The challenging economic conditions in the US housing market are leading to a revolution in the use of technology as real estate businesses cut costs and seek to exploit new ways to reach customers

The revolution has seen intense competition develop on the internet as Realtors try to get the most from marketing budgets and harness the growing trend for clients to search for property online. However, as real estate agents suddenly realise the marketing opportunities that the internet offers them, it is forcing them to compete not only with each other, but also with the traditional media organizations that they used to support with their advertising.

‘Media companies will be competing more and more with broker sites,’ says Joy Hanawa, Real Estate GM and Chief Technology Officer for Adicio, which produces online classified advertising software. ‘In the US there are hundreds of MLS’ and only a few major sites on which to see 80 per cent of all listings.  Brokers with access to a listing service, such as an MLS, may have more data than local media companies.’

Getting personal
This glut of data that means that brokers are now fighting to differentiate their websites in what has become an increasingly ferocious battle to drive online visitors to their sites – and then hold them there.

‘What we are seeing now is a lot of personalization going on with website design,’ says Gary Cowan, Vice President of Products for the web development company Datasphere. ‘More and more people are conducting their research through the internet than through any other medium. People are spending hours and days looking for the right property, so you need to give them an experience when they are purchasing property through you that makes them think that they are with you.’

Without that sense of personal presence, potential clients will not stay on a site. The result has been the implementation of web technologies like those used by Datasphere, that try to deepen the amount of information that visitors receive from a website.

In Datasphere’s case, it allows real estate agents to group similar properties in similar places in what Cowan refers to as ‘communities’, so that the viewing experience can be customized for the person viewing it.

Information exchange
The flirtation with personalization does not stop there: personalization has turned into a full blown love affair for a real estate business that has not had to work too hard for customers for the past decade. In fact, some real estate web sites are now in the process of gathering as much information on their customers as some online dating sites, picking up data on age, children, finance, furnishing preferences and taste.

One company, California-based Geosemble, has come up with a model that adds in even more information. ‘The key here is that there are lots of different web sites that list home size, price, number of rooms, lot size, last purchase price and lots of detail on the home itself,’ says the company’s CEO Andre Doummitt. ‘However, what homebuyers need is a simple way to understand the context that the house sits in, i.e. the neighborhood, surrounding businesses, shops, restaurants, news articles about the area, events, and things like flood plains, nearby planned construction of buildings, rail lines, pollution sites.

‘In the old days, you had to gumshoe that sort of information, but it’s data that is really crucial to you, not just because of the investment that a house represents but also because of what difference that information can make to your quality of life.’

Going global
According experts, such as Inman News’ technology columnist, Professor Bernice Ross, it’s information that will increasingly be demanded, as a global market for real estate develops following the move to the web.

Investors are already taking advantage of the current economic climate and buying properties in the US sight unseen from as far afield as South America and the Middle East. Professor Ross predicts this remote viewing process will encourage people to decide that they want to move to a particular area – and then find ways of doing so, rather than seeing employment prospects as the sole driver.

Competition vs collaboration
Such an appetite for information, and its availability, will, according to Hanawa, see the beginnings of the competition between media and real estate websites, as each seek to adopt their models to attract customers and viewers.

‘What we are seeing happening is two industries seeking to redefine each other by adapting and developing the technology that has thrown their old business models up into the air,’ says Aamir Butt, CEO of 3D real estate specialists United Lane and an adviser on new technology models for Atlanta Real Estate. ‘Due to the freefall generated by the present market conditions which has put them under enormous pressure, both sectors are trying to build business models that not only replicate what they once did, but also take on new functions that they do not have any real expertise in.’

Butt predicts that the winners will be those who realise that, rather than competing, they should be working together, a view echoed by Hanawa. ‘Some media companies will join forces with brokerages to get listings in exchange for advertising,’ she says.  ‘Media companies have the local content, news, demographics and the local audience.  As media companies continue to improve their online presence with more community journalism – blogs and opinion polls – consumers will come to rely on these sites to gauge the value of property, and research the area where they want to live.’

However, Hanawa adds that any trend towards virtual buying in the residential market will be small. ‘Even in the future, virtual transactions will be rare, at least for home sales.  People may send info to their phone and Twitter about a place they are looking at, but they are unlikely to purchase without physically visiting the property and checking out the community and potential neighbors.  Buyers will be much more knowledgeable about properties and their locations before making a purchase decision.’

And, with Geosemble’s technology and websites such as rottenneighbor.com, checking out the neighbors is now more than a distinct possibility.

Blog: Mark Foreman

‘Virtual tours are great, but what if you don’t like the color of the living room?’

The constantly evolving technologies that help
us market and sell real estate all started with Gutenberg’s printing press in or around 1450. Fast forward to 2009. Fax machines, cell phones, digital cameras and the internet have created marketing tools unimagined 30 years ago – so what will the future of real estate marketing and sales look like?

No one really knows, but sci-fi author and techno-visionary William Gibson once said, ‘The future is already here – it is just unevenly distributed.’ Some innovative companies are already showing a glimpse of how agents will market their listings in the not-too-distant future: 3D technology is at the center of this movement.

Potential buyers already have the ability access property data, photos, flat floor plans, photo tours and virtual tours online, before they venture out to physically tour the homes. In the very near future, agents will be able to walk buyers through their listings virtually. If they don’t like the wall colors or floor style, they will change them with the click of a mouse. Want to see what the rooms look like with furniture? Simply arrange and rearrange with your index finger. Just about any item in the home will be viewable in a different style or color.

As a Realtor for over 21 years, I have worked with a lot of buyers who look at a lot of houses that they never buy. Some just like to look. And I can’t tell you how many times I have heard, ‘My furniture will never fit in this space.’ Having my buyers ‘fit’ their furniture in the rooms before they go out and look at the homes would make a tremendous time saving. They would only then look at homes about which they already have a sense of the interior size and layout. Most of my clients end up spending a lot of time envisioning how the walls will look in a certain color, or asking, ‘What if I changed the floors to hardwood from carpet?’

Many Realtors already use floor plans as part of their marketing package, which add depth to the information a potential buyer uses in making a decision whether or not to go see a home. Virtual tours are great, but what if you don’t like the color of the living room? How can you tell if a King-sized bed will fit in the master bedroom? A two-dimensional static floor plan lets you see the room layout, but it won’t allow you to place furniture in the rooms or play with different wall colors.

A new program, being developed by the Denmark-based United Lane Corporation, will soon allow home shoppers and commercial tenants to make and see these changes online. United Lane’s software takes that 2D floor plan and converts it to an interactive virtual 3D model that then becomes an open house – 24 hours per day. No more Sunday open houses; no more asking the sellers to leave for the afternoon; no more baking gingerbread cookies to make the house smell ‘homey’. Any buyer can look at and ‘walk through’ the listing anytime, from anywhere in the world. That’s powerful marketing.

It’s rare when a product/concept so unique and intuitive first comes to the market and almost everyone can immediately see how this could change the face of several industries. The early version of the program is impressive to say the least, but high-definition, video-quality 3D walkthroughs are already in the development stages. And purchasing consumer products through this venue might be as easy as clicking the Dell laptop on the desk in the den and inputting your credit card info.

It won’t be too long before every single piece of commercial and residential property in the world will have an interactive 3D rendering of the layout available to the owner, or made accessible to the public if the home is for sale. Planting a virtual ‘For Sale’ sign in front of these homes and buildings will let the world know that this property is on the market. Potential buyers will be able to ‘cyberwalk’ down United Lane, popping into the properties they are interested in seeing. Agents will benefit by taking buyers only to homes that they have a high level of interest in. The possibilities can only be imagined…

The mobile phone is already considered indispensable in the modern world. As the device becomes increasingly powerful and complex, techno-evangelists are hailing it as the next frontier in digital communications

The humble mobile has become the focus of huge amounts of attention over the last four years, as companies ponder ways to turn it into both a hi-tech pocketbook and a universal communications device. The advent of mobile broadband and, increasingly, inexpensive mobile tariffs is now accelerating that process. Four years ago, researchers found that people leaving their houses always checked for three items: keys, wallet and mobile phone. The aim of technology companies today is to bring that down to just one item: the mobile.

Uniting a key with a mobile phone is a relatively simple process; the move to develop the phone into a mobile banking system capable of letting you pay for small items with your handset is taking longer. But, despite being hampered by the recession, things are now well under way. (See http://www.futureintelligence.co.uk/content/view/49/57/) Further mobile updates expected over the next five years will include new OLED (organic light emitting diode) screens which will have hugely increased resolution, soft metals, touch screens with tactile feedback, fast and accurate voice recognition systems, and keyboards and screens made from light.

The long-term aim is to produce completely mobile communications systems that can be easily worked with while on the move, have the same power and display functionality as a desktop PC, and which will provide instant internet access. The result of this will be mobiles that can be integrated into clothing, powered by our immediate environment, and capable of producing instant, full-size ‘air screens’ that we can interface with, either by talking or using ‘air keyboards’. Until the full emergence of this technology, in the short-term the attention is on the development of ultra-high-definition tactile screens that we can reconfigure into any interface required, using our fingers to access information.

The content industry is already gearing itself up to accommodate these developments, with film and mobile companies working hard to develop films, games and TV access via the mobile. Big internet companies, such as Google and Microsoft, are not only supporting this new technology, but are also actively engaged in developing it.

It’s a brave new world that is ignored by real estate companies at their peril. Real estate technology guru Professor Bernice Ross (See her interview and blog elsewhere in this issue) flags up the growing consumer trend to use their mobiles both to display property listing information, and then navigate to the location. She says companies should not just develop an internet presence, but one that can be accessed by the mobile.

‘The mobile is something that the real estate sector should not ignore. More and more information is being held by people on their mobiles; it is something that the President of Nokia has referred to as iPodification. All of your services should be delivered to one point. Because of that, there should be two variants of a real estate website – a full-blown version and a dot-mobi version which carries short, one-line descriptions for mobile.’

Some Realtors have already started to experiment. ‘We are seeing a lot of real estate companies starting to come to us for mobile websites,’ says Daniel West, CEO of Unity Mobile, a company that specialises in producing fully functional mobile websites capable of streaming high quality video.

‘Our technology allows people to set up incredibly inexpensive mobile phone websites in 10 minutes, which means that we can bring the functionality that only used to be available to large companies to smaller businesses, and that is proving very attractive to real estate.

‘We can redirect any website to a mobile so long as the content is digital, though it has to be remembered that no phone can deliver 100 per cent of the functionality that you get from the internet because a different technology is used. In some cases, people are finding that they have to build other applications to get an equivalent experience, but that’s not difficult to do.’

West points out that Unity’s system also allows huge amounts of analytical data to be extracted from any visit to its mobile websites. ‘Information about who a person is, what their phone number is, and what they have been doing while they were on the mobile website, can all be recorded. If you then think about the potential of being able to link that with SMS, then this becomes very powerful.’

Doug Garcia, director of research for Colliers Parrish, a large commercial real estate group based in the San Francisco Bay area, is already looking into ways that his company can exploit the trends in mobile, and also looking into the potential of the new locational services offered by companies such as Google. With other companies now working hard to offer services that will allow messages to be triggered on a mobile phone when you drive down a particular street, he predicts a world where you will sign up to receive alerts about a particular type of house within a certain price range from a Realtor’s internet site, and then be sent a message when you are near to a property advertised by that agent, asking you if you want to view it. This new mobile world will be supported by a huge raft of viewing technologies.

‘The rate of development of these technologies is already having an impact on the US real estate market,’ says Garcia. ‘We’ve explored using 3D modeling on the market. We are working towards a future where actual 3D tours will allow you to go to different floors of a building and look around the location using Google Earth.

‘Increasingly, we think that people will want to use 3D to assess the value of a property remotely, and the challenge there will be in the refresh of the 3D worlds that will evolve – though I could see that happening with social networking for an area where people will work to contribute information.’

Blog: Bernice Ross

Agents today face numerous challenges when it comes to technology. Which solutions really work? How can I convert more leads from the web? What do I need to do to motivate visitors to return to my site repeatedly?

For the last two years, blogging has been at the forefront as a solution for improving search engine rankings and for motivating visitors to return to your site repeatedly. Nevertheless, most agents find blogging difficult. With the latest Web 2.0 real estate technology innovations, agents now have multiple options to turn their websites into a lead conversion machine. Better yet, most of these new tools are free.

All things local
Your goal as an agent is to become the single go-to resource for your specific market niche. A number of services now make this easier than ever. Everyblock.com provides a wealth of information about the five cities they serve (Charlotte, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco.) They display business reviews, permits, crimes, liquor licenses, real estate listings from Trulia and Redfin, restaurant inspections, zoning agenda items, as well as maps pinpointing relevant locations. Another local site, Eventful.com, claims to be the ‘world’s leading events website’ and has a comprehensive list of events occurring near your local address. Both of these resources will motivate your web visitors to visit your site regularly.

What’s your Walk Score?
If you represent properties where people routinely walk to nearby services, this is another great addition to your site. With gasoline hovering around $4.00 per gallon, many people are leaving suburbia and returning to urban living. Walk Score (www.walkscore.com) allows your web visitors to determine the ‘walkability’ of various neighborhoods. Walkability is important because it supports local merchants, reduces fuel costs, and strengthens local neighborhoods. Furthermore, it can be a major influence on where your buyers decide that they want to live.

Plug in your address (or the address of any of your listings) and you’ll receive a score between 1 and 100 rating how ‘walkable’ that address is. The site grades walkability based upon the convenience of various businesses to the residents, income mix, parks and public space, nearby schools, bike paths, and a ‘pedestrian-centric’ design. They also evaluate how accessible the area is for the disabled, what the flow of the traffic is, and how comfortable and/or convenient it is to use mass transit if available.

One caveat: Walk Score does not rate the quality of the neighborhood. Just because there are facilities nearby doesn’t mean that they are places that you want to visit. When you post a Walk Score, it’s also a good idea to post pictures or videos that provide your web visitors with a sense of the area.

Find Cheap Gas
Gasbuddy.com links to the local gas prices in your neighborhood. Consumers report in real time the price they paid to fill up their tanks. This tool is another excellent way to motivate people to visit your site each time that they need to fill up.

Highlight interesting architectural properties in your area
Ourbania.com is a site for real estate enthusiasts who want to share pictures and other information about ‘the buildings that shape our cities worldwide – innovative existing and future projects, from bridges to skyscrapers.’ Whether it’s the ‘lipstick’ building in New York City or the Kodak Center in Hollywood, this site is a great resource to acquaint your web visitors with the most interesting buildings in your area. It’s also an excellent sightseeing resource if you’re traveling to major cities both inside and outside the U.S.

‘Rat out’ lousy neighbors and landlords
While you may not want to add RottenNeighbor.com and Introin.com to your website, it’s an excellent idea to check these sites when you’re working with sellers, buyers, lessors, or lessees. RottenNeighbor.com reports on noise, odor, and other neighborhood nuisances. There is also a place to report great neighbors as well. Introin.com provides information about the availability of rentals as well as an evaluation of the buildings and their landlords.

Track your numbers
AltosResearch.com provides real time charts that graphically display the median prices in your local area. They allow you to download this valuable information to your website and update it for you regularly. For sellers who may be reluctant about lowering their prices, you can show them if the market is trending down. You can also use the statistics to encourage your buyers to take action when prices begin to increase. The advantage is that you’ll have the data long before it appears in the press.

Another useful tool for your website comes from ListingNumber.com. Virtually no one evaluates the ROI (return on investment) for specific marketing campaigns. ListingNumber.com tracks this data for you and specifically shows you the cost of each lead that you generate.

While implementing this many innovations may seem daunting, you can easily add most of these solutions to your website. The result is that you will have a website rich with fresh local content that will keep visitors constantly coming back for more. Best of all, you didn’t have to research or create it – someone else did it for you!

Bernice Ross is a leading real estate writer, commentator and coach.
Email: Bernice@RealEstateCoach.com
Copyright 2009. All rights reserved in all media.