A backlog of reading

Back from a 2½ weeks of vacation (long? In Sweden there is a five weeks of holiday...) I've to catch up reading the blogs. Here are the post I found most worth reading.

An outsider look on the industry
It's always good reading when someone from 'the outside' takes an interest in our own field, like CNET sending a reporter to the Inman ConnectSF 2006. (Thanks Joel at 'The future of real estate marketing' for having a post on this article making me aware of  it.) The result is an article taking a closer look at the changing world for Realtors.

More on ConnectSF 2006 event in San Francisco
The Sellsius blog has an entry on the topic including a comprehensive list of related entries in the blog sphere. A good summary is also found at the Zillow blog.

The launch of a new home valuation tool
Through the 'Rain City Blog' I found out about a new AVM called HomeInsight. However, the best reading was the comments on the post.

SEO in real estate
At Mike 's Corner you find a great entry on the search engine topic.

Finally, The Carnival of estate
It has continued with three more weeks. The best about those lists are that you probably will find new blogs worth reading.
July 24th   -->  Searchlight Crusade
July 31st   -->  The future of real estate marketing
Aug 7th   --> Property Grunt

Carnival of Real Estate

Are you looking for good blogs in the real estate field?
Here is a good opporunity to get a great sample.

An initiative called 'Carnival of Real Estate' runs in The US under the summer.
The first post is from Zillow and could be found here.

"A Blog Carnival is a weekly summary of the best blogging posts on a given subject that appeared in someone’s blog during the previous week.  A different blog hosts the carnival each week, so it brings bloggers writing on a given subject together." www.carnivalofrealestate.com

Kungsleden takes the lead...

 ... and makes it easier to buy their services.

I believe that many companies make it too complicated to be interested in their services. For example, if a property company tries to attract tenants, why not making the offer as easy as possible to understand? 

Most companies are now days using the Internet to market their empty office space. However, few do it with more than a few lines of text, one (1) photo and contact information. Actually, 10% of the offerings on the listing service Objektvision don't have a single photo!

Anyway, for a long time I have questioned why not also put the rental rate in the offering. The response has been that it is impossible (?) . But I'm now delighted to notice a change. One of the companies that has started this is Kungsleden, a listed property company. Their new concept "Raka vägen till rätt lokal" (Direct road to the right space) is promising. The aim is to always include photo, floorplan and rental rate. Keep going!

Using the listing service mentioned above I find that 10% of the 1038 listed offices in Stockholm displayed the rental rate. In Göteborg 4% of 871 and Malmö 17% of 449. (However, if you excludes the listings from Kungsleden, the number is 7% for Malmö!)

Compare that to the listings on Loopnet, a US based listing service, where 90% have rental rate displayed. Anyway, someone has to start in Sweden and that seems to be Kungsleden.

Carl von Linné goes real estate

Imagine the following; you travel from Sweden to Dallas in the US to attend a real estate conference focusing on IT and you end up in a presentation about the famous Swedish botanist Carl von Linné. Surprised is an understatement!

However, there was two good reasons why this occurred;

1. First of all, the presentation was about the benefits of standards
Linné created what should became known as the Linné taxonomy, a system of scientific classification.

2. The speaker, Mark R. Linné, was a relative to Carl von Linné!

I've attended many presentations but a better storyline is hard to find. Finally, the presentation was indeed interesting and put an interesting point to standards. It also introduced me to the abbreviation AVM (Automated Valuation Models).

Realcomm I -- CoStar vs Google

At the Opening Session at the Realcomm two different ways of data gathering was displayed.

On the photo is Diane Paddison, Andrew Florence, John Hanke and Michael Joroff (MIT).

John Hanke, general manager of Google Earth (an founder of Keyhole), did a great presentation of Google Earth which included a display of Bombay city with all major buildings named out on the map (se below). The interesting part is that this informed has been put in place by the users 'the Google community. In other words, collaborative information gathering. Something that John was pushing to the real estate audience; "why not put in information about your buildings in the system and market it to the 100 million users?".

In contrast to the approach of having the users themselves putting in the data CoStar's founder and CEO Andrew Florance ran through their new retail solution.

Also that an impressive product, but you have to wonder, what if Google manager to have the industry to put in the same data into Google Earth for free?