A property touch in InternetWorld Sweden

Was delighted to see not one, but two articles about the property related issues in an issue of InternetWorld Sweden.

Social media in a residential property company

An interview is conducted with Thomas B. Walden, Head of Information & Marketing at Henry Ståhl Fastigheter AB. A large regional residential building and property company in Norrköping, Sweden. 

The article describes how Thomas for many years has focused on making the communication from the property company more 'human' then just a lot of technical jargon. From the knowledge of new technology he understands that the power has shifted to the individual consumer,  so one has to be where the discussion is going on. 

One example is the residential project 'Knäppingsborg' where they also use a Facebook page, with 1100+ fans, on which there right now is a discussion on which retail shops should be included. 

This project is the first and is used as trial, but they are already started to plan for an extension. The future may also include mobile applications. 

Redesign of a residential property site

In each issue of InternetWorld a web agency is invited to come up with a better design for any website of their choice. In this issue InUse (which is the firm behind Hemnet's latest update) took on the site of StockholmsHem, a large municipality owned residential property firm. 

Their aim is to, through the site, save money for the company, increase the interaction between neighboures and create a suistanable future. The result looks like a crossover between Mint & the live feed in Facebook. 

The main idea is to add and connect sensors, like measuring energy, and making it visible and comparable using the site. A great idea. 

Early Adopters in LinkedIn are put into the spotlight

Being an early adopter ain't easy all the time. One is always looking for the new stuff through 100+ RSS feeds, try out services and products when they are in version 0.2, queuing up to buy the latest release, spending a fortune, being questioned of the use of the service that your friends & co-workers one day will take for granted...  ;-)

But then one receive a mail...  Epic!

561 856 people signed up before me, one of them was Victor. ;-) 

I'm proud to be among the early adopters but my aim is to be an innovator.
The first 100 000 to sign up for LinkedIn got another mail also... 

Sweden gets 'Zestimates' when Booli teams up with Ljungqvist Information

Booli, the challenger on the Swedish residential listing market, is once again pushing the the limits of end user experience when introducing 'market price' functionality. ('Zestimates' is a verb from Zillow in the US.)

The new functionality

The user is able to see (after two 'warnings' on how it works) the 'market value approximation' directly in the listings.

How it works

The service actually provides two different values.

Värderobot (translation 'ValueRobot')  
The value is calculated through a AVM (Automated Value Model) from the Swedish company Ljungqvist Information AB. The input to the model is a large number of comparable sales that is combined with data from each unique listing regarding parameters like location, size, monthly payment and so on. 

Mäklarindikatorn  (translation 'AgentIndikator')  
More of 'Mechanical Turk' approach letting agents not involved in the listing have a say about the value. The coverage for this service is much more limited.

When displaying a listing there is new page showing both values (if they exists).

 

My thoughts

I think this is a great move from Booli. It will create buzz and increase traffic. There has for a long time been a topic on the Swedish market (especially in Stockholm) regarding the low 'listing price' on objects. This will give more input to the analyze done by the buyer. 

However, AVMs also have a negative side to it, it's just an approximation and not an appraisal (external valuation) for the specific object. Read more on the topic of AVM downside here, here and here. Booli really tries to make the users aware of this. There is not one, but two, warnings you have to 'click through' in order to active this service.