Just Brilliant – makes you do a double take alright.
However after last years kerfuffle regarding the Open2view photographer (& not just them – everyone else does it too) mentioned in Wellingtons Dominion Post over making the blue sky in Real Estate photos, “blue-er”, or replacing the sky completely, I wonder how this would sit.
I certainly know one thing, this type of “tonque in cheek” stuff would find no flavor with this chap, who made the following comments to the paper re last years Blue Sky / Replacement Sky episode.
……who last year had his Real Estate Bill passed by Parliament bringing in industry reform, joked that Photoshopping photographs was good “if they could make me look slimmer and give me more hair”.
He said realtors should try to show a house “in its ordinary environment”.
“I just think it’s a bit on the nose. The more straight up you are, the better you are.”
I seem to think any property buyer will just not believe that your home in the suburbs has a ….
…..Formula One car……
……or a plane in their suburban garage……..
……or for that matter, a CAT Dump Truck parked there.
These clips and links are to a German site, and the videos are in German, but you don’t need language translation to see what it’s about.
Lets say one thing, if you’re the first in your neighbourhood to do something like this – you will get noticed rightly or wrongly………certainly by the media who would love to jump back on the theme I discussed at the beginning again. Perhaps a great idea for a business -- or even better -- a great way of beautifying what would otherwise be a drab view.
Surprising then with all the range available that there no. 1 is a Harley Road King motorcycle.
I can just visualise now the injured person explaining to the ACC case manager how they got their broken nose, black eye, and lost two front teeth…….
“by walking into a garage door in broad daylight” to inspect a Harley Davidson
I don’t actually think its got anything to do with pimping for sale either -- looks like its just an individuals point of difference for their home.
There’s also a sister site about doors called Style Your Door, with its own eclectic collection of doorfronts.
Could Imagine that some teenagers would think that this would be just want they need to personalize their bedroom?
CREDIT -- images & videos via http://www.style-your-garage.com/ (via http://www.powersiteblog.com)
Tonight’s Weekend edition of the Nelson Mail has the craft and its operator Craig on the frontpage.
You might be familiar with Model Remote Controlled helicopters, but I bet your one, unlike Craigs Skylark & Falco, doesn’t come with;
11 on-board sensors, three gyros, three accelerometers, three magnetometers, a barometric pressure sensor and a inbuilt GPS unit capable of holding the unit in a designated hover
Bit of a mouthful that lot but I really do believe this is the way of the future for real estate photography.
And as I had hinted its not a cheap exercise, the paper quotes Mr Craig Dickie;
It costs about $50,000 to purchase and fully kit out a UAV, but Mr Dickie said that was the price of innovation.
Its not just great for the different amount of angles/heights (CAA restrictions limit it to 120m but it can go higher) that the unit can get to & provide, but more importantly in the future as bandwidth on the internet gets better this will be the type of unit required to generate compelling Real Estate video……..
and HD video (might need to double click above Youtube video and select 720HD on the menu-line at bottom of frame) / videotours like this stunning example above from the States -- but imagine it with heaps more/higher aerial shots / flybys. (thanks Larry @ PFRE for the heads-up on this fab production -- full article here at Scott Hargis’s site. This video was actually completed by a Canon 5D MK II DSLR!)
Maybe that’s why as the article in tonight’s paper notes, Aerial Imaging have a “major car magazine” already signed up and a demo with the Nelson police next week.
You can contact Craig by clicking the link to Aerial Imaging above.
Just in case you missed it a few weeks back, at this months TED2010, in a demo that according to reports, drew gasps from the audience, and afforded the presenter a standing ovation afterwards, Blaise Aguera y Arcas, from Microsoft, demonstrated new augmented-reality mapping technology from his company.
Augmented Reality is very relevant to the future of Real Estate Marketing, I spoke about it here last June as a primer for readers.
Who is Blaise, well he just happens to be the architect of Bing Maps at Microsoft, and is working to build augmented reality into searchable maps.
Watch this and see if you don’t agree.
Certainly is a forerunner of what the agent in 2015 may be showing on his own website, perhaps broadcasting from his Open Day?
Or imagine a setup like this for an on-site auction, would it be helpful if out of town/overseas telephone buyers could see the other bidders?
With the byline of “find the right neighbourhood – find the right home” this site takes a very different approach to Real Estate search, and one that is indeed fascinating.
How about browsing this way…..
browse by seeing what everyone else is clicking on the most **
or by the most frequently viewed schools, maybe a good one for an executive on job transfer to a new town to check out **
…distressed homes ……”mortgagee type sales” in kiwi speak that is, this type of search could also be quite advantageous to a property investor for example **
or by just the highest price – or perhaps more importantly for many buyers…..the opposite end of the spectrum….the lowest prices in the country for example **
or by neighbourhoods, after all it is this sites catchline/motto. **
Would kiwi searchers take to this, think that some of these would be a good idea?
The site I am talking about above is called Cyberhomes.com. +++
They also feature one of my favourites, “heatmaps.”
What are heatmaps?
Heatmaps, or thematic layer maps -are data overlays that are overlaid on a map or satellite view of an area to illustrate the relationship visually.
Just as some people are “numbers” orientated, many others are visually activated.
Heatmaps aid visual clarity enormously.
I find them very important for visual spotting of trends / information that a mere list or graph cannot. They are used famously in the share-market.
One other thing I do like as a real estate browser is this, the ability to create your own homepage.
Why?
Well because it makes a lot of sense to have all your favourite searches, distressed/mortgagee sales, relevant real estate browsing all on the one dashboard screen, set-up for a speedy quick once over glance.
And having the ability to add or remove different sections will help to make your ongoing real estate search so much more efficient …….fruitful I’d say.
Bit of a co-incidence here, but I’ve just noticed McGraths too, have a similar feature, as arrowed above.
Only thing is, unlike realestate.co.nz, McGraths don’t actually show or tell you the number of visitors.
To me that’s necessary from a transparency point of view, and like you can on realesatate.co.nz, it would be beneficial to see what the daily makeup is, and where those visitors come from. In that case, I think the counter on realestate.co.nz, clickable if you weren’t already aware, is a big step up in comparision.
I should mention I note another Auckland website have added a small link on their sidebar as seen above for a “1 click” through to view Mortgagee sales. Speeds the process up doesn’t it, when its a trending search I’d say?
You mightn’t think a list of most popular homes viewed would be important?
However when placed in the context of seeing that same list of data, visually……….
MAP CREDIT – Google
…….the picture is a lot clearer.
Were you to be a seller looking at placing your home on the market, and were still undecided about what time of year/season to do so, then a look at a map like this showing the most popular properties are actually in your immediate neighbourhood could assist you greatly in making up your mind. At least the data is telling you where the buyer activity is right now.
So overall, it looks like searching for real estate will get better.
** one issue I see is that in some of these based on clicks/views models you would need some form of protection to reduce the possibility of fraud, perhaps only registering one click per day/per IP address or so…..that way hopefully discouraging a home owner from artificially inflating the amount of clicks their home registers, or even to the extent that a school may get all pupils to click once from their school / home pc’s on that school – again potential erroneously inflating its rating.
+++ – problems they have – seems to be a few errors on the site today – but the concept is great.
Very refreshing for a Real Estate homepage in Oceania, and in my last post I’d asked…………….
Were there are a couple of “got ya’s” here that an Kiwi or Aussie can deny? The term OE springs to mind.
Studies still show, that second to Ireland, Kiwis presently have the highest percentage of their residential population offshore.
That’s probably not exactly dissimilar to the Aussie situation either.
So to my way of thinking, most anyone downunder would have an instant recognition factor with the above screenshot?
There must be hundreds if not thousands of ex-pats (in a born in NZ sense) that are residing in the UK …….for Aussie’s …….multiply that even more.
Frankly because the site is not trying to be a Yahoo or Google to everyone they intelligently only have one section that “moves” or changes.
There’s enough info / colour on the landing page to keep a browser there for 10 seconds, which is all it takes before that image section rotates to ask a different emotional question?
And because it seems to move/change so often a browsers eyes can’t help but be drawn to it, It wouldn’t surprise me if someone in Johns web team has studied this eye movement/page recognition flow either.
IMAGE CREDIT -google.com
Crucially it’s not even in the top left of your screen, like everyone says it should be…..and that’s great because that’s what everyone else is doing………(remember my post a short time ago about how incredibly successful some contrarian believers have been) so you land on CNN, BBC, ABC News, Yahoo-Xtra……..etc ………….you start to get attuned to that expectation that all the action happens in the top left hand side of your browser page……and then this site has the action, in the top right hand side.
What’s neat here is that it doesn’t really matter which of these icons/lifestyle patterns you click on, you’re taken to the next panel/page………..and in every case you’re always taken to the exactly same Page 1.
This one…….
Frankly no browser will even know any different, because I suspect only 2-5% may backtrack anyway.
Check out the options available……and just for a moment think about it…………would you be tempted to click on one of these……..or would you still want to fill out 3-4-5 boxes and 4 drop down categories to your search for an ideal property.
To be frank ….you probably would click on one of these wouldn’t you?
If for nothing other than to see what the result is. …… just “one click” away?
Which brings me another site that offered another enlightening approach to Real Estate Search……
On behalf of a friend looking for a Sydney property, this week I found myself checking out the website of McGraths Real Estate in Sydney.
I suggest, one of Australia’s most recent forward thinking, successful and invigorating agencies – principal John McGrath has also penned written a book, or two in his time as well as being an inspirational speaker.
Usually when I click on these sites, it’s within 15 seconds that I click “off them” to run on to something else.
What stopped me in my tracks this last week on browsing was something I hadn’t seen before.
The above screenshot is what I saw.
What Kiwi or Aussie can’t be empathetic to that photo – we all know what it represents don’t we?
………..Emotion.
You know I’ve offered up the following question many times before………..
Do people buy houses emotionally or logically?
So what was next?
I was curious, so I clicked.
And I thought to myself, quite a novel approach.
Here’s the homepage at McGrathsso you see for yourself.
That word again…..emotion.
And smartly enough the rotation of these photos like shown in the above screenshots seem to change quite quickly.
You know what……….it doesn’t always seem to me that people buy logically… from experience, so many times I have been in a situation where after the buyer has told me what they want/desire in a property…….I’ve made the appt to visit them in their own “prior to purchase” residence (which I like to do because more than anything this should give you insights into the type of new property they are looking for……and even more so….…will tell you things that differ from what they have even told you they want/must have) that I have recognized parts of their living environment that seem to be “at odds” with what they have mentioned to be desirous in their new residence.
Obviously then, as a professional I would be remiss if I didn’t take that into the equation.
Must admit here though, that the one and only most important time when this is not true……well that’s when two people are moving apart…..even I’ll admit it’s a bit hard to judge at that stage.
Obviously at the end of the day you, as a Real Estate Marketer …….you are there to facilitate……..you show a buyer what they have told you they want………..hmmm and then your intuition kicks in…………and says, why don’t you show them this & this because you know they won’t be unhappy with it.
More than likely that’s when you hear the “…but they showed me this place and it wasn’t anything like what I told them…….” comment.
Let me tell you from past experience in 75% of cases…….emotion kicks in……and people buy a particular property for something that doesn’t appear logical at all.
Frankly that’s where buyers of For Sale By Owners can miss out.
They just don’t understand that as an agent who has seen hundreds / thousands of homes …….you actually are in the box seat to direct/find them the home of their dreams.
But as they are intent on saving $2-3-4,000 for their “future” that they will probably never ever know what they missed out on……..or that their dream home was just 1-2-3 home inspections away.
In other words because they brought privately to save $$$, bypassing contact with an agent, they have possibly missed out on something that logically wasn’t on their list for inspecting, but with an agents experience, could have been shown a property that was “just off their centre line” and moreover “exactly what they wanted.”
This is especially the case when the homes haven’t even been advertised to the whole market/general public…..a situation that has presented itself twice this past week, just to our own Stoke office alone. Sorry what I meant to say twice this week those homes have had multi-offers…….and have already sold..….so the first notice that most buyers will have is showing up to the Open for Inspection (Open Home in NZ) on Sunday to see a SOLD sticker across the sign.
So many times Real Estate portals/search interfaces attempt to be “everything to everybody”….after all I guess in appealing to the masses, which is what they have todo today in a fiscal sense, they probably don’t have a lot of choice other than to do exactly that.
This website was…..refreshing.
And interestingly enough there are a couple of “gotch ya’s” here that no Kiwi or Aussie can deny.
All attention swings to the Winter Olympics this weekend, now there’s a way you can be there too.
In the Winter Olympics city tonight, you too, can get your name mentioned.
First you set up the searchlights here. You’ll need to enter some basic details too.
You can actually watch live views from the 4 separate webcams on this one screen here.
Then you wait……and then you get an email…..
Here’s the email I just received.
Dear David,
Your Vectorial Elevation light design has been shown in Vancouver!
You’ll notice they not only include the actual live webcam snaps but also the virtual representation. Mine was a bit basic – mainly aiming the searchlights directly up in the night sky, maybe you can be a bit more creative.
Theres a shot from each of the 4 webcams (only included 2 in the above snap) but click on the link below to see all 4 shots.
Statistics NZ are on a roll – they have today………………
gone and released another fabulous application called Business Toolbox.
This is fabulous news for businesses and should be a boon for business brokers allowing them and their clients to….as Statistics NZ put it…..
Over on the right of the screen , our old friend table – builder is still there so if you want to do your own completely custom search then thats where you go.
If you haven’t done it before I would advise you to watch the videos they provide online to get the feel of it.
Back to the new application Business Toolbox – what can you do with it?
Well the good folks at Statistics NZ have as you can see above broken the app into two sections, one is more a graphical Mapper, a “GIS” type app.
Whilst the other is more about profiles and provides the data to you more in charts or lists.
Say you’re interested in starting a cafe/coffee shop in Nelson, then this type of chart for your selected region could be very handy to know.
Or perhaps you’d like to try your hand at opening a retail store in Auckland, in which case a chart like this could be beneficial?
Admittedly in both cases I happened to have focused on the “how many left in business after 5 years” version, but there are plenty of others.
Head over here and check it out for yourself and then you decide……….but at the least, tell me about it.
Fantastic new resource for Real Estate persons, and also for buyers / investors who want to find out statistical information about a locality / suburb / town that they may not be familiar with.
Statistics NZ have just released their new NZ Interactive Boundary Maps Application.
Head on over to the main site and you’ll spot the button on the upper right side (as arrowed)
Click on it and away you go.
You can view by whole council regions, or even
break that down into suburb pullouts.
…and by clicking on “View QuickStats” that appears in the pop-up boxes you’ll be taken directly to the latest Census 2006 data relevant to your selection.
Its just so much faster to get directly to that data now.
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