A mobile presence will become a necessity. With the number of smart phone users growing by the day, there is an increasing expectation that your listings will be accessible via mobile. Whether it’s a website optimised for mobile, a downloadable application, or a yard sign that brings listing information to house hunters’ handsets, people will be looking for some way to access what you have to offer while they’re on the move.

Layar will start to gain real ground. As the number of smart phones grows steadily, so too will the number of mobile applications that make use of Layar’s Augmented Reality (AR) view of the world. With many real estate advertisers already putting AR to work, expect Layar to become much less unusual in 2010.

Mash-up applications – those that merge maps, real estate listings, and other neighbourhood information – will blow our minds. There are all kinds of possibilities for consumers and agents when it comes to online real estate: everything from finding the suburb with the lowest pollution levels to gauging where people most want to move to through an analysis of geo-tagged tweets.

Google will keep surprising us. 2009 saw Google make huge strides in online real estate. While there are still plenty of challenges to overcome, it seems highly unlikely that Google will slow down in 2010. For agents, the trick will be to stay on top of Google’s movements and focus on how each release can be used to their advantage.

Social media fatigue will set in. 2009 could easily be described as the Year of the Tweet, and Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube all saw substantial growth. But amongst people who use these tools for business, we predict 2010 will be the year the excitement wears off and many begin to focus on the return their social media use is bringing in.

Newspapers will sell even fewer ads. mediapost.com suggests 2010 could be the year newspapers hit bottom in terms of advertising revenue. Whether 2010 is the worst year for newspapers or if there are even slower years to come, the bottom line is that online advertising is only going to consolidate its position as the default option.

Now it’s your turn: have we hit the nail on the head or are we way off the mark? Bring on your best predictions for the new year in our comments.

[Image: theweatherpages.wordpress.com]

Not only is this a great way to promote your listings to an international audience, it is also a great tool to differentiate yourself from your competitors when marketing to potential sellers.

If you would like to be a guinea pig and help us test the application for free, just go to www.listglobally.com and click the link on the home page to register for a free trial. Once we receive your request, we will be in touch via email with your login details.

The news just over a week ago that Google was “entering” the UK/European market has sent the share prices of Rightmove and Seloger into a tailspin. Seloger dropped by 9% while Rightmove has plummeted a whopping 17%. Seloger has since recovered to its pre-news price while Rightmove continues to be significantly down.

So let’s look at what happened, will the property portal landscape change and is this impact on the share prices is justified.

An article by the Financial Times (Dec 2 titled “Google set to enter UK property market”) seems to have set the cat amongst the pigeons. The article stated that Google is in talks with British estate agents and that “experts” say that an entry by them to the market could pose a serious threat to existing property websites. The article didn’t talk about what Google was going to do and Google didn’t comment. So there is really not much to go on. So the only guide we really have as to what Google may do in the UK and Europe is what they have done in Australia.

Google “entered” the Australian market 6 months ago (July 2009) when they made it possible for agents, brokers, franchise groups, and portal sites to place their listings on Google Maps. When a user does a search on Google Maps (not the main Google search) for real estate, Google plots the houses in its database on the maps and users can then click on the various dots to see if they like the houses and then are driven back to the advertiser’s site.

At that time, there was a similar uproar and many were predicting the death of realestate.com.au and domain.com.au and the REA Group share price dropped nearly 7% from $5.90 to $5.50. However in the 6 months since the announcement by Google, the REA Group share price has increased 60% to $8.84, the traffic to the site has increased from 4.5m UB’s in June 09 to 5.4m UB’s in October and analysts are predicting an additional 20% revenue growth for the REA Group in FY 2010.

In August, PropertyPortalWatch wrote about the challenges for Google knocking over the market leaders. Here is the link to the article called “The Challenges for Google Real Estate”. All of these still hold true.

Many hope that Google will be the saviour from the “big bad” commercial property portals and deliver free marketing to the agents. However this is a simplistic view and underestimates the challenges Google faces. The challenges include gaining enough listings, maintaining their quality, driving traffic to the maps area, and ensuring the interface is attractive to consumers.

Even if Google is successful in addressing the above, they will only be delivering clicks to the agent’s site not email leads. The agents will need to invest more in higher quality sites to convert the clicks to leads. This, of course, comes at a cost. The old adage holds true, there is no such thing as a free lunch.

It will be interesting times and if I was an agent, I would be putting my listings on Google. However, any clicks I get from Google should be supplemental to my existing online marketing strategy and not replacing my use of established portal sites.

The new improved website is designed to help real estate agents and property developers do business overseas, providing networking and business opportunities.

New features include development finder, agent finder, interactive events calendar, news and alerts with business announcements, plus data on portals which allows agents to compare pricing and google rankings, aimed to help connect the global real estate world.

The website also offers the Globaledge Search Index where agents can research consumer demand for overseas property and make better business planning decisions, and marketing reports and online marketing advice to help improve lead generation and sales.

Best of all, it is free for agents to sign up and add themselves to the global business directory or choose from a range of email news alerts which might just help their business. The website also offers paid for premium services to give agents a real competitive edge.

Globaledge was founded by Ashley Rigg in April 2007 shortly after he left his position as Online Publishing Director at Blendon Communications, the publishers of Homes Overseas and Show House Magazine.

In an interview about the relaunch on Estate Agent Today, Rigg was quoted as saying the new site is a natural progression from its original position as a marketing portal for overseas property professionals

“When we launched the site this time last year, the aim was to help agents and developers do more business online. This hasn’t changed. The relaunch is about creating new ways for our international audience to do business. We want to be the first place estate agents and property developers come to meet new international partners and explore new markets.”

“Over the past 12 months we’ve signed up over 3,500 international agents and developers as registered users, so there is already a base of potential partners for people to network with.”

Officially, globaledge.co.uk celebrates its first birthday this Thursday 4 December 2008, and the relaunch looks like it will ensure the next year is fruitful for the portal and its many members.