CEO at a large construction company starts blogging

I'm impressed.
The CEO (Per-Ingemar Persson) at Veidekke Sweden, one of Swedens largest construction companies, has started to blog at http://per-ingemar.se/. 

The first entry has the 'Why starting to blog?' (translated to english, using Google Translate). A highly relevant question if one start doing something that few (none?) others in the same position are doing.

Per-Ingemar says:

"... It is therefore particularly important to increase communication with both employees and suppliers in the sector and the customers we have been privileged to work with. Both by getting bring our thoughts and ideas but also to get feedback on how we can improve on to get satisfied customers and dedicated employees, and how we can become more attractive to our suppliers as partners. I think the blog is such an instrument that can serve these purposes."

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Click to read more ...

Augmented Reality Real Estate Valuations

Joel Burslem who writes the blog Future or Real Estate Marketing has a great story about a French residential brokerage firm that has developed a valuation tool using augmented reality technology.

See the video here.
Looks great!

More on Augmented Reality

For further reading on the topic see an earlier post.

Fasticon launches a new HR web-service at Business Arena Real Estate

It's not to common that a new IT system is launched at a Swedish real estate fair, but it happened at Business Arena Real Estate (a event with 1500 delegates in Stockholm on the 16-17th September). 

 

The company 

Fasticon, a leading management consulting firm for real estate companies on the Swedish market, has over the years increased their services in the area of Human Resources. For example, providing services for recruiting and replacement.

The solution

Their newest offering is 'FastiKompetens', a web-based system for competence management.

  It has been developed in close partnership with StockholmsHem (a large municipality owned residential property company) over the last year.

The aim of the solution is to make it more visible, for both the employee and the management, what skills are present within the company, what is needed, the plan for training and a list of preferred courses.

Each employee has its own 'page' with the CV and competence plan.

The aim has been to create a system that both is easy to start using and specific for the the property industry. The technical development has been done by the IT consulting firm Sajtkonsulterna.

Next step

The system will go live at the first client on the 1st of October and the plan is to add new clients in the beginning of 2010.

Additional reading

Further reading, there is an article in Magasinet FastighetsSverige (2009, Nr 6), the press release and the site of Fasticon.

Is Hemnet going for commercial listings?

Yesterday I stumbled upon an interesting article in the magazine FastighetsMäklaren (Issue 1, 2009, just in print). It was an article about Hemnet (the leading residential listing service in Sweden) where it was mentioned in one sentence that Hemnet is creating a listing service for commercial properties.

That's quite a development.

What is known?  

There hasn't been any press releases regarding this, but according to this page (Hemnets Extranet?), Svensk FastighetsData (a software company for brokers, owned by Vitec) has "transferred" their commercial listing service kommersiella.se to Hemnet AB.

According to the page above it is supposed to be released in the autumn using this logo.

This could also explain why there currently is a navigation at Hemnet which only has one choice; 'Residential'. I guess they will be adding 'commercial' in the near future.

To be released in September? 

According to the agenda for the 'Storhusseminaret', arranged by Mäklarsamfundet (The Association of Swedish Real Estate Agen) in late September, there will be a presentation by Eva Sjögren and Andreas Löwgren from Hemnet on the topic "Launch of Hemnets kommersiella.se".

Interesting development

It will be interesting indeed to follow how Hemnet will be approaching the market of investment properties. Which, according to me, differs greatly from residential listings. The main difference is that (as of today) it is not too common to use any of the listing services around. Especially not for larger investment portfolios.

In Sweden there are two listing services for commercial properties. The mentioned service Kommersiella.se has been around since 2001 and Objektvision was released in 1998. The latter is the biggest and owned by Alma Media which also runs the site Bovision which is competitor to Hemnet in the area of residential listings.

Update

Carl-Henric Borg, CEO at Hemnet, confirms (over Twitter @HemnetVD) that they will release a commercial listing site later this autumn. 

 Interesting, very interesting.

Hemnet.se launches an iPhone application

The pick of the season among real estate listing services is to launch an iPhone application (1, 2, 3 and 4). Yesterday it was Hemnet, the leading Swedish service, turn to put their services to the table.

First impression 

Impressed! Not bad at all.

You're able to search both using the built in GPS or by choosing any municipality. Easy to use map. Multiple photos. Save listings to 'My Hemnet'. Calculate monthly costs. Able to contact the agent through a call or email.

However, the best thing is the ability to take your own photos from the open house and store them together with the listing.

Room for improvements

The search is a bit confusing in the beginning. Took me a while to find the detail search page (first do a search, then click 'filter') and understand what types of listings that are presented.

But the biggest disappointment, after 15 minutes of hard search on the Internet version of Hemnet, was to understand that their is actually two different 'My Hemnet'. One on the Internet version and one on the iPhone. The highlighted listings are synced but not the photos I've taken on a listing. Confusing and takes away the benefit.  

One functionality that I don't understand why they put into the application (both versions) is the register of building suppliers, removal companies, storage and so on. There are 'yellow pages' services doing this much better. Instead I would like to see more statistics and tools for handling the process of buying a home.

Finally, the video from Hemnet showing their new iPhone application.