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/

Guest Blog: Henry Pryor

Here comes Google!


It was only a matter of time but we now know that everyone's favourite search engine looks like it wants a bit of the Property pie. I don’t mean that it’s going to start buying and selling homes nor is it about to help build some of the 200,000 new homes we were told we needed to keep homes affordable. No, it wants to help it’s users to find homes to buy or to rent.

Rightmove, the UK’s biggest property portal announced it’s busiest week ever at the start of January with over 157 million page views over seven days that the country was covered by snow. We knew that most home movers now start their search online but these numbers make scary reading for traditional estate agents who used to control the registers of prospective buyers and tenants. Pre-qualifying those who were to look at their clients homes is still something that some agents trot out as an excuse for the fees they charge.

Sadly, the internet means that you don’t have to answer a whole heap of irrelevant questions from someone you know wants to ‘sell’ you something (probably a mortgage or some conveyancing services!). You choose when you want to look, you choose what you say, you can lie and say you have more to spend than your spouse would ever believe and you can do it all anonymously.

Over 90% of all the estate agents in the UK and a growing number of agents and brokers abroad pay to list on Rightmove and in the UK their rates for new joiners are now over £400 per month per branch! Small wonder that Rightmove is a £600m company and even less surprise that Google is interested in taking a slice of this pie.

Of course Google aren’t saying that they want to compete. It’s all about providing a service to their users. I am still amazed at the number of people I see who put a www address into Google rather than just typing it into a web browser so I can testify to the number of people who given the chance will stay within the Google site if they can.

Imagine using Google maps for directions, seeing homes for sale as you do (and cars, jobs and who knows what else in the near future) and being offered the chance to view the homes, being offered two or three mortgage products while you’re looking and given the chance to be sent more properties like this in the future - all without leaving the Google site and you can see why the established portals might be nervous.

The Digital Property Group (owned by the Daily Mail group) also have a significant investment in the property marketing space having paid north of £70m over the years to acquire brands such as Primelocation, FindaProperty, Under one Roof to name but three. They along with Trinity Mirror (who own Smart New Homes amongst other online property businesses) will all be planning a defence no doubt.

One aggregator, home.co.uk has already taken the option open to all (including estate agents) of using the helpful Google code to populate the Google Base product that at present you can list your inventory on. Home.co.uk has irritated some property players as they collect their inventory by indexing other sites.

This is exactly what Google does so the argument seems a little flawed to me. The bottom line is that those looking to market their properties have never had it so good. The choices are numerous and if you’re looking for something it’s never been easier.

I expect Google will launch with innovations in the next few months. At their offices in London last Spring they helpfully explained the Google approach of being certain that what they want to do will work. There has been silence so far from the Company but you can be sure that when they do go public with their property offering we can expect their competition to be howling and pointing out the Google motto “don’t be evil”!

It is unlikely that customers are going to be anything like as worried.

Henry Pryor

Many thanks indeed to Henry for this entry.  To find out more about his work as a buying agent, industry pundit, internet entrepreneur and all round "good egg" please visit his website at www.hclp.co.uk

www.cognacproperty.com