Swedish construction firms starts blogging

Burson-Marsteller (global public relations and public affairs firm) has published a white paper (in PDF and SlideShare) on the use of blogs in companies on the OMX Large Cap list (the Nordic exchange list and the Norwegian counterpart)

The conclusion is;

Approximately 9.1%, or 12 companies, of the 132 Nordic Large Caps have company sponsored blogs. This number represents a lower percentage than the 14.8%, or 72 companies, with blogs on the Fortune 500 list in the U.S. A reason for the lower penetration among Nordic companies could be that the U.S. market in general is ahead on the adoption curve when it comes to both social media and innovation in marketing communications.

More about the white paper is found at Svd (a large Swedish newspaper).

Construction firms in the study
Both Skanska and NCC were among the companies blogging. Both of them to have a conversation with students. You find them here; NCCs blog and Skanskas blog.

Next step
Hopefully they will take this way of communicating to the next step. Anyone that has lived or worked close to a construction site would appreciate information what is happening with the project. A blog could be a great channel for this.

Residential comps for free at Booli

Booli, the Swedish search engine for residential listings, continues to create brilliant functionality for buyers (maybe not for the brokers and sellers). Their latest step is to offer residential comparable sales for free.

The comparables are listed with information on:

• price  
• date  
• name on buyer and seller  
• address  
• real estate broker  
• difference compared to asking price  

Below is an example from a small village in Sweden. The red symbols are comparable sales; the blue are listings.

How it works
The information is purchased from the Swedish Land Register and updated every night (I suppose, since new data is released daily). The service does only include single family houses (not apartments).

The price for sold apartments is not available through the Land Register. However, it is manually collected through the company Mäklarstatistik, which is owned by Mäklarsamfundet (The Association of Swedish Real Estate Agents ) and the two largest brokerage firms in Sweden; Fastighetsbyrån och Svensk Fastighetsförmedling. The data is not published for free, but available through products from Värderingsdata.

First with national coverage
The idea to provide this data for free is not new. The local newspaper MittI started with this service in Stockholm earlier this year, but Booli is first with national coverage. It could also be seen as a response to the newly introduced service from Boligan.se who displays differences on asking price.

Introduction of a new business model
Information on comparable sales has been available for many years through PC or Client/Server products from companies like Ljungqvist, Värderingsdata and Svefa. However, those services have been for business clients and attached with a fee.

Two of them have provided free versions like Villvärdet (see example) from Ljungqvist and BoPriset from Värderingsdata (see below for an example). However, none of them are as comprehensive or user friendly as Booli's version. And none of them also displays the listings. On the other hand, Booli is the first to bring in advertisement (which is part of the business model).

More info
Is found at the Booli blog and from coverage in mainstream media like Ny Teknik and Veckans Affärer.

Boligan.se displays price changes to the listings

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.

Booli covers entire Sweden (and more this spring)

Booli, the Swedish search engine for residential listings, has had a busy spring.

1. Coverage of the entire Sweden
In June Booli announced (in Swedish) that they are now covering the entire Sweden. An impressive task since there are some 6000 brokers (according to Booli) to make searchable.

A quick test in my home town Karlskrona shows that Booli is close (but not there yet) to have all the listings in Hemnet (the market leader in listings and owned by the Association of Swedish Real Estate Agents). Anyway, an impressive first start for a service that just been around for 7 months)

2. Signs an exclusive deal with 'Villaägarna'
A week ago it became official that 'Villaägarna' (Association of house owners in Sweden) has included Booli in their site for searching houses on sale.

Read more about it 1 (press release) and 2 (Booli blog).

3. Internet Entreprenours of the year  
In April the Swedish magazine InternetWorld dubbed Booli to the 'Internet Entrepreneurs' of the year in Sweden.
Find the article here.

To sum up...
An quite impressive spring from a team that for sure believers in the smart use of Internet.

MyDealBook - A LinkedIn for the Commercial Real Estate industry

As far as I'm concerned, the commercial real estate market just got it's first social network. 

MyDealBook was released three weeks ago in the US. One of the founders is Ryan Slack, former CEO of PropertyShark (an information service for the commercial market), and the service also hits the ground running with adding the existing 300 000 PropertyShark users automatically to the network.

The idea for the service is (according to an Inman interview) a spin of from the user needs at PropertyShark;

"As CEO of PropertyShark, I found that our users were demanding that we let them meet other users: They demanded the ability to advertise on the site and they demanded more networking functions. MyDealBook addresses these needs",

MyDealBook is described by this Reuters article as:

"MyDealBook.com combines the best social networking techniques with powerful tools specific to the needs of real estate professionals.  Its features are designed to help users expand professional networks, find new business and manage projects.  Features include user profiles, messaging, networking and marketplace listings, as well as:
    Deals -- features a unique deal management system that allows users to post their professional activities to gain credibility, promotion for their projects, seek funding, market properties and share files
    Mini-feed -- provides users insight into the projects and deal flow within their network
    Events -- lists opportunities for real estate professionals to connect in person, including networking mixers, speed networking, conferences, training, site visits, fund raisers, sporting events, and more
    Groups -- enables users to join or form their own groups for specific purposes, such as organizing events, sharing deal information, collaborating, forming company teams, office networks and investment clubs
    Natural groups -- automatically groups users by company, profession, location, educational institution, professional association, state licensing and professional designation, to allow easy search and identification of
potential clients, business partners, or service providers
    Services -- provides powerful tools to search and match users with complementary business partners
    Jobs -- provides its users with opportunities to find or advertise job openings specific to the real estate industry.  

A niche not covered by Costar?
In this article in New York The Sun an associate director at the commercial real estate firm Newmark Knight Frank said the site could fill a niche not covered by services such as CoStar, the subscription-based Web site commonly used by office leasing brokers that offers only limited information about other industry professionals.

Find out more
About MyDealBook here;
   GeekEstateBlog  - an interview back in September
   4realz - have both a pod interview and a post about it 
   Inman coverage is found here and here