The believer

... is found here at 1000watt blog.

I bet that client received 'the extra length' of support if he later on called in.

A daily routine for many in Sweden is to go through the comparable residential sales printed in the local paper. At least in the countryside where the local paper cover a smaller area (and the number of comps are fewer).

In large cities like Stockholm this hasn't always been the case since the 'local' paper normally is one of the two national papers, DN or SvD, which haven't put the effort in to this. (There are large papers in the country who has done it, for example Sydsvenskan (great mapping) och Helsingborg Dagblad (just a list).)

However, the local paper Mitt i Stockholm AB which runs 31 (?) local papers in Stockholm has been putting this information in their papers.

Next step, put the information online
Now has Mitt i Stockholm AB taken the next step and put this information online. The service started in April and hit the press a few days (1, 2, 3, 4) with the effect that the service was terrible slow the first days. However, I gave it a try today and it is an impressive web 2.0 service (in terms of being user friendly and designed).

You select a municipality (31 to choose from all in 'greater' Stockholm) and all comparable sales for residential real estates are shown (not multi-family).

The information per comparable sales listing includes:
   - address
   - purchase price
   - purchase date
   - assessment value
   - seller
   - buyer

By clicking on 'read more' the information is displayed like below.

The information feed is from the Swedish Land Register and is (I assume) updated every night (at least it could be).

More to come
Mitt i Stockholm (as many local papers) is working hard to provide super local news, information, classifieds, and also residential listings. (Read more about this localization of news at Mindpark.)  In an article in DI the Online Manager Peter Leijonspjuth states that this is just version 1.0 and more is to come.

Adding apartments comps?
Mentioned is to add comparable sales for apartments '(CoOps') before the summer. This is indeed impressive since this data is not collected by the government. The only source I'm aware of is through the Association of Swedish Real Estate Agents('Mäklarsamfundet'). This data is today available on a summarized level at Mäklarstatistik and at the largest residential listing service Hemnet (which is owned and run by Samfundet). Both services has the same provider; Värderingsdata and costs about 100 SEK (~15 USD) for each search.

It will be interesting to see if this information will be published for free at Mitt i. Especially since Peter previously has worked at Teknik i Media which runs the technical platform for Hemnet and is quoted in the DI article that "it is important to never compete with Hemnet" (my translation).

The Swedish design & communication magazine Cap&Design has a makeover of Hemnet (the Swedish listing service, earlier coverage) in their latest issue. It's done by Daytona and the result looks like below (the article is found here).

Carl Bjurling and Thomas Le Guellaff from Daytona have focused on;
   1. search using pictures
   2. all listings should have the same layout
   3. add services for home renovation
   4. making it easier on 'open house' day with possibility of GPS coordinates 

My thoughts
I like the idea to add a search more based on pictures, just like the way the ads are done in a newspaper. It's a quick way to browse through a list and get a sense of the listing. The same with the functionality helping out on the day of 'open house'. (A possibility to create an account and mark interested listings should be a minimum.)

The same layout for all listing on the detailed page will be complicated since Hemnet only gather a few searchable parameters then link the visitors to the detailed page at each brokers website. Everything is possible, but that one will involve quite a few changes to the overall technical architecture.

I don't believe in creating more services around the lifecycle of a home. Hemnet (or a service like this) should stay focused on investing in a home, not how to renovate it.

Overall, it's a good suggestion on a service that is easy to pick on. But fact speaks for it self, Hemnet still has the most listings and is the preferable choice to start your search. One has to wait an see if new services like Booli (earlier coverage) and bospindeln will change this.

Computer Sweden (the largest IT paper in Sweden) ran a SaaS topic last week including a conference (when I was in Cannés...).

The seven articles are found here (in Swedish).

It's great to see this effort and I'm looking forward to more to come.
(Also glad that they put in the effort to find other SaaS representatives than just Salesforce...)

A tradition in the commercial property industry is to meet up in Cannés (France) in the beginning of March for informal meetings. The reason is to visit the annual MIPIM event. An event that brings 28 000 attendees from 85 countries (some 800 (!) from Sweden.)

More info about MIPIM
Click here for photos from MIPIM.

Great coverage on MIPIM is found at CNBC (special MIPIM coverage), PropertyWeek (UK based property magazine), PropertyEU (independent research site) and the blogs at bdonline (architects) and TheLawer (infosite)   

A new traditon for IT believers
This year Datscha (where I'm the Product Manager) gathered IT focused professionals for a drink at our yacht. Even on a short notice quite a group showed up and it was a great gathering. It's always great to meet people that share a common belief. See you all next year.

It comes as no surprise that the Swedish start up Booli (a start up offering search engine for residential listings on the Swedish real estate market, earlier coverage) was going to create a debate in the market.

However, earlier this week Lars Kilander, CEO of Mäklarsamfundet (the Association of Swedish Real Estate Agents), made it easy for many papers this week to create selling headlines with the quote (my translation)  "We don't believe it is better with more listing services, it just gets more complicated for the buyers". 

I guess that there are few things that customers dislike more than being told what they like.

Press about the debate (in Swedish)
DN:  the article by DN (the largest newspaper in Sweden)
Metro: here 
DinaPengar: here
Realtid: two articles here and here
DagensPS: one
JönköpingsNytt: an article  (with a slightly different approach)
From the blogosphere: here, here, here

The response from Booli
Is found here.

The letter
The background is that the press has found out that a letter has been sent to all members of Mäklarsamfundet asking their members "to protest" against Booli in order to keep their 'own' service Hemnet  (read more) as 'the one and only' listing service (forgetting that there already exist another one in Bovision).

A company that is going 'Bedouin' on a large scale is MySQL. Today I learned that they have 400 employers in 23 countries out of which 80% (?) works from home!

Read more here and here.

Imagine the impact on the property industry (read office market) if a greater number of companies takes this approach!

The most interesting presentation at the the IT fair was given by Magnus Stenberg from MySQL (an open source database provider from Sweden bought by Sun Microsystems for 1 billion USD).

The topic was if property management systems are ready for an open source approach. The question wasn't really answered. It was more about the story of MySQL and how clients in general could use their database technology. A very interesting presentation though.

Started a debate
Anyway, since I believed that there was to little debate and I wanted to increase the temperature I stated that one of the reasons when suppliers don't go for mySQL could be that they believe it will be more expansive when it comes to hire consultants in this field and referred to an article in Computer Sweden (the largest IT paper in Sweden). Not surprisingly, this point was denied. (Even   laughed at which in a sense proves the point...)

The 'fact'
Unfortunately I wasn't able to defend my point (I wasn't given the microphone) with 'facts' (it is still just an article) and showing the actual source of my point, so here is the link to the article (in Swedish). The story is about that an 'open source' consultant could cost up to 1 500 SEK/hour, compared to 950 SEK/hour for a .NET developer.

Of course, there is not one (1) truth when it comes to prices and it will change over time. My point is still that it could be one of the reasons why a company hesitates to make the change to open source program. Not saying that it's wrong to go there.

Well, at least the temperature raised....   ;-)

Today I attended the IT & Property fair in Sweden called 'Fastighetsbranschens IT-dag' (Swedish) which is arranged by SeminarDesign. This is the second year.

I hoped that it should have grown since last year, but the number of attendees (130) and exhibitors (6) is almost exact as last year.  Hopefully it will grow in the future because I believe there is need for an event as this one. If not for our suppliers and believers to meet up an discuss 'war stories'.

The vast majority of the RE.net (and here) blogs are towards the residential public. Therefore, I'm delighted to find out that ARGUS, one of the largest suppliers of financial software to the commercial real estate industry, has started a blog dubbed 'Global Viewpoints'.

ARGUS describes the blog as;

"This blog is produced by ARGUS Software. The blog will cover a range of topics related to the global landscape for real estate investment and development, and blog visitors will have an opportunity to share their opinions on blog topics. The blog also will serve as an educational tool and provides information including industry reports and recently published books related to real estate, as well as a list of global industry events and links to industry media outlets."

They started of in the early November and has so far been able to produce a large number of posts. It will indeed be interesting reading. Especially with this list of writers.