Great use of Silverlight PivotViewer for residential listings

What a coincidence, the same week as a debate started on the blog Future of Real Estate Marketing (an Inman company) why (or if) 'the map based search was dead' an absolute stunning new search tool was launched on the Swedish market called BostadsPivot ('RealEstatePivot').

The service 

A software developer named Magnus Ohlsson has used the Silverlight control PivotViewer combined with listings data from the Booli API (a Swedish residential listing service) to create this tool. 

Hard to explain the tool in one picture but each photo represents one listing the different columns are in this case the representing different price intervals. 

Try it

It's for sure worth trying. And for all non Swedish speaking here is the short manual.  

 In the panel to the left one decides how to limit the search. In the drop down menu in the upper right corner one choose how to 'group' the listings. And finally there are two icons (upper right corner) for how to view the result.

Read more about the tool at the developers blog (in English). Where you also find more information about the PivotViewer, including a great TED presentation on the topic.

My thoughts

First of all, the PivotViewer technology is impressive and this example for sure takes advantage of it. It gives a new way to browse the listings. The downside is to make it as user friendly as needed for the average user. Furthermore, the integration of a map could be better. However, the use of technology is brilliant. Other listing services will hopefully be inspired by this.

Datscha launches in Finland

(Full disclosure: This post is a shameless self-promotion when I'm the Product Manager at Datscha. I try to stay clear from writing about Datscha on this blog, but this is to good to be left out.)

Datscha, the Swedish SaaS solution for the commercial property market, launched last week it's services in Finland by adding data on 140 000 properties and market information for 7 municipalities (to be 50 soon).

Property data

The data to be found on all commercial properties in Finland includes  id, owner, type code, land area and total size of the building. 

Below is the rather useless, but all so cool view of all the 510 000 (!) commercial properties in Sweden and Finland. 

Makes much more sense when zooming in.

On a detailed level the user is able to do a 'mouse over' on any property icon and see the id, owner and type code. There is also a link for more details.  

Market data

As in Sweden, market data from a consulting firm is available in order for the user to getting a better understanding of what office sub markets that exist and their rent-, vacancy- and yield-levels.

More information

Is found at www.datscha.com and through the press release (in English). 

My thoughts

Very proud indeed.  ;-) 

Time to start marketing the standards

One of the great (small) challenges in business life is all the silos of data within an organisation. For example, the property information in the property management software that could be useful to have in your CRM system and through the growth of standards there may be a solution in sight. 

 

The hard work

However, standards don't just pop-up. They are the result of some serious hard work and timeless efforts to put them in place. A standard is an agreement between maybe 100s of counterparts that first of all not may be aware why they need it (!) or want it (software suppliers making it harder to switch supplier). That's a tough starting point. The second is that everyone is doing their business in an unique way making it hard just to have a common understanding of 'what is included in the rent?' or 'what type of area is it?". 

  

The organisations

Luckily for the property industry there are organisations driving the work of standardisation. The largest effort internationally is run by OSCRE, which is a merge between an US based organisation (OSCRE) and a UK one (PISCES) a few years back. Their effort is nowadays not limited to any particular country. See some of there larger projects listed here. A great interview with Stephen Spooner, the Executive Chairman of OSCRE, is found at crePodcast.    

 

In Sweden the equivalent effort is run by the fi2, which has been successful in the construction phases. (OSCRE has been more focusing on the investment & valuation phase.) 

  

Real solutions

Some examples on the benefits of standards.  

   

Case: Lease data

A great examples is from the large commercial real estate consulting firm JLL described in a PISCES case paper.

Jones Lang LaSalle has devised a lease administration system to manage its clients’ portfolios. Originally information was transferred to this system from lawyers using paper-based systems. This traditional approach required specialist staff to extract the data, was monotonous for those involved, and therefore prone to error.

      

In contrast, when the PISCES Lease Standard was developed it became possible to take lease data direct from law firms straight into the lease administration system. Using PISCES, ambiguities are minimised and the responsibility for data is more clearly defined. Definitions are often unclear with paper leases but with PISCES there is more precision, because the data standard defines that if a data field is populated in a particular way it carries a precise meaning.  

  

Case: Underwriting process

Found a video showing how standards are used in the underwriting process.  
.    

Find more videos like this on CREOpoint

 

Case: Making the data in CAD drawings searchable (In Swedish)

The fi2 has created a PDF with existing solutions at companies like ABB Fastigheter and Regionfastigheter.  

Next step

Why not sign up at www.OSCREiForum.org (hosted by CREOpoint) and join the discussion?  

   

My thoughts

The different standards have today reached the point when the main problem is not to make them work, but to convince firms to start using them (or demand suppliers to put them in place). This is a challenge of marketing and selling.

 

I believe the only way is to SHOW existing real time solutions (like the video above). Then also to focus the 'sales' towards the large investors & banks who then will show the benefits for (/put the pressure on) all other parties in the industry. Cause like always, money talks. 

 

Finally, to all you people out there working within the area; keep up the great work. 

 

ARGUS to partner with RCA to integrate data in solutions

The real estate software supplier ARGUS (Facebook page) and the global real estate data research firm Real Capital Analytics has announced an interesting partnership making the RCA data available within the software suite.   

From the press release; 

"Initially this partnership will provide access to data points including a quartile distribution of capitalization rates and prices per unit within our market leading analysis and asset management solutions," says Mark P. Kingston, president and CEO of ARGUS Software. "More importantly, however, this partnership marks the first step in the convergence of real market data with our solutions that will facilitate the next generation of efficiency and value at the desktop."

"This venture between RCA and ARGUS is a natural. To value a commercial property anywhere in the world, ARGUS has the leading software and RCA has the leading data," said Robert M. White, Jr., RCA's founder and president. "The cooperative efforts between the two firms will yield great value for our clients."

My thoughts

This is a great move. I strongly believe in making the research work much more efficient by merging data from different sources directly into, for example, a DCF software. (Full disclosure, I'm the product manager at Datscha which has done this successfully for 10 years in a web solution.)     

Hemnet integrates listings at Eniro

Hemnet (the largest Swedish residential listing service) has made an interesting strategic move; their listings are now integrated on Eniro, one of the largest yellow pages in Sweden. 

Benefits

The biggest benefit for the end user is that one could use a direct link http://kartor.eniro.se/ in order to quickly display all Hemnet listing on a map. No need to go through multiple drop-downs (for example choose municipality) at Hemnets site. 

The user is able to filter the listing displayed on type, price and size directly on Eniros site. In combination with aerial photos, street view and more.  

Furthermore, the user is able to display searches in the yellow pages database and display the result together with the listings on the map. For example, schools, restaurants and health care.  

Not a new relationship

Hemnet and Eniro has been in close co-operations for many, especially since mid 2009 when Hemnet integrated Eniro's mapping solution on Hemnet. most of the services now available on Eniro are also available on Hemnet. 

My thoughts

Great move in order to make the listing more available. However, when the listing now are more easily available on Eniro (one click to a large map) will the traffic go down on Hemnet?   

Additional reading

More to be read at Eniro's press release and blog (both in Swedish).