Aussie rules team signs name players
Author: Helen Osborne
Date: 26 May 2001
Section: e-Business page 150
Publication: Estates Gazette (UK)
Web: www.egi.co.uk
Australia's simpler geography has allowed big agents to
set up a comprehensive listing service ahead of the US and
the UK.
As UK and US listings sites battle for domination amid
over-investment and plundering, the Australian market is
stealing the march. Down under, four players have been
getting their act together in typical unperturbed Aussie
style.
PropertyLook.com.au was founded by four of Australia's
most formidable agents: Jones Lang LaSalle, CB Richard
Ellis, Colliers Jardine and Knight Frank. And UK agents
could do well to take heed of it.
Built, loaded and launched in just three months, the site
is intended to serve as an industry portal. Furthermore,
investment was modest and although PropertyLook refuses to
divulge a figure, it "certainly was not in the area of
tens of millions of Australian dollars", says the site's
general manager, Andrew Grill.
And, like US consortium Octane, it is "a gift to the real
estate industry", being funded completely by its partners.
Membership is open to all.
Grill says: "Other licensed real estate agents can join
the site. We have DTZ, Ray White and Laing & Simmons, with
more to follow. We understand that to have a critical mass
of users and members, we need to have an open policy."
Greater transparency
With the aim of moving the industry towards greater
transparency, Grill dismisses fears that the brand
strength of the big four could become diluted, and insists
that the CEOs are equally committed to the site's success.
Membership comes at a cost of £55 per office per calendar
month.
PropertyLook is in discussions with a number of other
players such as Chesterton, Stanton Hillier Parker and
FPDSavills.
Following the site's March launch in Australia,
www.propertylook.co.nz also went live in New Zealand this
month as the nation's first commercial property listings
site.
Although it has competitors, PropertyLook purports to be a
fearsome entity. So why has Australia been so quick off
the mark?
Reasons to be speedy
Paul Nelson, director of e-business at Jones Lang
LaSalle's Sydney office, points to some obvious reasons:
"PropertyLook services Australia and New Zealand, which
has eight key commercial central business districts and a
number of subsidiary markets. With a population of some
21m, this is clearly a more straightforward market than
the US, with its multiple central business districts and
huge population. The UK is different again, dominated by
one city but still substantially bigger."
Grill, who comes from a technical background, says: "In
Australia, the market is obviously smaller. The aim with
PropertyLook was to get the four key players around the
table to develop a solution. Given that the four actually
hold a large share of the listings already, we have a
tremendous base on which to build.
"In the UK or US, you would probably have to invite more
people to the table for the launch, which brings with it
its own set of problems. We found that four was a good
number to deal with."
It was decided that leaving the job to a
non-industry-driven third party would mean holding agents
to ransom. And it was felt that if the main players were
unable to drive things forward, then chances of success
were minimal.
According to business intelligence service Red Sheriff,
PropertyLook got 62,000 page impressions during April.
There are a number of competitors in Australia including
www.bazcan.com, www.commercialpropertysearch.com.au, and
www.commercialproperty.com.au, plus the commercial sectors
of residential portals such as www.realestate.com.au and
www.property.com.au. However, PropertyLook holds
comprehensive content from the founding members, who are
obliged to put up all controlled listings unless a client
objects. They must also show the www.propertylook.com.au
web address on all print advertising, as well as on all
signboards and websites.
Grill adds: "We have some competitors in Australia but
they are not actively advertising, and are not active in
markets outside the major capitals. In the first five
weeks, our website traffic is already two to three times
what theirs is. We also offer agents the ability to enter
their listings and photographs on to the website,
utilising special software developed by our web designer,
Information Dynamics, that just requires a web browser.
Our competition uses a number of data entry operators,
which means that their turnaround time is slower."
PropertyLook allows individual offices to download their
statistics on the amount of hits for a particular listing.
It can also act as an agent to present listings from
PropertyLook on its own corporate website, with all of its
own branding.
Links to the server
Agents' property search sections are linked directly to
PropertyLook's server, which means that an agent can enter
a new property, or modify an existing one, to have it
instantly available on its site, as well as on the main
PropertyLook site.
The organisation has an advisory group, which includes all
members, to look at enhancements and to provide feedback.
Longer term, it is anticipated that the site will become a
full-service listings vehicle with all associated services
also available via the web. A business user will be able
to find premises, get professional advice, design space,
fit it out, organise a move and arrange facilities
management.
US players are grappling with the issue of merging
listings sites and transaction sites.
Arthur Andersen in Australia, in its research initiative,
Digital Property, highlights some of the benefits of
transaction management: greater transparency of
information, faster dissemination of information and
better standardisation of processes. However, the report
says: "Transaction bliss is not here yet, not by a long
shot, and a number of existing hurdles will make forward
progress arduous."
The report cites resistance to change and new working
methods as the main problems.
It says: "Locally, there has been a much greater focus on
marketing tools, for example PropertyLook and Bazcan,
rather than downstream contract processing, which will
require a stronger element of standardisation if confusion
is to be removed from the market."
Implementation problems
JLL's Nelson agrees that the logical follow-on from a
listings site is data collection and transaction
management. However, it seems that Australia is also
facing problems in terms of implementation. Nelson says:
"PropertyLook is looking at both aspects, but there are no
existing local transaction management platforms to 'hitch
onto'. There are a number of developments in Europe and
the USA with which Jones Lang LaSalle's global e-business
team is working closely in order to develop global
platforms and data collection strategies."
Grill adds: "We plan to build a services section that will
offer third-party services, and transaction management
could be one of these. But there are no plans right now.
We are concentrating on building up the listings side, and
ensuring that people know about us."
PropertyLook has learned from overseas operators, with
regard to quality of listings and membership agreements,
and has rigidly enforced its own, with the aim of
protecting everyone's interests.
Grill feels that now it is the one setting standards. He
says: " We know that the head offices of our shareholders in
the US and UK are watching what we are doing very closely
to see just how we do it."
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