Two new property blogs

Over the last weeks two new property blogs have started in Sweden.

Newsec
This is an interesting initiative. Newsec is one of the largest real estate valuation and advisory companies (commercial real estate) in the Nordic area. (Full disclosure: I'm partner in Stronghold Invest where Newsec is on the portfolio companies. Read more.)

Their blog (dubbed 'the property blog') will be the first in the Swedish commercial property industry (as far as I'm concerned).

REALgood AB 
This blog is from a system supplier of property management system which has started with a number of posts the first week.

More blogs...
... are found at my list.

Reflections from an IT & Property event in Stockholm

Last week I attended the third annual 'IT & Property' event in Stockholm arranged by Seminar Design. This is the third year (for coverage of 2007 and 2008.)

After a rather slow start, two years ago, this event is starting to take off. I was surprised by the energy at the event. (Even Though I would have preferred even more.) 

Some 130 people from 80 companies attended the conference. A majority of those where from state or municipality owned companies. Does it take a long term view in order to focus on the benefits of IT in real estate?

At the exhibition area a handful companies displayed their products. The one which caught my attention was Jetas Quality System.  Which "is a state-of-the-art, web based, real estate and property management and inspection tool. With a simple system of barcodes and a PDA you can maintain 100% control – no need for notebooks, bits of paper or Post-its." The service is used by, for example, IKEA and Jones Lang LaSalle.

Two reflections
What I bring with me from the event is mainly:

• "the systems need to talk to each other"
           A line that was heard repeatedly. In other words, the use of standards like
           the XML scheme from fi2 is going to increase the upcoming years.
     
• "It has to be easy to use"
           Simplicity and user friendly seems to be more important than advanced.

The best presentation
Among all the presentations there was one that stood out exceptionally; Sören Sandell, CTO at Vasakronan. One of the largest property companies in Sweden.  

Not only did he show the impressive Intranet they are using to simplify as many processes as possible with in the organisation. For example, most of the users of the Property Management system is using it through the interface of the Intranet.

However, the most impressive thing was the strategy they had to achieve it. The focus for any system development was;

1. user friendly                   "think Google"
2. well design                    "think Apple"
3. easy to administrate

At this point I was highly impressed (never ever heard something like this from any one in this industry). So when he then said that they were aggressive on eliminating the use of Excel spreadsheets in the organisation by adding easy to use functionality at the Intranet I started to applaud!

Thanks Sören for making my day.

RE.net event in London on the 4th march

Interested in technology and commercial real estate?
Then you have to visit the Realcomm events.  

Originally from the USA but has now grown to include events and tours all over the globe. In the beginning of March (4th) the Realcomm Europe 2009 will take place in London. You will find the brochure here.

        

Meet me in London
I'm really looking forward to the event. Especially since I wasn't able go the event in 2008 (which was the first Realcomm Europe event). This is THE event for IT in commercial real estate since Property Computer Show (PCS) has faded away and is now an 'agency event' focusing residential real estate.

Are you going to Realcomm in London?
Drop me a line and lets go for a beer/dinner.

While I was in Costa Rica...

... quite a few things happened.  

I spent January in Costa Rica surfing some of the best waves on the planet (Santa Teresa). It was a brilliant.

The first three weeks was offline and then I worked remotely the last two weeks. Combining a Swedish lifestyle (6 weeks vacation a year) with the possibilities of the web is great.  (Also happy to give Michael Arrington more fuel...)

Hemnet - Major changes in the management
The largest search engine on Swedish market is looking for a new CEO after that Björn Dietmann has stepped down. The news was picked up by PropertyPortalWatch. Impressive. The press release is found here (in Swedish).

There are more changes at Hemnet. After seven year as chairman, will Lars Kilander be replaced by Per Johnler(who also is CEO of Fastighetsbyrån, one of the largets brokers in Sweden). However, Lars will still be on the board. Finally, Hemnet also has a new Director of Sales; Andreas Löwgren(an article in Resumé).

The question is; has the pressure from Booli and Boliga forced those changes to occur?

Boligan launched in Norway
The Danish residential search engine is continuing its Nordic growth. On the same day as Inman, they entered the Norwegian market. Press Release is found here. More is found at PropertyPortalWatchand an earlier post on this blog.

The Inman Conference New York 
Early in January the Inman event Real Estate Connect NY 2009 took place in New York. Read about it at Inman, Mike's Corner, Notorious Rob, Jay, Matrix and Dustin. 

I had the opportunity to visit their event last summer in San Francisco and it is for sure an energy boost. (Even though I prefer more commercial real estate focus.)

If you are Premium member of the Inman service you have a great source of information from event on their site. Including for example a 25 pages summary paper and video of quite a few of the speeches! Way to go.

For the first time ever (I guess) there was a Swedish firm represented on the stage, Booli (a residential search engine, covered here). Unfortunately, they haven't put this video on the web yet.

Zoopla raised more money
The UK based residential property information and valuation service has raised another £ 3,75 million. Great coverage at the Renthusiast.

Morten Lund was declared personally bankrupt
Not much real estate connection (more than that the bank took his house), but what a believer in the web Morten is. This story is a must read for any entrepreneur. Don't miss the video (at the bottom) of his speech at Le Web a few months ago. Read more at his blog.

An IT supplement in a CRE magazine

In Sweden there is no publication focusing on the use of IT in the real estate. However, one of the largest CRE magazines, FastighetsTidningen (owned by The Swedish Property Federation) has at least a IT supplement in one of their yearly issues.

It is named IT & Property and it's 52 pages covers a wide range of topics.
The ones that got my attention were;

The customer satisfaction is rising
A survey, conducted for the paper, among clients of Property Management Suppliers shows three large conclusions:

• Most clients are satisfied with their suppliers (but wasn’t from the beginning)
• The area with most complaints is the user interface (especially to make it easy for non-hard core users)
• The suppliers are moving online (finally... if you ask me...)

Status among the Property Management suppliers
In two articles the status of the 15+ suppliers of Property Management Systems are analyzed, with the highlights of:

• DinaFastigheter has been around for 2 years and has 250 clients
• Estatus which in 2006 was founded in 2006 has now a complete web-based system with 10 clients (and has been acquired by SoftOne Fastigheter)
• Modus which has, since 2003, been developing a brand new system together with MKB (large property owner in Malmö) is still some time from a public release
• Fast2 is developing SMS service for renting of student housing
• LEB is working on a complete new code version which will make their system much easier to personalize
• VITEC has created a much more customer focused organisation
• 5D-system is focusing on integration using XLM standard
• PONDUS has released a web version

BIM is moving forward, but it’s a long way
The topic of BIM (Building Information Model) is covered extensively.  Especially the academic research conducted by Rogier Jongeling. You find all his publications here. An additional article here in Byggindustrin (in Swedish).

More about the supplement
It is written by Björn Åslund, a freelance journalist and among other things a blogger about environment topics.

The entire supplement could be downloaded as a PDF version here (5 MB).