Realmap.com.au today launched its beta trial and my first impression is wow!
This is how you create a real estate mapping system and whilst the CEO has told me it has some teething problems, I am still trying to find one. Some listings do not contain data, but this is probably more of a problem with the data being fed than the actual site!
The site has a nice clean interface and has some interesting partners. The first thing I noticed was the home page is that the interface is aimed squarely at Google or what?
Agents listings will be free for at least 6 months and then a small fee based service will more than likely begin. The site has a number of sample agents and sample suburbs for you to browse through. Each agent also has their own home page where all of their listings appear.
Through development partners the site has also included information for visitors such as local agents, childcare, education, shops, transport and other information.
The site is a classic web 2.0 application, where all information is continuously loaded within one screen.
House Icons appear on the map identifying property prices by colour and you can zoom in and out using the Google Tools.
So what is my opinion? I think this is the best mapping site on the planet, bar none and I have seen and used most of them!
Everything zooms nicely and a great touch is that all listing details goes back to the agents home page.
The site will launch nationally either late December or early January and whilst there will be some teething problems I can see this site growing rapidly within 12 months to be the number 3 site in Australia!
My company will soon be exporting to this site but if you want to get on board now through another supplier many of my competitors are ready to go such as ARO Software, PortPlus, ReNet, PropertyMode.
Oh, and if you think I have shares or any interest whatsoever in the site, just remember this, I do not!
So go there yourself and tell me what you think!
19 Comments
snoop
I would be amazed if this site got to number two or even no 5.
How are they going to get the distribution horsepower,that is becoming more expensive by the day?
Peter
Well it will not get to number 2, not in the short term but number 3 is not a long shot. Please explain what you mean by distribution horsepower?
Sam
Finally we get to see more maps and less real estate, why don’t they just take the photos of the properties out altogether then we could have a full screen map.
It’s not the way I like to search for property , I like to see the house first and then go to a map if I need to.
Peter
Sam – This is how you search for a property in the traditional sense.
1. You log into a site (wait for it to load)
2. You select a state (wait for it to load)
3. You select your suburbs, property type, bed, bath etc) then…..(wait for listing to load)
4. Look at listings and then select each one you like (wait for property to load)
5. Go back and do some of the tasks again.
Or: Select an area of the map you are interested in and then filter results as you like, if you like a property it pops up in a new window.
It all happens in the one window. I cannot think of anything easier and so much more user friendly, it will get better of course, but from a user perspective it is so much better
Paul
Finally, as a real estate buyer, someone is deliverying what I want – how simple and easy. This technology is awesome with a massive WOW factor. Would like to see the full version though and not just the samples. It murders realestate.com.au and domain. And what a great tool for agents. This will be a far more cost effective lead generator than traditional search engines and old fashioned real estate portals.
Alex
I think Sam has a valid point here. Map searching is a great feature but realmap.com.au has traded decent-sized thumbnails for screen real estate (please excuse the pun) in which to place the map.
If a user can’t clearly see the property in an 80 pixel thumbnail then, arguably, they might end up spending more time clicking around than by using the traditional list search. I realise that there are larger thumbnails on the map itself but you have to click on each individual property to see them, which is much slower than scanning a list.
I’m a big fan of map searching. It’s certainly useful when your location criteria are very specific but that is not always the case. It seems to me that realmap.com.au is trying to differentiate itself from the competition by going down the map route but is doing so at the expense of overall usability. Perhaps if they gave the list in the left-hand column more space and moved the right-hand column somewhere above or below they might just hit the sweet spot of a useful list search combined with the benefits of mapping on a single page.
Despite pushing the map aspect, realmap.com.au still isn’t a “true” map search in the sense that you can pan/zoom anywhere and see all results in that area. Take a look at http://ononemap.com in the UK for a decent example of that kind of interface.
My final gripe with realmap.com.au is the look of it. What’s with the colours in the house icons? Why does the right-hand column look so out of place? Why the tiny font everywhere? I know it’s largely unimportant but a slick interface and obsessive attention-to-detail can turn a good application into a great one.
Has anyone spotted any hidden entrances to an SEO text-based route through the site? Assuming their marketing budget is fairly limited, organic search will be a vital factor for the site’s success.
snoop
Peter,what I meant by distribution horsepower is how are they planning to drive traffic or eyeballs to the site?
Organic growth willl not be enough.
Peter
Hi Snoop
Well distribution horsepower works when you have lots of $ and a network of sites. Organic growth works when you have low overheads and a patient management team.
I have built a portal in Tasmania which gets around 60,000 visitors per month and it was built upon organic growth!
So it is possible, but you are right, realmaps success will come down to agents getting results from consumers, but give these guys a chance before condemning them to the trash heap.
An interesting point to remember is that Sensis has spent well over 30 million dollars promoting the Sensis Search Engine, [problem is people use it once and then say why bother, as Google is just so much better, even for local results. Less than 1% of the market is a complete and utter failure considering their network strength (yellowpages, trading post etc) and the money invested in promotion.
If you build something of value to consumers it catches on, but it does take time.
snoop
Very true
People will always go with a big brand and the Sensis engine leaves a lot to be desired…dont know why they bothered.
Remember Altavista?
To get to Number three behind Domain and REA they will need to get around 300k user sessions per month.
I am not writing them off ,but I do think they are brave investing in a space dominated by some very fat wallets.
Share of agents spend is obviously a challenge for a new entrant as well.
According to Hitwise there are over 3000 real estate sites in AU.
Less than 10 get more than 100k user sessions per month.
All the same I agree with you its a nice interface with well thought out functionality.
I wish them luck.
Sam
Hitwise say 3000 agents in Australia ? HaHaHa – I think realestate.com.au are claiming over 5000 agents on their site so they must be opening offices themselves to get the numbers up or maybe the bull%$^% machine in just getting out of control.
(without doubt)
The usefull feature on the maps in beling able to filter on the fly, bedrooms etc and locatate facilities around the property.
But take it from me the map is secondary, people want to search the traditional way first THEN use a map if they want to. This obsession with maps is disturbing.
You may want maps but the people want real estate, whats the point of seeing a map with a dozen pins on the one location, you can’t differerentiate between them, quite useless in my opinion.
Would be useful for rural searches.
As far as them becoming number 3 dream on, and the comment “won’t get to number 2 in the short term” oh so you think Farfax have nothing to worry about this week ? I bet they’re relieved. The hosting required alone would sent them broke in about 10 minutes.
These maps are good but they have their place.
AJ
Very interesting application – and obviously a LOT of work to do yet.
But a few things need to be clarified about realmap.
1) It is not Australia’s FIRST realestate search engine – the first dedicated realestate search engine was PropertyPage – way back in 2001.
2) Realmaps design actually is a modern reinvention of PropertyPage – where the agents fed their listings directly to the DB via CSV – and consumers were taken directly to agents sites from the search results.
All realmap is doing is just having a different search interface.
3) The trouble with the realmap design at the moment is that it is trying to be lean – but still using images taken from its own DB. Absolute URLs (which PPage used) are a much cheaper and faster way of serving images for this kind of shallow DB.
4) The model design itself (where consumers go to agent sites) will work against realmap in climbing the rankings – as consumers will start to go to agent sites without real maps assistance.
5) Diverting to external sites to see full property details actually annoys consumers – the links take a long time to load – and there is no consistency in content and formatting.
This is a great little site – but lets keep it in perspective.
Perhaps the best application for this kind of Map/search is for holiday letting or viewing saved properties.
dave platter
Sam and Snoop, Hitwise isn’t counting real estate agents, they are counting real estate agency websites. I think you may have gotten those two things confused.
Elders has something like 270 agent offices, but one main web site at Eldersrealestate.com.au. Most agents have their home page within the corporate site, though there are perhaps a smattering of Elders agents who have their own websites. About 72% of Elders agents are realestate.com.au clients.
The same applies to LJ Hookers’ 500 agents. About 50% of them are our customers but all told they only have a handful of websites.
It’s true that no one knows the exact number of real estate agents in Australia. However, if you look at p. 15 of our annual report (download it from our site) you’ll see that our best estimate is that there are some 8,500. In August, 7,684 relied on us to help them reach customers in Australia and that number has only gone up since then.
John
Alex, after looking at ononemap.com, I can see that by having so much information in the page it takes forever for it to load. To be honest I am not that patient to wait so long for a page to come up.
It will be interesting to see how realmap goes in the next 12 months.
Dan
It’s been a busy day and thanks to everyone who took a look at our public beta. All the comments and constructive criticism go straight up on the big whiteboard so please keep it coming. I wanted to briefly clarify a few important points that people here have already raised.
* RealMap will launch to the public before xmas.
* The features currently on display are just a sample of the tools buyers and agents will have at their fingertips at launch, can’t say more just yet.
* RealMap’s marketing plans, while thorough, do not rely on us competing with agents for business at google, etc – http://www.google.com.au/search?q=lj+hooker+mosman
* The pricing models under consideration aren’t currently available to Australian agents and will offer profoundly better value than existing solutions.
* Australia is the first market RealMap will be deployed in with other markets to follow. (And Peter, if the rest of the world doesn’t agree with you that it’s the world’s best, I promise I’ll let you know!)
RealMap was developed with lots of input from agents from all over Australia and we’re always keen to hear more feedback as we go.
–Dan
Peter Ricci
Dan
My pleasure, I know you have a long way to go and you will have to remember that any good ideas you have are going to be copied by others, this is just natural in this industry. I really think your site is excellent, it has its floors and just remember this blog is about views good and bad, and I think it is great to get feedback. I will be launching my new FREE version of my system on here soon, to see what feedback I get as well. I think it is good that most of the comments on here are a little on the negative side, it keeps us on our toes.
I think if you concentrate on the user experience and do not get too bogged down on making money (which I know is difficult)
Here are some tips…..
1. Do not charge agents ever! In my opinion your success will come from getting as many agents on the site as possible. Telling agents that at $50, 100, or $150 dollars a month it means amazing value compared to say realestate.com.au or domain.com.au does not cut it, when they get most of their enquiries from them.
2. Don’t get too worried about visitors until you get volume of listings. Then tell all of Australia about it.
3. Never make agents compete against each other for priority listings. Agents can easily set themselves apart from the quality of their website and the quality of the presentation of properties. (information and images)
4. Allow advertisers like banks, surveyors, builders, plumbers to advertise locally for great value and this should build a solid revenue base.
Australia is a great start, maybe look at selling your technology in other markets (and hosting it), concentrate 100% on the success of Australia and you cannot go wrong.
Matthew
Peter Ricci are you in la la land ???
How can you follow Tip 1 and 2 together? You can’t NOT focus on traffic and expect to build a sustainable business if you are not charging your client for the service. Do you think ads from the local plumber are going to pay for a website developer, hosting, marketing and everything else?
I see nothing wrong with charging agents and having them compete for the best inventory on a website. This is a capitalist system after all.
Peter
Matthew, yes just off La la Avenue. Thanks for the compliment!
To be honest I think my approach would have a chance of working. Ummm, heard of Google?
Yes and they make their money from plumbers, and knitters and banks and restaurants and………………….
La La Land is starting to sound a little better!
Matthew
Peter. Google make their money from advertising, and they charge everyone. I don’t see how your site could work unless you charge your biggest customer – the agents.
Frankly, I don’t see how the comparison with Google is valid, as they are not following the 4 rules that you set down.
Even so, have a go, make a business and make it good.
Peter Ricci
Matthew, yes Google make their money from advertising, and billions of dollars a year at that. However, they do not charge anyone for use of their web based systems, the idea is if it is massively popular the more companies will want to advertise due to this popularity.
In my opinion major portals want it every way. They want to charge high premiums for the very people that make them popular and also charge advertisers to advertise because of this popularity. I am not saying it is wrong, what I am saying is that if Google enters the market they will not be able to have it all their own way!