Leading Dutch property portal funda.nl recently commissioned market research to find out what consumers thought of it. The results are as revealing for agents as they were for the portal itself.

The research, conducted by Heliview, showed just how important video and interactive floor plans are when it comes to listings. 53 percent of respondents said they were more likely to spend time looking at a listing if a floor plan was included, while 61 percent said they were likely to prefer listings if a video was available.

Heliview’s results were also enlightening when it came to public perception of the market-leading portal. A huge 81 percent named funda.nl as their preferred listing location when it came to promoting their house.

So, for Dutch agents at least, it seems skipping the market leader when placing property listings simply isn’t an option. In terms of listing content, the survey confirms what many already know: the more content, the better.

Looking for more ideas on listing content? Click here to see our tips on making your listings stand out.

This week we can report that France’s meilleursagents.com has taken things one step further by releasing a mobile android application. The app displays the property value of every single building in Paris in price per square meter.

The “layar empowered augmented reality app” allows users to see at street level, through their mobile phone camera, the value or prices of real estate in Paris.

Users launch the application, place their phone in front of them and steer toward the building of their choice. GPS identifies the location and orientation of the phone and estimates of house prices from meilleursagents.com then appear in real time on the phone screen, above the camera image.

The company claim this is the first application of augmented reality real estate in France.

You can watch a video demo below:

Augmented Reality demo using Google Android + Layar from MeilleursAgents.com on Vimeo.

Stay tuned for many more android releases as the real estate industry cottons on to possibilities offered by this latest technology.

The reeswe.com venture has three “channels” through which it hopes to create revenue. The first, Montelatici says, is the prospect of licensing its technology to other industry players, such as portals. Second is the idea that web companies, designers and developers will use reeswe.com to build real estate websites for their customers. Third, reeswe.com is aiming to provide complete real estate websites to domestic customers.

While not all reeswe.com’s content is available in English at this stage, Montelatici hopes its technology will appeal to international customers as well as those in the Italian market.

funda.nl, the leading property portal in the Netherlands, will reportedly be partnering with Dutch mobile phone company SPRXmobile to be part of their new “augmented reality” mobile application.

SPRXmobile is behind Layar, described as the “world’s first mobile augmented reality browser”. Put simply, Layar uses a phone’s camera, GPS and compass to show information about the buildings on the screen.

This information is sorted into layers – one for places to go out (using data provided by social network Hyves), available jobs (from temp agency Tempo team), nearby ATMs (from ING Bank), healthcare providers (from health insurer zekur.nl) and real estate, using data from funda.nl. According to the Layar website, funda.nl’s data layer will be added in early July.

A video demonstration of the application describes its functions in detail:

The application is currently only available on mobiles that use the Google Andriod operating system in the Netherlands. However, a press release from Layar states:

“SPRXmobile is planning further roll-outs, together with local partners, in Germany, the UK and the United States this year. SPRXmobile will continue with regular releases of new layers after each local launch. The Layar application will be available via the Android Market. Other handsets and operating systems are in development with a prime focus on the iPhone 3G S.”

Raimo van der Klein, co-founder of SPRXmobile, adds:

“Eventually, the physical and the virtual worlds will become one. Many visions on Augmented Reality have already been developed, but we are proud to be able to bring this one step closer to reality.”

findaproperty.com was selected as the only UK property portal launch partner for last week’s debut of Google Street View.

In a statement about the launch, Chris Boorman, Head of Product Development at findaproperty.com said:

“We are naturally delighted to partner with Google for this launch. Street View is a genuine innovation in mapping and fits extremely well with the existing technology on each of our sites. It makes finding the right property even easier and we fully believe Street View will become a fundamental part of every property search.”

The company says that the technology will equally help estate agents and developers to create a comprehensive picture of an area prior to the first viewing – bringing key features, which may positively influence a decision to buy or rent, to the fore at the earliest stage.

Street View is available on findaproperty.com listings located in major UK towns and cities including London, Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, York, Newcastle, Southampton, Bristol, Swansea and Glasgow. findaproperty.com was also very quick to incorporate Street View into its Area Guide pages for towns and cities, with twenty-two pages already live.

Boorman said that Street View will complement their member agents’ listings and encourage potential buyers and renters to spend more time investigating their next home, and that “it also neatly supplements the agent’s role as the local expert with functionality that brings a property search to life”.

findaproperty.com’s parent company, The Digital Property Group, said that this cutting-edge technology will soon appear on the other three portals owned by the company: primelocation.com, homesandproperty.co.uk and findanewhome.com.

The partnership placed findaproperty.com in a unique position as the only property portal chosen for the launch of Street View, giving it an extra, albeit short-lived, edge until other portals integrated the new technology.

By this week the application had already been adopted by leading Scottish property search website s1homes.com so Scottish homeseekers can take a virtual walk around every property for sale or rent in Scotland’s four main cities: Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Glasgow and Dundee.

Across the Channel in the Netherlands Google Street View launched with local property portal funda.nl last week.

Having also launched Street View in France, Spain and Italy last year, Google has recently added more cities to Street View in these countries, around the south of France, Zaragoza and the Amalfi coast. While it’s been put to many uses, from tourist boards to property portals, Street View seriously enhances a user’s ability to get to know the local area, while perusing properties online.

It’s an amazing product, but Street View has most famously been the subject of controversy over privacy, and has spawned websites like streetviewnederland.nl, which highlights some of the more interesting and unusual things the Google cameras have captured in The Netherlands.

Scams of this nature, involving unwitting victims calling premium numbers as a matter of urgency, are well documented.

The latest in these attempts was brought to our attention by kyero.com, a niche Spanish property portal serving overseas buyers. kyero.com’s Managing Director, Martin Dell, told propertyadguru.com that a number of suspicious enquiries were made this week to estate agents advertising on kyero.com with a telephone number starting with 0067 0330 XXXX.

“We’ve advised advertisers not to call this number and be very wary about calling telephone numbers to international destinations they are not familiar with,” says Martin.

kyero.com acted quickly to prevent the problem happening again, and say they deleted the suspect enquiries from kyero.com, reported the abuse to the Internet provider and banned the offending email address from accessing kyero.com in the future.

Property scams are nothing new – but they don’t usually target the agent, via property portal leads.

propertyadguru.com advises agents to exercise caution when returning calls – if you’re suspicious of a number, particularly if it’s from overseas, or you don’t recognise the area code, do some research online before you call it or call the phone company or portal and ask a few questions.

[image: flickr/Alexander O'Neill]

German market leader immobilienscout24.de have announced a price increase.

The portal argues that the increase will enable them to provide a better service, and that it will enhance their ability to attract buyers for their agents.

The increase comes at a time when many portals are reconsidering price structures, as agents struggle in a difficult market. UK market leader rightmove.co.uk has already suggested it will not be increasing pricing for 2009.

immobilienscout24.de is owned by Deutsche Telekom and is part of the telco’s Scout Group which also operates portals in the other major classifieds categories. It is the clear market leader in Germany.

One blog puts the price increase at around 1 euro per item.

Along with new packages and prices for immobilienscout24.de comes a new booking facility called FLEXplus.

With trends indicating immobilienscout24.de typically takes the lead in setting prices, it raises speculation that this could set a precedent for other German portals to hike up their prices.

The new price list for immobilienscout24.de can be viewed here.