adjusted to its use as a complement to a laptop and the addition of some awesome apps I am now beginning to get hooked – seriously hooked! The recent launch last week in NZ will certainly only enhance the experience as I suspect we will see a flow of excellent local apps onto the “shelves” of the app store.

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Connect – the global conference where technology and real estate “connect”

Posted on: July 17th, 2010 | Filed in Featured, International, Real Estate Industry, Technology, Website searching

San Francisco skylineWhat began as a small gathering of technologists and tech minded real estate people over a decade and a half ago has evolved into the most significant global conference on real estate – not just real estate technology. I make this statement as the reality is that technology is, has been, and will in the future, continue to be the largest change agent of this industry globally.

Connect is hosted by Inman News – the specialist news service for the real estate industry and its charismatic founder and host of the conference Brad Inman.

This year’s San Francisco event (they are hosted twice a year – New York in January) has just wrapped up and for me as a regular attendee the value of the event never fails to deliver.

A key essence of the event is information overload. The feeling that after 3 days you have been exposed to the largest mass of insight and emerging comprehension of where this industry is heading in the future. There are always (I sense deliberately) more sessions and content than one person alone can consume. That means that after these 3 days I have to sit down and re-read the scribbled notes and digest the learning in order to come up with a picture that has emerged from the conference.

There isn’t a single message promoted as the theme of the conference, but there is always, in summing up the conference an emerging train of thought that can best describe the conference. For me this year that came from one of the final speakers on the last day – Matt Gilligan of SimpleGeo, who made the simple statement that “Location is Context”. A simple statement, but in my mind loaded with powerful inference. For over the past 2 years the emerging role of mobile technologies has grown and grown to the situation where at this conference more than any other preceding Connect conference mobile was all anyone talked about. Mobile is all about location and being location aware is in a broader context a radical paradigm shift for almost all businesses, however for real estate location is at its very core. The phrase “Location, Location, Location” is an international phrase as well known as the McDonalds “I’m Loving it” or Nike’s “Just do it”

A show of hands ably demonstrated the view of the attendees (some 2,000 of them) as to ownership of smart phones (>70%) and iPads (c.15% after just 3 months on sale!). This industry, or at least those at the forefront of technology adoption within it, are embracing mobile as a game changer for the industry. The exhibiting companies as well as almost all presenters talked and demonstrated smart phone apps and iPad apps – next year this portfolio will undoubtedly extend to include Andriod and potentially Microsoft Mobile Window 7.

Another interesting stream of content from the conference of specific relevance to Realestate.co.nz was the whole area of search. A couple of excellent panel discussions and workshop looked at search as the online tool of entry to the real estate marketplace. Providing an unbiased and external perspective was Gary Flake of Microsoft who rightly asked the question; could there be a better way of searching for property? after all the facet based search on price, bedrooms, bathrooms and property type is really a crude way of interpreting the characteristics of lifestyle / lifestage. This theme was picked up by a workshop group who having the benefit of a 24 period to debate and discuss the issue came back with some excellent proposals around leveraging the “Social Graph” to apply all that accessible online information tied up collectively in all your personal behaviours, actions and intent online to better present property that really should suit you.

The practical application being that if you were able to share your key social graph around these parameters – salary = price range; family scale = size of house; age = size of house / location; entertainment likes & activity = location / style of house. All of these clues are bound up in your profile & activity on sites such as Facebook / LinkedIn / Amazon / iTunes / Netflix / your bank account. Now clearly this list includes some very non-public data and as such raises some red flags, but just challenge the concept for a moment to say, if this social graph was inputted through an algorithm to the database of available property on the market as well as alerts to new property, it would certainly provide a richer set of results than just searching for 3 bedroom homes under $500,000 in inner city suburbs of Wellington.

The Connect conference is in many ways a reaffirmation of the fact that we live in a wired (& more so these days wireless) and mutli-connected world and the issues and challenges faced in the real estate market in NZ are so similar to the issues in Europe, US, Australia and Asia, further evidenced by attendees from all the major developed countries of the world represented at the conference. This was further evidenced when set against the hi tech apps and online tools profiled at the conference, a presenter talked of the abandonment rate of telephone inquiries which divert to voice mail and from research how low the return call rate was. It left a sobering reinforcement of the fact that technology cannot replace the human process, but hopefully can make the smarter agents more effective and efficient and enable them to track that performance more accurately as an individual or business owner.

Connect is a valuable event. It has grown from being a US domestic event to become an international event – even noted by many at this years conference that Australians seems to be “everywhere”. I personally was delighted to see a good number of NZ representatives eagerly absorbing the content. It is a conference I would highly recommend to anyone with a conviction to invest in their career in real estate and who recognises the game-changing role of technology in that future.

Sydney skyline

Great news could be on the horizon, there was a question asked in the closing session as to other locations for hosting Connect. The question was posed by an American, their question was directed at an alternative US location, but the answer from Brad included the inference that they might look at international locations – Beijing and Sydney were mentioned.

To have a Connect in our Asia Pacific region would be enormous and I will share my passion and support to try and get such a conference organized.

15

Time to upgrade your web browser to enjoy the new Realestate.co.nz websites

Posted on: April 22nd, 2010 | Filed in Technology, Website news, Website searching

mosaic-browserI have today personally received 3 complaints in regard to our newly released websites – the common thread was that these sites were broken! – the tabs did not work and the search was unusable. Not good news to any website business. The question I had to ask myself and the rest of the team was – how could it be that we could get these 3 distinct and specific issues when thousands of sessions were being served in the past 24hrs with no issue?

Further investigation revealed the common theme – Internet Explorer 6.

Here comes the brutal truth – our new website architecture does not support and will not support Internet Explorer 6 – sorry!

The constant challenge that faces every web based company is what browser to support. The web has been in operation since the very early 90’s – at that time Netscape was the king of the hill, over the years new and improved web browsers have been released. Each new release bringing enhanced user benefits to speed up and improve the experience of using the web. The challenge in building a website is to be able to ensure the majority of users can enjoy the features and benefits of the website without having to compromise to suit everybody.

There is a very clear and trusted rule which I believe is appropriate to apply in such matters – that rule is “Support to N-1″. This translated means that you build a website which is compatible with the latest version of all available web browsers and also in addition to support the last version. In the case of Microsoft Internet Explorer, the current version is IE8, so we built the new site to run on IE8 and the predecessor IE7. We did not build it to be compatible with IE6.

This rule is consistently applied to other web browsers such as Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera etc. The big problem is that the rule of “n-1″ for all other browsers is not a problem as most users of non IE browsers tend to upgrade regularly taking advantage of security enhancements and feature improvements. It is also important to remind people – browsers are free to download. When it comes to IE6 however the problem we and many thousands of web companies across the world face is that IE6 was probably the most widely used web browser, as it was packaged with the hugely successful Microsoft Windows XP and many companies chose not to upgrade to Windows Vista in early 2007 and therefore have not chosen to upgrade to the later version of IE7 or IE8.

I don’t need to labour the point, but if you are using IE6 I would recommend reading this Wikipedia page on IE6 – it states that the IE6 browser is “widely derided for its security issues and lack of support for modern web standards, making frequent appearances in “worst tech products of all time” lists, with some publications labeling it as the “least secure software on the planet.” It is a fact that the French and German governments have advised their citizens not to use IE6. It is also important to remember than IE6 was released in 2001 – it is 9 year old technology which in web years is close to half a century!

So whilst I am sorry if you are experiencing issues in viewing these new websites. My recommendation would be to download IE8 – it only takes a few minutes, but the value to you will be immeasurable not least in knowing that the security of your internet usage will be many hundreds of times better and your enjoyment of the new Realestate.co.nz websites will be enhanced.

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Twitter – carving out a valuable space in our day to day world

Posted on: March 11th, 2010 | Filed in Online marketing, Technology

twitter-birdOne of the great benefits of a blog is the ability to go back in time to review old posts and see how issues have changed and then refer to them. So when it comes to Twitter I find myself writing a third post on this subject.

My first post was back in August 2008 and at that time I had set up a Twitter account but felt a bit like a sideline spectator trying to better understand the benefits outside of event commentaries.

Some 6 months later and I found myself with 3 months of active usage under my belt and a growing appreciation of the benefits of this communication technology.

So a further year on and I find that Twitter is now my “first place” for news as well as status updates on my world and the connections I want and need to make with the world around me. It is more important than news websites and RSS feeds and with the many applications drawing on the API it is conspicuously becoming a more frequent check than my email.

Simply put Twitter is a live feed into the world I am interested in which has a large component of real estate, and sourcing real estate news can be undertaken so easily by following the key people who like me use Twitter to highlight their latest blog post or direct people to interesting stories on the web.

Every time a major event or news story breaks I can now be assured that if I am at my laptop I will hear about it / see it on Twitter – no longer do I have to refresh the news sites. With mobile clients even when away from my laptop I know truly the world is at my finger tips.

For me Twitter is certainly not inane banter – it is a business tool to aid productivity and comprehension. It is also a marketing tool to ensure that my aspiring communications about this real estate industry are spread and read widely. I do that by cultivating a loyal following through valuable referrals to information and articles of interest – the very essence of reciprocity.

So 15 months into serious Twitter usage it is time to further tailor my approach to Twitter. We have launched a Realestate.co.nz Twitter account.

Realestate.co.nz (realestateconz) on Twitter-1

From now on the tweets on the Realestate.co.nz (@realestateconz) and my own account (@alistairnz) will  be clearly separated. Realestate.co.nz Twitter account will focus on news and articles purely related to the industry of real estate. This will comprise articles on the industry for both agents and consumers alike, it will also draw attention to recent blog posts written by agents who blog both on their own and on the Voices platform on Unconditional. The account will also be able to provide a status update to the website – should anything need urgently communicating.

As for my own account, I will tend to use this to share observations and insights into things I think are important – real estate certainly, but also technology and business in general.

So please come join us and follow Realestate.co.nz on Twitter and/or follow me on Twitter.

3

A perspective of real estate search in 2012

Posted on: February 19th, 2010 | Filed in Buying / Selling a home, Technology

The first two months of this year has provided me with a clear view of the future of real estate; and at the same time provided a view of the leap that I think we will collectively take in the application of technology in the property market. This clarity has come as a result of a couple of key signals, the first of which came from the single defining message from the Inman Connect conference in New York at the start of January – the message loud and clear was MOBILE.

Mobile, as in the always-accessible, real-time, comprehensive, location-aware data to enable buyers to be more efficient in the property searching process to find that perfect home.

Apple iPadSecondly we have witnessed the birth of not just a new product, but a new category in technology. I am speaking of course of the iPad. I am confident this new product will spawn a new category for information and media consumption. The new Apple device whilst being derided by some as just an iTouch with a bigger screen, for me is the first computing device built as a reading device that is not derived from the humble typewriter. If you cast aside smart phones for the moment for their limited screen size; the iPad is the first accessory that is designed to be viewed, read and used to help us make sense of information. It is not compromised by a clam shell construction and a 19th century keyboard structure.

Rightly as some will argue the iPad will not become the instant hot item as the iPhone was; but give it a few years and let a few of your friends get one, and before long the iPad and the “me-to” devices that will undoubtedly spring to life will hold a serious role in consumers’ lives in the coming years.

So the question then is – how could this device and its competitors change the world of property search?  To think this through, visualise for a moment a day in the future, some day a year or so from now when you are looking for a new home.

You will be walking across the road to the open home having utilized the turn by turn driving instructions in your car downloaded from the web app to get the travel sequence for today’s open home schedule for the 3 properties you wanted to check out. The app also conveniently worked out and recommended a convenient cafe on the route for you to have a quick coffee.

The long black and flat white was all the better for the online promotion code and the service more than merited a recommendation easily uploaded through the iphone app as part of the open home schedule.

Approaching the open home you activate the record device on your iPhone to capture images and comments pertaining to the layout of the house – all contextually linked to the dynamic floor plan of the property. You calmly wander through the house having by passed the registration book as an established client with the real estate agent.

No need for open home brochure here, as the agent had already provided all the necessary reports including LIM, valuation, title record and Zoodle report on the community and amenities. All accessible and stored online for easy reference.

The open home “host” reminds you politely for the completion of the open home survey which has already been triggered by the iPhone app. The open home “host” now has a complete list of attendees at the property through blue-tooth & RFID matching to enquirers interested in the property.

Leaving the property your attention is drawn to the property across the road. Accessing the Zoodle app you verify the property ID through the augmented reality and having already set up a 3 month subscription service to the Zoodle data you are instantly provided with sales history and current valuation on the property as you stand facing the house. The data certainly gives you confidence that the home opposite, the one you are keen on is reasonably priced.

Returning home you relax in the lounge and complete the open home survey on your iPad, providing the listing agent with comments on all aspects of the house. You also take the opportunity to provide an indication of what you think the property is likely to sell for. You then have the chance to review the property combining the agent provided details together with your own images and notes recorded during the open home visit making for a comprehensive portfolio about the property all stored and accessible on the “My Property” section on Realestate.co.nz.

With all the relevant information you could need, you are now ready to contact the agent to discuss an offer – you conference in the agent and your solicitor and make an offer – all electronically – of course!

2

Technology is the key to the future of real estate

Posted on: February 5th, 2010 | Filed in Agent Tips, Other interesting reads:, Technology

Real Estate Connect New York City 2010 | Real Estate and Technology News for Agents, Brokers and Investors | Inman NewsI have taken a week or so following my attendance at the Inman Connect Conference in New York earlier last month. In this time I have collated my thoughts around the conference to share these here now.

As has become traditional with Inman Connect conferences of the past couple of years there is usually a single takeaway that I carry with me as I return to NZ from attending these events.

In 2007 at my first conference the takeaway was social media and the emergence of blogs; 2008 was the rise of Facebook and Twitter as platforms for real estate conversations; 2009 was all about data and a growing transparency for the real estate industry – agents embracing the concept of consumer review and critique of the performance metrics of the industry.

For 2010 the takeaway was mobile – mobile as in real time, location based, real estate data, accessible on portable devices.

Mobile computing came of age in 2009.

YouTube - Trulia iPhone App UpdateWith more than 75 million iPhones sold and a growing collection of alternative smart phones, most significant of which is undoubtedly Google’s new entrance through the Android mobile operating system and now the Nexus One, it is very clear to see that we are on the fast accelerating adoption curve where we will see many hundreds of millions of new generation smart phones purchased in the coming months and years. All of these devices are in fact far more mobile computers that just happen to provide voice communication rather than phones in the sense of what we have been using for two decades to make mobile calls.

The future as Brad Inman (the conference host and owner of Inman News) said in summing up the conference; the future is very clear and bright (and profitable) for those agents who understand and leverage the technology revolution in this industry that began at the start of this last decade and in some ways is now really hitting its stride. The great quote I often use in many presentations I do is from an Australian real estate conference of a couple of years ago “Agents will not be replaced by technology – they will be replaced by agents with technology” it just keeps on resonating as so relevant, so true.

The Connect conference is structured to provide a rich mix of technology and real estate business discussions and debates. The origin of the name came from the concept of the place where real estate and technology “connected”. It is featured packed, somewhat frenetic in nature and very much a smorgasbord of discussion groups and break out sessions as well as short – but pithy keynote presentations as well as lots of valuable takeaway ideas and initiatives.

Here then is a smorgasbord of takeaways, which caught my attention during the conference:

  • More and more agents are confidently stating that print advertising has lost all relevance and now all of their focus is on the web, this even lead in one session to the heated quote from a prominent New York agent “print never sold properties”. The move online is not just for advertising properties but also for profiling agents as part of marketing themselves – their brand.
  • The appeal of the iPhone and the development of the apps store replete with real estate apps has developed a culture and unique behaviour particularly on a Saturday as witnessed by massive spikes in traffic to these apps when “soccer mums” seek out local open homes to check out after the kids sports event – this behaviour has now become a phenomenon which is contributing to a noticeable rise in open home visits driven by the real time location based data.
  • Google was a much talked about subject and the conference provided a platform for the company’s real estate representative to share the company’s plans. Needless to say not a lot was shared except to recognise the value that Google saw in liberating real estate data. They refused to be drawn as to any potential acquisition to enhance their already released map based search. As ever with Google they are undoubtedly the smartest guys in the room. They have very clear views and plans and they have massive resources. They will roll out new functionality to enhance basic search, it will be disruptive, it will provide opportunities for them to sell more advertising and more and more of these adverts will be bought by real estate companies and agents. Google are here to stay, and real estate for them is a key agenda item.
  • Video as a complement to image based property presentation always represents a component of these conferences. Whilst the technology is improving in leaps and bounds the limitation and appeal is as ever down to the capability and professionalism behind the camera. The percentage of all listings with a video is increasing; but in reality it still represents a small percentage and always will. Buyers are looking for speed and efficiency at the early stage of search – video is just not conducive as a medium to this process.
  • There were a couple of sessions during the conference titled and focused on challenges to reinvent the real estate brokerage model. This included a panel of key leaders in the industry. Having sat in the breakout sessions and the main panel, I have to confess I was particularly unimpressed by the level of innovation. There was a sense of the same model with just a new set of clothes. There were plenty of good words – such as accountability, transparency, ethics, and personal service. Lots of plans to leverage social media and engage with clients, but through it all; it was the same model – advertise and farm for vendor (and buyer) leads, advertise everywhere, manage leads and negotiate sale for a % of the selling price. The question in the back of my mind was:
    * Is the current model broken” – answer “No!” (Or at least not significantly broken)
    * Is their scope for innovation and significant differentiation in business model – answer “Surely must be!”
  • An excellent session was a “start-up alley” of new technology companies offering services to the real estate industry. This was the chance for these new companies to share with the attendees their pitch for their company and for the audience to vote for the concept most likely to succeed – which they would most likely invest in. These were all companies, which were largely operating, and at this time many of which were self financed
  • I was impressed at the diversity and innovation; they covered the range from agent business applications to online media sales to neighbourhood social – the winner being in the latter category NabeWise aiming to create social commentary around neighbourhoods.
  • As ever the conference has the usual heated debates and literal stand-offs, a classic of the last day was the ubiquitous debate around the structure, value, longevity and relevance of the USA’s unique MLS structure (that is the central Multiple Listing Service) – central is actually the wrong word as there are over 800 MLS’s covering the country and all are largely built as proprietary fiefdoms who to my naive and non-US eyes and ears exemplify the analogy of the buggy maker at the turn of the century as the motor car drove into town.

As a fellow conference attendee shared his thoughts with me during the conference – this is such a valuable engagement with like-minded people, a sense of reinforcement, substantiation and affirmation that in spite of the fact that we may operate in a market of just 4 million people – a tiny fraction of the business scale of Europe and the US we can share, learn, contribute and gain so much to ensure we are constantly challenges to deliver unique and valuable service

Returning to the key takeaway again of mobile as the technological catalyst most likely to impact this industry, it is interesting to speculate as to the landscape of real estate a year or two from now. Whilst the adoption and integration of mobile enabled capabilities within the agent community is uncertain, sitting as I do running a consumer website to assist buyer find their dream home I can very clearly see the future for property seekers as they become mobile enabled with real estate data. More data, more accessible, helping buyers and sellers to make better-informed decisions.

8

The next major technology challenge for real estate – 3D!

Posted on: December 7th, 2009 | Filed in Online marketing, Technology

istock_000008454256xsmallHeading as we are to the end of the decade prompts me to wonder – what will be the “next big thing” for 2010 and beyond?

So I will stick my neck out and say that the next decade will bring a radical change to the real estate industry processes borne of the transformative technology of the visual images we will see on every device in the future. That transformation will come from the switch from 2D to 3D.

To be clear I am not envisaging the adoption of the current version of 3D complete with coloured lens glasses – no! the technology I foresee will be a totally immersive and life-like experience.

I cannot claim to have come up with this prediction – for that I have to thank Phil McKinney the global CTO (Chief Technology Officer) of HP who in a recent interview with the Tech Weekly team at the Guardian podcast in the UK laid out his vision of the future focused around 3D.

So how would 3D imaging radically change real estate?

Well think for a moment around this analogy – the current 2D imaging we see every minute of every day is akin to the very first moving pictures – they were a marvel and without sound relied on captions to provide dialogue. Then came the talkies and some wondered why people would want to have sound – that view lasted all of 5 minutes before sound and image became the norm. So it will be with 3D – there are those that say “why do we need it” – until we experience it.

So imagine this world of 3D – the ability in the case of real estate to genuinely and authentically undertake Open Homes – true, lifelike experiences at the click of a mouse.

With this type of experience for all properties there will be no need for 150 words of description for a property, as the images will be streamed in real time to your viewing device; which will not be  a 17″ laptop or desktop PC, but a 50″ TV monitor.

Browsing through photos will still be the first step of search, but each property will be able to be experienced in a comprehensive fashion; investigating every room of a property from every angle in a truly immersive manner. Added to which you will be able to add your own furniture and colour scheme to ensure you can fit, and that the house fits you!

So how will this impact the real estate profession? – it is likely that we will see changes around the marketing of properties. It is quite possible that the marketing of properties will become an outsourced service. Specialised companies will be contracted by real estate agents to document digitally every property to enable a comprehensive selection of still and moving 3D images to be created.

Removing this task of content creation is great news for the real estate profession, freeing them up to focus their skills directly to the task of facilitating the sale. Bringing together the buyers and seller and providing guidance, advice, local knowledge and statistical insight to ensure that the purchase is executed with clarity and efficiency which satisfies both parties to the sale.

The technology for 3D is not quite there as yet, but something like this certainly has the ability to come upon us speedily. Rest assured when it does realestate.co.nz will be embracing it to add richness to the experience of property searching – we plan to be here providing services to property searchers and the real estate industry way into the next decade and beyond!

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The smart grid – the next extension of the information super highway

Posted on: October 25th, 2009 | Filed in Green, Technology

Smart Grid 101 - Business WeekFifty five years ago the then head of the US Atomic Energy Commission foretold of a time in the future when as he put it “our children would enjoy in their homes electrical energy too cheap to meter”.

We are the children he foresaw, however that world has yet to eventuate. His prediction interestingly was not of future of nuclear power, despite that being the flavour of the day, his prediction was of hydrogen fusion, something that is only now emerging.

Although we are not clearly approaching a time when “power will be too cheap to meter” we are approaching a time when we will be able to closely monitor not only how we use power but more and more how we produce power. The smart grid is emerging as a real future for houses across the world which will provide us with an analysis of our usage by time and type of consumption allowing for decision making which could tie into a greater range of peak and off peak charging by power generators.

Individual solar panels on house roofs which are currently dropping in price (almost in line with the classic “Moore’s Law” which accurately predicted that silicon chip technology would see a doubling of transistors every 18 months matched to a halving of cost) could reshape the balance between generation and consumption aided by wireless accessed smart meters providing online account details.

This scenario is well presented in a recent Business Week article and podcast which examines this phenomena. As the article states it could have an empowering influence for the consumer to better be able to manage power usage in the future, allowing us to make better decisions as to what type of devises to buy and use and also when to use them – aided with enhancements in battery technology which would allow us to even collect and re-sell power at optimal time when demand is high and thereby take advantage of spot pricing.

Not surprising in all of this technological development is the  appearance of Google. Google happens to be one of the major power users of our modern time, with an unconfirmed; but much estimated inventory of web servers and database servers running in the millions of units. The fact is that in our online world power usage at data centres is often far in excess of the cost of the hardware.

Google has long held the principle of organising the world’s collective knowledge and making it available – power usage, consumption and generation is just such information and therefore it is not then surprising that Google this month announced a partnership with a smart meter company. In addition Google already invests in solar farms and is generating most of its own energy at it’s Mountain View campus in California. These are the early signs of where Google could be looking to extend its offering from the web (the utilities of the future – which might just be “too cheap to meter”) to another of today’s utilities.

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Check your address at myaddress.co.nz

Posted on: October 18th, 2009 | Filed in Technology, Website searching

myaddress.co.nz website - NZ address registerWe may be a small country – but sometimes we do make life hard for ourselves, take addresses for example. Most countries have a post code or Zip code which in some countries represents an area comprising on average less than a dozen or so homes, thereby allowing hyper local addressing. Here in NZ our post code is both little known and at the same time not that granular.

This not only makes for issues with postal systems, but more importantly with emergency services. That is why a new website launched by Terralink International is a great opportunity for NZ to get itself back on the map.

The New Zealand Address Register at www.myaddress.co.nz is an excellent tool to allow home owners to check out the place they call home and make sure it is accurately represented on the mapping system which Terralink operates. This is important as Terralink provide mapping services for the emergency services.

Should you find that your property is not accurately represented – not the right number or street name then this website allows you to send in details to submit proposed changes and thereby allow a more accurate record to be kept so that the emergency services know exactly where you are, especially if your house is known by a name rather than a number, or that your street name has an alias!

For the real estate industry addressing is a critical issue. This tool will be a great opportunity for real estate agents to work with clients to ensure that at the time of any listing or prospecting they can provide assistance to ensure their local knowledge enhances the accuracy of this critical website.

As joint venture partners with Terralink in the property information website of Zoodle, we are pleased to see this initiative come to fruition as it will greatly assist Terralink to maintain a more comprehensive up-to-date database of all properties in the country accurately addressed.

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