My name is Magnus Svantegård (LinkedIn), live in Sweden, and is the Product Manager for Datscha and Partner in Stronghold Invest. I believe in smart use of Internet in the Real Estate industry.
Andrew Waller at Remit Consulting sent me a great FT article which included this brilliant quote;
"Like many Google initiatives, Chrome is as much a philosophy as a product. And the philosophy is: never mind the computer, the action is on the Internet. That is getting truer by the day."
Not only that, it's a way of life...
Do you think Wordpress is the 'the stuff' when it comes to blogging? It's time for you to get 'Squarespaced'!
I've been using this SaaS blogging platform since 2006 and has been more than happy. Tonight I (finally) sat down and tried out all the new version5 functionality. (As you may notice from the redesign of my blog.)
And have they improved!
Below is how the screen looks like when changing design template, number of columns and navigation. Just click and draw. A picture tells you more... you have to see this video.
You want more details?
This video shows the Squarespace team showing of by rebuilding the 37signals blog in 18 minutes(?).
It has been some improvement since I, in 1996, wrote my first site using notepad...
Earlier this week the Danish residential listing service Boliga.dk made its debut on the Swedish market under the name boligan.se. (Bolig is Danish for home.)
Boligan has two major differences compared to the other listings in Sweden (for example Hemnet, Bovision, Booli & Bospindeln):
* changes in the listing price
* number of days on the market
Changes in the listing price
Any changes are displayed not only in the information for a listing but also directly on the map. A small red arrow point down indicates a price reduction. (For the other way around, it's a green arrow upwards.) There is also a list on the start page with the largest price changes during the day.
Number of days on the market
Another type of information that isn't shown on any other listing service is the number of days a listing has been on the market. This is displayed on the listing and could also be used as a search parameter.
Background
The site is run by a company called Boliga Sverige Aps but behind the service is the Danish company Boliga.dk, which started in Denmark in January 2007. Their start in Denmark was controversial creating an upset among the brokers. Read more here (the Boligan site), here (Swedish article) and here (Danish article). However, they have also won the prize for best new website in Denmark.
In June 2007 Euroinvestor bought (in Danish) 51% of Boliga.dk.
Impressive mapping functionality
From a technical standpoint, what impresses me most is the mapping functionality. Especially the way to browse without need to first make a choice of municipality. Brilliant when you looking in an area where you're unaware of the boundaries of the municipalities (or states for that reason).
The market for listings are heating up
This is the third large listing service that has entered the market in less than 10 months! It will be most interesting to see where the market is going.
The largest conference on the topic of (residential) real estate and IT is the Inman Real Estate Connect which was held this week in San Francisco 2008' . I guess there were more than 1 000 participants. Not only from the USA but also Australia, New Zealand, Spain and UK.
Below are the highlights of the week (in no particular order) from the perspectiv from a Swedish Product Manager.
Meeting up with all online friends
Meeting up all people whose blogs you are reading and the people behind many of the services in person has been indeed rewarding. Truly inspiring.
A demo of next generation websites
Tyler Davey from Infusion gave a preview of the new Radisson site that will be released in the autumn. Built in Silverlight and extensively using Microsoft Virtual Earth; the user experience was incredible. Tyler also mentioned that the incredible software Photosynth will be included in Virtual Earth. See this video and get blown away by the photosynth technology.
The Swedish connection
In the presentation "25 Online Real Estate Sites You Don't Know About But Should" Brian Boero, 1000Watt Consulting, started of with showing the Swedish real estate search engine Booli!
A demo of Trulia iPhone Application
Trulias very own Mr Social network Rudy gave me an demo of their iPhone application (YouTube movie). Very impressive. I believe devices with location functionality will have a great impact on the way we find real estate information.
Walkscore
You know that the Americans find the gas price high (still less then half of prices in Sweden) when services like WalkScore is being created. Nevertheless, a great service that measures the walkability of an address.
Webbased solutions to get rid of Excel
As a Product Manager of Datscha it is great to see that there are more people how believe that a web solution is better then the best Excel spreadsheet. At Inman I found two services in this area; T-rex (Property Management) and eRealInvestor ("Analyze your own property and investments and optimize your returns!")
The techiness of the attendees
As an official geek, it was great to see how many attendees that took their notes on a laptop and where present online even at the conference.
During the entire conference there was an active discussion on Twitter.
An example of the discussion.
Read the entire conversation here.
Next time you doing a presentation at a conference be aware that quite a few in audience could be twittering about you, google your facts and browsing through your LinkedIn resume. In other words, be humble and stick to the facts.
More Inman coverage
Below a some more reading about Inman.
I'm sure there is more to come.
The Orlando Condo Blog
Joel writing for Inman
Daneil for Inman
Drew about blogging
Matrix
Finally...
Thanks to everyone who made this conference such a brilliant experience.
Today I attended the ReBarCamp event in San Francisco.
Start of the day
First of all it's in the Swedish American Hall. Pretty wired for a Sweden who has travelled half over the world!
Anyway, there are some 100+ people here and for most of them (including me) it's there first visit to a conference set up as a Barcamp., which means that it is "user generated conferences . In other words, it is up to the crowd to on the spot create the sessions.
So there was quite a confusing crowd in the beginning, but quickly a great list of sessions were created.
Then the sessions started and the conversations for sure kicked off.
How many conversations do you find in the photo below?
Below are quick notes from some of the sessions I attended.
Blog survey
The Center for Real Estate and Social Technology (http://varbuzz.com/crest/) has conducted a survey among bloggers in the USA. They will do those surveyes every quarter.
Result from the first survey
128 responses
Agents 65%
Brokers 23%
50% using WordPress (especially the veterans)
50% hosted
The median start date is 1 aug 2007
The median is 12 post in may 2008
Medium number of comments 3,4 per post
80% had fewer than 50 commments in may
The more posts you put in the less comments per post
1315 uniqe browsers per month is average
Ideal for traffic is 5 posts per week
35 medium RSS subscribers is average
Full RSS feed --> more readers
The crew from Zipvo organised an open discussion about video.
It seems to really start coming off over here.
The discussion was primarily around;
1. type of camera
2. "start now, even if the quality isn't there, you will learn"
3. the business model for the video platforms out there
Podcasting
A great conversation that covered everything from showing audio software to discussing why to use podcasts on an agents site.
The answer for the latter question was according to one of the participants;
"The consumer will come to your site for three reasons;
1. to figure out what his house is worth
2. to view the listings
3. to learn about the community
And it is in the last point that you could successfully add Podcasts."
The sum up was (as for video session above) start easy and focus to improve.
An easy starting point is TalkShoe.
Beer with bloggers
After all the sessions the crowd went to the bar next door for the Inman Conference kick off party "Beer with bloggers".
Thanks Zillow for the open bar.
To sum up
Not only did I learn a lot about the US market and what topics are 'hot', also had the opportunity to meet up with people I prio only know through their blogs.
Furthermore, I did also get a hand on experience of BarCamps. For sure liked the concept! Tomorrow starts the Inman Conference. A more 'normal' conference. I sure that will be as great as of today.
Magnus (The Believer)