Estate agents aren't normally this shy

OK - I've had a chance to sleep on it now.

Here's my "considered" opinion about winning the Primelocation property blog awards.

Where are all the agents - commercial or residential - why are they not embracing this opportunity?

I write about pretty trivial issues because my clients & friends are interested in the intimacies of my lifestyle out here but that shouldn't diminish the power of blogging in the property arena.

Want a great example of a serious topic (and a brilliant use of blogging) then click here.

These "Notes from Davos" were written by Colin Dyer the CEO of Jones Lang Lasalle. In them he says:

This ‘blog’ was also an experiment in ‘Connections.’

I summarised what I saw, and made it clear when I was giving you my opinion. It gave me a small insight into the life of a journalist, including the feeling I have today, that yesterday’s news is quickly stale!

Want another great example of how a brand can be fortified and stand out from the crowd... then I'd point you towards Chesterton Humberts, read their success story here.

It's not just blogging. A couple of weeks ago I replied to a "tweet" from a journalist looking for comments on a property issue and a few days later found myself quoted in The Independent.

I'm just a one man band "buying agent" in one of the remotest parts of SW France.

OK - I have a lifetime of experience in property marketing but if I can get national press coverage and win a prestigious award like this then imagine what some of the big players in the property world could do!

Social media - it's here to stay and it can bring personality to your brand.

Used correctly it will become an integral part of your marketing strategy and spend (although use it poorly and you'll do untold damage to your business).

Don't be shy now folks.

http://www.grahamdownie.com/

Google Real Estate - a view from The Independent

It's nice to have some of my thoughts quoted on the Google Real Estate revolution in today's Independent.

Graham Norwood has written (another) excellent article on the issue which you can read here.

Yours truly is given the final word which was gratifying as it happens so rarely at home. Obviously space only allowed Graham to pick and choose from the comments I gave him. In full these were:

It's clear that the internet (with Google firmly behind the wheel) is changing the property market from being "seller driven" to "buyer driven" which is it's natural place. Historically estate agents have been all powerful - controlling the flow of information on what's available, how much a property is worth and how it is best exposed to the market.

Property portals and listing sites have chipped away at this over the last 10 years and with Google entering the market the walls protecting this information will soon crumble and fall.

Buyers will be able to use Google to locate the properties available, view exterior photos (and the surrounding areas) and will be one click away from floor plans, internal photos, video tours and other data....where's the mystique now? No more smiling estate agent reaching into his bottom drawer to show you grainy pictures of a house that's "just come on the market".

The really interesting thing will be to see if Google are brave enough to ignore the existing portals (Rightmove, Primelocation etc) and the established agency chains...how about a mixture of "hard" Google technology and the "soft" pretty and ubiquitous, face of Sarah Beeny who runs Tepilo (a private sale website). Now that truly would get them spluttering in their tea at the RICS and NAEA.

Estate agents aren't going to die out but I'm sure we'll see a sea-change in the way they work and earn their fees. Expect to see a mad dash away from advising the seller and towards advising the buyer (it is the buyer who has the cash and desire to spend it after all).

http://www.grahamdownie.com/

Social Media and the property industry

For those of you who use Twitter you'll know that RT stands for "re-tweet". It's a way of spreading interesting news across the internet in seconds.

Today saw a flurry of RT's over this article on a website called Techcrunch. In it the author senses that social media is beginning to alter the way that the property market operates.  It's well written, interesting and worth a read.

Last November I posted a link to a report on the use of social media within commercial property, published on behalf of the RICS.  This too is worth a read.

There's something immediate and tangible that hasn't really been discussed yet though.

It's the ability to use social media to set a corporate "tone of voice" and to allow big corporations to differentiate themselves.

What's the difference between JLL, CBRE and DTZ?  Don't know....nor do I. Because if you took their logos off their corporate ads, literature and websites you'd be hard pushed to know who's was who's.

The same goes for PWC, KPMG and E&Y (getting fed up of the initials yet?).

Now, I've been in the board meetings and I know why this is.

Fear.

Publishing a report & accounts.....for goodness sake don't inject any personality into it in case one of our institutional investors objects to it.

Publishing research....keep it dry or people won't take it seriously.

PR campaign....bugger the true state of the market, keep on message and always highlight these three points (copyright Alastair Campbell, 1997).

Get my point?  Well, social media and blogging in particular can change all this.

If any of the six sets of initials above published a blog then shareholders, clients, potential clients, competitors and staff would all have different expectations (and higher tolerance levels) than usual.

It's a chance to inject personality and charisma into your brand.

Humour, market comment, a softer tone of voice perhaps even some truth.

Of course there are plenty of potential pitfalls and it would be easy to destroy a brand. But it can't be beyond the wit of man to put procedures in place that ensure social media enhances and humanises your other marketing efforts.

Need a brilliant example of what I mean? Click here.

http://www.grahamdownie.com/

I can hear the property journalists sharpening their pencils...

I'm sat here in the depths of rural France but my mind has wandered back to 10 turbulent years worth of working in the heart of the West End of London.

For those who don't know I held a pretty senior position at Chesterton International plc who were one of the largest and most acquisitive property consultancies in the UK.

Just before I joined, the board had floated the practice on the stock exchange and been on a huge buying spree which included recruiting a senior team from Price Waterhouse and a Facilities Management company called Workplace Management. 

There followed a whole host of further acquisitions as they tried to become a true "one stop shop".

As most people know the strategy failed miserably. 

Some put it down to the "deal junkie" mentality of the board, others said it was simply a flawed strategy, even more said it was a fine strategy but the execution was woeful.

Chesterton went into receivership and was broken up. Many people lost their jobs and some (me included)  are victims of a massively under-funded pension scheme.

Anyway - the point is that with Deloittes & Drivers Jonas announcing their "merger" and the likelihood that Capita will be buying Nelson Bakewell in the next week or so I'm offering short odds on a rash of "remember Chesterton" stories as the property journos trawl through their archives and memory banks and sharpen their pencils.

There's nothing new in politics and for those of us who have been around a while we know it's exactly the same in property.

http://www.grahamdownie.com/

Primelocation blog awards - pls don't vote more than once

I had an email earlier today from a beautiful cousin of mine on the other side of the world.  She told me that she'd voted for me a dozen times.  Of course I love her dearly for this and am truly grateful for her kind support.

It's not really cricket though and against the spirit of things so, tempting as it is, please only cast a single vote per person.

I'm grateful too to the owners of my favourite internet café who have encouraged all their regulars to put down their café & croissants and vote for their "local" entrepreneur (whether they can read English or not).

It's all a bit of fun and takes my mind away from what is a pretty appalling property market over here.  I was out with a well known French agent this morning and I asked him what style of house was currently in vogue with his local buyers.

"Graham" he said "they couldn't care less about the style - they're interested in one thing only and that's the price.  If it's cheap enough they'll buy it otherwise they'll wait".

It's a buyers market for sure.  There are some terrific bargains around and if you're considering buying in France this year your problem will be wading through the average & good to find the outstanding.

http://www.grahamdownie.com/

Thanks for the nominations - Primelocation property blog awards

Wow - thanks a million to those people who nominated me for the Primelocation property blog awards.

I have been shortlisted for three of the four available categories and if you really want to make my day you can vote for this blog here.

It's a tough one though as I'm up against some full time journalists/bloggers with massive resources behind them.  Still, if Rage against the machine can knock the X factor winner off the christmas number one slot then anything is possible.

I'm actually chuffed to bits that A little drop of Cognac has done so well.  There are literally thousands of property blogs and many of them have professional writers funded by major corporations.

I write this for fun and (sadly) have to put most of my time and energy into running my business and finding beautiful houses for my clients.

Anyway, that's enough self promotion....my ego will explode if it gets any larger so it's back to "day to day" life now.

And, as regular readers know, that means it's off down to Jarnac, buy L'Equipe and into the bar for my Saturday morning ritual.

Enjoy the week-end (and don't forget to vote!)

www.cognacproperty.com

Rightmove fire a salvo at Google

Terrific stuff from the FT who write about a leaked memo circulated by the top brass at Rightmove.

They (Rightmove) are in a tricky position.

Do they just ignore all the speculation about Google entering the real estate market - and get accused of burying their heads in the sand.

Or, do they come out fighting - and get accused of defensiveness and "feeding the flames".

They're going to be damned whatever they do but I do think that the memo they sent out could have been better crafted.  Read it, (link here) and judge for yourself. 

My take is that they sound scared and bewildered - I'm reading Watership Down to my kids at the moment and I had a "rabbits in the headlights" feeling when scrolling through what Rightmove sent out.  The second paragraph was particularly poor:

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?

Bewilderment and sarcasm aren't the tone to set things off with.

The FT say that they await Googles response.  My guess is that there won't be one - they'll just continue testing, evaluating and meeting the major players in private.

They're a juggernaut and the momentum they are gathering won't be deflected by tactical volleys like this.

http://www.grahamdownie.com/