Well, we have been busy putting up the new Property Owl community (the old Juicy Red Apple), social network, real estate network, gathering place, whatever you would like to call it.
We naturally believe this to be a good thing and I have had many positive comments, only one negative comment and one weird comment. The weird comment reminded me of two recent conversations, one with a software developer (for property) and one with an agent.
The software developer was keen to advertise on this blog and started negotiations with “I don’t really expect too much from this so I want to try it free for three months and then I will committ, but my budget will only be £30 per month”. As I searched for the ‘electrocute the person at the end of the phone button’ I thought I would not just hang up, but try and understand this person a little. I tried to engage her in conversation. Why do you think you won’t get too much from your advert I asked. ”the decision makers don’t read these things, only the minions in the office” she replied. I begged to differ and also went on to explain that they were not minions and were often the real driving forces behind any business (I am a minion I pointed out). I could not believe I was hearing this. I went on to explain about the community and she almost laughed at me! She thought such networks were not for the people that mattered and those that would be buying her product. And this is where I lost it a little, I could not help it. I ended the conversation by asking her two key questions: One, how many clients does she have and can I have a demo of her product so I can review it. Answer to question one: ”I am not at liberty to divulge that information, but we have been in business for 12 years”, answer to question two, “no, we don’t have them” . Needless to say, they didn’t get an advert!!
I should point out the software developer was not one of the well known players.
The second conversation was with an estate agent. He was old school and didn’t like the phrase ‘real estate’. I asked him how he would define the industry in which he works and he simply replied “property”. Whilst he is certainly not the sharpest chisel in the pack, he has been around a while and I thought he may have something interesting to say about the new community. ”I don’t know why you are bothering with that” he delightfully said. ”I don’t like other agents and certainly don’t want to share my thoughts with my competitors”. This went on, back and forth as I tried to educate this guy about …… just common sense business really. But he wouldn’t even listen and it all ended with me pointing out that he had two failed agency practices behind him already and he was asking me for advice!!
I recommended the above software provided to him and recommended the growing market in outer Mongolia.
This did get me thinking whether I was actually in the right space and doing the right thing, but then I genuinely had a buzz about me today as I watched all our members sign up to the new site and interact with each other – I was a like a child watching his first 3D movie.
Please enjoy the community and please ask your colleagues, friends, associates to sign up.
As you may know, I don’t normally jump on the Rightmove bashing bandwagon, but I see on estateagenttoday that Rightmove are to increase their charges by 20%.
What is it with these guys? First, they say google are rubbish, don’t worry about them and then go on to say, in fact…. we are so good we are going to put our prices up. Yes we know you have had a tough year, but so have we, our shareholders took a bit of a pasting and we want to show them we have not gone soft.
But then, hold on, Google maps are ok so we will start using google maps. Oh well, whatever, we are putting prices up and like BT and the trains you still need us so tough, pay up!
I rarely use the word wow, but …. wow!* We have been nominated with four others as best blog by Primelocation.com
Thank you to those who took the time to vote for us and just making it onto the list is an achievement. I believe this is the first such award for blogs in this industry and I am pleased to link to my fellow nominees. They are: Cognac Property, Agent’s Diary, The House Historian and Renter Girl. All great blogs.
The winner is announced on 1 February 2010 so I am off to prepare my speech, but first I would like to thank my mum, the milkman, my first teacher, my ……….
* definition – an exclamation of surprise, wonder, pleasure, or the like
Martin Smith spotted a letter from rightmove to all their staff on the FT.
Didn’t someone famous say don’t worry it isn’t loaded then had his head blown off?
Anyway, rightmove may have a small point about having a strong big brand, but big brands go down just as much as they go up. Indeed, some of the worlds largest companies went down recently, big brands! Lehman Brothers, Enron, general motors, ABN, Texaco and of course Woolworths … the list goes on and on.
Rightmove is not in this league and the more interesting questions for me are twofold. First, how many agents actually contacted rightmove and what were they asking? Secondly, why do companies still adopt this attitude of ‘lets fight’ when they should be saying ‘let’s work with’. Would you really believe a rightmove customer service agent if they said to you in response of your question about google, ‘ahh, don’t worry google are rubbish and our brand is much better’? I don’t think you would believe this. What I would want to hear would be along the lines of yes we are always keen to see what Google are up to and we are endeavouring to work with them in this space. Now that would give one confidence. This all smacks of misplaced arrogance.
The letter as follows in full as taken from the FT,. with thier comments (cat references included – they are good):
Dear all,
It has become apparent that many of you are facing some questions from unusually inquisitive agents who are interested to hear about how we see the future for online property advertising. It could well be that they just asking after us because they care, though I suspect the reality is that this sudden interest in our business and the wider market has been prompted by the will-they-won’t-they story surrounding Google.
The reality – we think! – is that at some point Google will launch a real-estate feature in the UK. We can’t be sure about when they will launch but we can hazard a guess that what they will launch will be along the same lines as their real estate features in Australia and the US, launched in July. So, what do we know about the brave new world of online property advertising in Australia and the US?
[Not very much it would seem:]
What Google have actually launched in both the US and Australia isn’t actually very easy for users to find!
What Google have launched is only accessible via their maps function and not part of their main search results directly through google.com (or Google Australia). In other words, at the moment, users have to know it’s there and go looking for it. See if you can find it. You’ll see what I mean.
[And then things get really catty:]
Not everything Google turns its hand to turns to gold
Google are huge, Google are successful, but Google also get things wrong sometimes. At any one time Google has more than 100 products and features available but not all of these go on to become best-in-show or topple existing market-leaders. Whilst products like Google Mail and Google Maps are obvious successes, Google failed to get the better of You Tube with Google Video and Knol, Google’s user-generated online encyclopaedia, has failed to have any impact on Wikipedia. And anyone used the Google’s answer to Facebook? No, thought not.
There are plenty of other examples too. Much of it depends on how seriously they take it and where they see their priorities. Google’s answer to Internet Explorer, Chrome, is being heavily advertised at the moment, but they rarely run such high profile above-the-line advertising on that scale for products. The fact that Chrome is head-to-head with a well-established Microsoft product (Internet Explorer) probably explains the Chrome campaign.
[Meow:]
Can Google match the service we deliver to users through the site and our account handling teams?
Not only does Google have to match existing websites in the market (and not just ours) in order to seriously challenge, but they will also have to match existing offers from a customer service perspective too. That means matching our teams of AMs, TAMs and CST who work incredibly hard to make sure that our member agents are expertly looked after and get full value from everything we offer. And Google are not famed for the ‘human-touch’ when it comes to dealing with customers: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/8451473.stm. They’ll need to keep up too. Everyone knows how much work went into the second half of last year alone to deliver the agent scorecard, two new products (local homepage and featured agent) and a new agent-focused marketing campaign and TV ad
Brand and market leaders are pretty hard to budge! Others have been eying-up our #1 spot for some time without making a significant dent in our lead. And, anyway, we’ve all worked very, very hard to get the position that we are now in – you don’t get c.90% of the agents and more than 50% of all pages viewed without a bit of graft.
And some of the numbers from recent research are pretty compelling too: We serve more pages of property than all the other property websites measured by Hitwise added together (there’s about 1400 of them!) Awareness of Rightmove amongst the public stands a 64% without prompts and 91% when prompted (to put that in context, McDonald’s have a score of 98% for prompted awareness and Burger King a score of 95%) Of those that have ever heard of Rightmove, more than 7 in 10 say that it is the property website they “turn to first” 32% of people who bought a home in the last 12 months first saw that home on Rightmove.
The Negotiator reports on a Foxtons refinancing deal that will see their debt reduced £300 million to £120 million.
Apparently, discussions over Christmas have seen the banks and the founder, Jon Hunt, who sold out for £370 million odd either reduce their stakes for equity or write it off completely. The founder apparently had the benefit of a shareholders loan for £50 million.
The banks originally lent £260 million, which like all great plans went up after Foxtons apparently rolled up interest payments into the debt.
But will this be enough? Foxtons MD says he can now face the future with confidence. Well, on the one hand it extremely handy to have your debt slashed by over 50%, but when you still owe at least £120 million and the bank owns the company and the board one has to ask whether the future is as bright as the MD hopes. Indeed, with the banks now running the show and appointing their own board will they keep it going, chop it up, sell it? Apaprently, there will be some cash available to spend, but with the bank’s board at the helm, will such cash be channelled where it is needed most?
The post aims at finding 1000 true fans for your product/business.
The post is directed towards musicians and artists and Seth asks whether there is a business case for developing this theory. Taking it one stage further, can we identify a business case within real estate?
No doubt, to find and organise 1000 people can change your world and can earn you a living. Seth points out that 1000 people each spending £1,000 is a million pounds. Moreover, 1000 peopel willing to spend £250 on a seminar gives you ‘…the leverage to invite just about anyone you can imagine to fly in and speak…’.
1000 people can change many things, but how can we apply this to real estate? Certainly at the learning level and social networking level we can aim for 1000 members. Indeed, Juciy Red Apple (Property Owl) is aiming for this magic number. We hope we can become indispensable for the community and develop a true fan base of 1000 members. That of course doesn’t mean just 1000 members it means many more, but with a core of 1000 ‘true fans’. The number may change a little but the principle remains.
So, back to real estate. Can an agent (for example) adopt this strategy? Why not?! The question is how to build a true fan base of house buyers/sellers/renters/landlords. I guess it comes back to loyalty, ensuring that your customers come back to you. With musicians one can see how a true fan will buy every album, even the platinum version with the same tracks they already purchased, but it is less easy to see how to breed such loyalty in house sellers with agents. Yes, good service, fair price, efficiency and the like all come into play, but how do you reach that true fan, the one who will always use your firm no matter what.
Seth says focus on ‘… long term relationships and life time value. You don’t find customers for your products. You find products for your customers…’ But real estate agents do find customers for their products and products for their customers.
Now you will probably say we have heard this before and it is what we do already, but can you actually identify these ‘true fans’ can you say confidentially they will come back to you when they next sell/buy/rent? Will that landlord continue to use you?
This is the year to build that loyalty, but by being different. And I mean different, push the envelope.
Lee Bramzell of Property Index tells the owl that they are in the midst of a management buyout.
As first reported by the Negotiator (I think), Property Index does appear to be in administration. Lee tells the owl that:
” Property Index was placed in administration last Thursday due to the underperformance of the UK side of the business. However, backed by a small group of private investors I am buying the business back. At present, a team of eleven displaced employees and I are operating the business ‘under license’ from the administrator. We are committed to all our clients, in the UK and overseas, and our lead generation partners and are working to ensure that it is business as usual as far as they are concerned. We continue to generate thousands of leads each day and have even signed up new clients since we took the business over on Friday. We look forward to sharing our future plans with our clients and business partners in due course.”
More comment coming on the above and more exclusives coming soon and watch out for changes over at JRA.
‘Google whispers’, ‘rightmove tumble’, ‘Google looms large’, the headlines were everywhere. Following the FT, all the other papers got in on the action and as I sat on the train the other night I spotted the Evening Standard was also running a ‘rightmove shares crash’ story. Even the BBC got in on the act. The EAT carried its usual comments of death to all and I was half expecting to see Rightmove effigies burning in the streets. Rightmove were forced into making a statement.
But what has actually happened? I suspect many traders and investors were asking the same question and the answer is, well …. not much really. Yes we have all been commenting on what Google is doing elsewhere in real estate, but no one at Google has made a statement about the UK market. Yes, Google are in town and doing the rounds, they are seeing a few people over the next couple of weeks, but with no statement of intent the market was simply reacting to one story it didn’t fully understand.
Let’s not forget that in August 2009 Rightmove shares were around 4.00 and at the beginning of the year they were only 1.60 odd. Rightmove shares are currently bouncing around 4.70 to 4.80 mark and the papers have now moved back to proper news such as Katie Price’s love life.
Property Portal Watch rightly asked what all the fuss is about and have prepared some statistics from the Australian market.
From their post ‘… Google “entered” the Australian market 6 months ago (July 2009) when they made it possible for agents, brokers, franchise groups, and portal sites to place their listings on Google Maps. When a user does a search on Google Maps (not the main Google search) for real estate, Google plots the houses in its database on the maps and users can then click on the various dots to see if they like the houses and then are driven back to the advertiser’s site.
At that time, there was a similar uproar and many were predicting the death of realestate.com.au and domain.com.au and the REA Group share price dropped nearly 7% from $5.90 to $5.50. However in the 6 months since the announcement by Google, the REA Group share price has increased 53% to $8.44, the traffic to the site has increased from 4.5m UB’s in June 09 to 5.4m UB’s in October and analysts are predicting an additional 20% revenue growth for the REA Group in FY 2010.
Keep reading the threads of discussion over at JRA as there is a whole host of information on this subject and there will be much more to come. Property Portal Watch will be posting a series of articles which will undoubtedly be essential reading. Dan Hare over at the Academy also has a good blog worthy of a read.
Any talk of google damaging estate agents is misplaced. Indeed, if Google makes searching for property easier it is common sense this will benefit agents. At least those that recognise the importance of having search friendly pages and take the time to feed into google.
Straw poll – how many agents currently feed property into Google?
This will keep commentators and pundits busy for a while, but what would be of extreme importance is quality research. Fully understanding user behaviour (to local level) in google property searches will become paramount.
I of course told you this would happen in 2008 so I will be talking about changes in 2011 (smug), but I doubt my comments will have such a dramatic effect on share prices.
Reported on Brand Repulic yesterday and now on the Globrix blog, the management of Globrix have purchased News International’s stake for an undisclosed sum.
Well, this is news and what will happen next I wonder? Surely, the Globrix team cannot continue to fund the operation without the support of News and I am guessing the freebie adverts and online assistance will cease.
Dan says he is ‘… delighted we have had the opportunity to buy News International’s stake in the business. This move means they can focus on their core activities and that we can continue to progress Globrix as a technology business and a growing UK property portal…’
Do we hear Zoopla footsteps or will they look upon this as writing on the wall? On the hand Zoopla have deep enough pockets to go and buy Globrix at a knock down rate, but on the other hand they may study the life of Globrix and adjust their own business model. How many millions have been poured into Globrix, more than Zoopla, about the same? Who knows, but it may be a reminder to Zoopla of the challenges ahead.
Maybe another investor is lurking around the corner and this may be good business for Dan and Ian. Indeed, spend News millions on growing brand and then buy back stake at fraction of the cost. Line up new investor, tinker with business model and you are back in business.
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