Increasing online presence in the Swedish real estate industry

I've updated my page 'the list' with a few more real estate focused blogs (and Twitter feeds) in Sweden. A few highlights:

Skanska 
Blogs as part of their students programs like Global Trainee and P3. Also find on Twitter@SkanskaSverige and @SkanskaUKplc,

NCC
Studentblogs and on Twitter @NCC_AB.

SkandiaMäklarna
One of the larger brokerage firms in Sweden are using Twitter to display their listings and also a channel forquestions. Their CIO Karin Fribergis blogging about IT in general. Also active on Twitter @karincfriberg.

FastighetsByrån
The brokerage firm that sells most houses in Sweden are quite active online. Mäklarvardag is a blog where four agents write about their work (Pressrelease). The company is also on Twitter, like CEO @Per Johnler, PR Manager @JohanWesterberg and Region Manager Stockholm @PontusTW.

DagensHem
A must have RSS feed that daily displays one extraordinary listing from Hemnet.

FastighetsÄgarna (The Swedish Property Federation)
Have a number of people writing about different topics for the commercial real estate market. Also a Twitter account @Stofast.

But... the Norwegians beat us with...

Petter A Stordalen
The charismatic owner of Home Invest and Choice Hotels Scandinavia is blogging and found @petterstordalen

Veidekke  
The Norwegian construction company that has a blogging CEO (translated to English) and where the Swedish organisation is found @veidekke_se.

GPS - the killer app for mobile services in real estate

In the real estate industry there is a saying that it's all about 'location, location and location'. If that is true, then the possibilities are endless when GPS functionality is coming to the mobile devices.

Here are a few examples of the applications that have been released over the last 6 months.

Layar

This is a very impressive solution where you point your mobile phone's camera on the buildings and get information about apartments for sale. You've to see the video below.

From the Techcrunch blog post:
"Layar is a so-called ‘augmented reality browser’, an application that turns you mobile phone’s camera viewer - only on Android-powered phones for the time being - into a full-fledged information portal and local business search engine. It essentially puts an information overlay on top of your camera view, bringing digital data of various sorts into play whenever you’re looking at or for something in the real world.

Imagine being on the look-out for a great new place in a street nearby your current apartment or house and seeing all the real estate listings, with some details and pricing included right from your mobile device as you’re walking down the street. Imagine watching status updates your friends pushed to social networks roll in with location information attached to them (e.g. ‘Tweets Nearby’). Imagine finding information on ATMs, public transport etc. in a city you’re visiting just by starting up the camera on your mobile phone. And thanks to an integration with Google Local Search, how about being able to look up contact information and reviews for businesses (e.g. restaurants, bars, etc.) in your direct neighborhood with one-click dialing capability?"

It's created by the Dutch company Layer for the Dutch market. More about the service at Techcrunch, weconverse (swedish), Engadget and ReadWriteWeb.

Zipcar

The US based car pool service (also in London) showed off a great iPhone app at the latest Apple keynote. Below is a CNET video from the event.

I like the quote in the beginning "25% of our Zipcare members he says that his life is on their iPhone". Additional reading at Springwise and Wired.

Zillow

The famous US based automated valuation service for single family houses has released a great iPhone app using the GPS functionality.

More reading at Zillow, PropertyPortalWatch, and Drew Meyers (Zillow employee).

Taxi Madrid

"Taxi Madrid is an useful tool for taxi cabs travelers to calculate routes, distance, time and fares on map.It will use GPS to determinate your actual address and calculate all the taxi ride cost to the point you want to go." From the blog.

Further reading at TechCrunch.

To sum up

Those where just a few teasers on what could be done using the GPS functionality in mobile devices. More examples could be found in the Wired 'Inside the GPS revolution' article.

I believe there will be great efforts to create location based applications for the real estate professionals in the near future. Just wait and see... 

The new Hemnet - version 2.0 or 1.4?

In the web industry the use of term '2.0' comes with a large responsibility.
There has to be a significant update.

 

Therefore, I was a bit disappointed today when the indeed anticipated 'Hemnet 2.0' version was launched. (Hemnet is the largest residential search engine in Sweden, more here.) I was expecting more. (So did 100s of people on Twitter.) Anyway, let us go through the new version. 

  

Faster and better search

In the earlier version the search was divided into three different pages. In the new version it's done direct on the starting page.

 

It's also easier to do changes to the search options and start an new search when the search bar is always on the top of the page. (However, it would have been great if you were able to minimize the search bar if needed in order to scroll less.)

    

     

An improvement is that the search parameter 'size of land' has been added.

 

Better 'account'
The biggest improvement has been done to the functionalities in the account area 'My Hemnet'. You're now able to easier create 'default' searches, save listings of interest, get updates through RSS and see changes done to a listing.

  

  

More data
One thing the new services on the market (like Booli and Boliga) has forced Hemnet to do is to be much more transparent about data like number of days on the market. Over the last weeks this data has been added to Hemnet and this continues.

 

 

The graph below displays a specific listing (in blue) in comparison with sold (red) and listings (green) regarding number of days on the market (Y-axis) and asked price in million SEK (X-axis).

 

 

  

 You're also able to see the price for listings in the area that has been sold.

  

   

      

       

The not so good

First impression isn't great. The starting page, with all flashing banners about Hemnet (?), is very confusing. Nothing new with the map (or have I missed something?). The usability and design has lot to ask. It is confusing how to find the detail statistics. And so on...

 

However, the biggest disappointment is that Hemnet is not able to make an overall better solution. The possibilities are endless with their position and all their data.

 

To sum up 

A great initiative to make improvements, but in my book it isn't a version 2.0.

More a version 1.4.   

 

 

Additional reading 
Is found here (all in Swedish): 1 (article at IDG), 2 (OhSoHighTech), 3 (MKSE), 4 (Norén), 5 (Bostadsknarkaren) and finally the press release 6.

 

  

A debate on Swedish search engines... on Twitter!

Two weeks back I wrote about the pressure on the 'old guys' on the Swedish residential search engine market. And the temperature is climbing....  with just 9 days to the release of the new version of the largest service, Hemnet, the debate is sparkling among the contenders... on Twitter!

Read the entire Twitter thread here.

The starting point was that Per Johnler (CEO Fastighetsbyrån, one of the largest brokerage firms in Sweden, and Chairman of Hemnet) wrote at @PerJohnler that "Interesting with all the new residential sites. It's great with choices..." (my translation).

A post that two of the founders at Booli  (a start-up in residential search), Peo Nilsson (CEO) and Anders Kyhlstedt (Marketing Manager) was quick to take action on since the statement is 'quite' different from the 'normal' reaction among brokers. According to Peo also were different from the chat those gentlemen had when Booli was introduced and Per demanded that all listings from Fastighetsbyrån should be removed from Booli. Which Booli refused. 

Per himself hasn't responded to the question from the Booli team. However, Fastighetsbyråns Johan Vesterberg (Press Officer) took the role as spokesperson for Fastighetsbyrån (Not Hemnet).

The discussion then moved to the comments area of a blog post by Rudolf at Disruptive, which highlighted the Twitter episode.

The debate could be summarized to:

• Booli push hard for their offering of a market channel for all brokers and 'their' listings
• FastighetsByrån hasn't finalized their strategy on how to handle all the new online channels

My reflections
1) The market for residential search engines on the Swedish market has changed a lot the last two years and I convinced it will change even more the upcoming two years. How will be the winners? I bet for the ones who are most eager to adapt to the new market.

2) It will be very interesting indeed to see the Hemnet's new version (due in 9 days) and if their strategy will change with a new CEO and Chairman. 

3) I believe Rudolf at Disruptive has a great point in comparing with the music industry. In the long run, you can't protect yourself against change. You've to adapt. It hurts, but the alternative isn't better.

Read more
A great post about Booli (in English) is found at ArticStartup.
More about the Twitter conversion is found at tdh.se and Disruptive (both in Swedish).
On Twitter at @PerJohnler, @BooliPeo, @BooliAnders and @JohanVesterberg  

Great video explaining different aspects of the cloud

Confused over the cloud? 
Don't understand the difference between the cloud and a SaaS solution?

Take the time time to view the great video I found at Tobias Strandh's blog.
It's from a cloud presentation last week at Informator.

 

It's 90 minutes long, but well worth the effort to look at.