SQUIIZ under the microscope: Will it work?

The new industry-owned listings portal SQUIIZ has launched, boasting 200,000 listings and 3,500 involved agencies nationwide.

In fact, managing director of RE/MAX Australia and New Zealand Michael Davoren said that the site is on track to upload another 2,000 agencies by the end of the month.

Property Observer decided that it’s time we take a squiz at SQUIIZ after its launch two days ago.

After the “launch meetings” began on 11 September across Australia, the official launch was somewhat delayed, apparently as a result of increased agency interest and some bugs that needed ironing out.

At the first launch, in Brisbane, there was strong participation, according to Harcourts International managing director Mike Green.

“Support from the industry has been incredibly strong. There were over 400 people at the first launch in Brisbane, and there was an overwhelmingly positive response to the portal and the industry initiative,” said Green.

Prior to this, Roomeo, the brainchild of the CPREA and chairman Geoff Baldwin, who is also managing director of RE/MAX, had been launched.

They had been aiming to create a 100% industry owned portal, but have since bowed to SQUIIZ and dropped their effort to support this new platform instead. RE/MAX has been showing full support to the new platform since this time.

Timeline:

• August 2013 - "Squiiz Property finds You" trademark number lodged
• May 2014 - CPREA launches Roomeo (plans for it to be 100% industry-owned)
• Early September 2014 – CPREA decides not to go ahead with Roomeo
• September 11, 2014 – Launch meetings across Australia begin
• Mid-October – Launch initially expected
• November 18, 2014 – Launch
• Future: App to be launched (“soon”), potentially to see added features

Back in August, we were already posing the question whether readers believed that SQUIIZ could seriously challenge the market leaders of realestate.com.au and Domain, with the majority saying that vendors would likely be keen list on the portal.

The costing is the real drawcard for a new site. While some were suggesting that the site was prompted as a result of rising prices on other portals this year, the timeline doesn’t support this factor.

SQUIIZ CEO Nick Christian, speaking to Greg Vincent’s Property Academy Marketing, reiterated this point.

“This hasn’t been a knee jerk reaction from the recent third party portals price increasing, these groups have been collectively speaking for some time,” said Christian.

“It’s the first time a group this size has come together in the real estate industry, it’s the first time that the groups have put a financial commitment to an initiative like this and it’s the very first time they’ve actually engaged a CEO to drive the initiative,” he said.

“The number one focus is to deliver a low-cost option… and have some level of control as an industry over the data as well.”

Nevertheless, with free basic listings for members, it’s worth a consideration.

Basic listings are those without logos or agent profiles, and are offered to members for free or to non-members for $50. Profile listings, with logo and agent photos, are priced at $200 per month per office for unlimited listings for members, and $250 for non-members. There are no premier or feature listings and no banner ads to agents or agencies.

Members include residential real estate offices, groups and networks, while independent offices can join through the Independent Real Estate Network of Excellence.

Those looking to sell themselves, or “For sale by owner” are not welcome.

“The costs of uploading listings onto other property portals have been spiraling and something needed to be done to protect both consumers and our industry,” said Davoren. He says it will future-proof online marketing costs.

Davoren points to, in some cases, a more than 100% increase on charges seen from listings portals in the space of 12 months.

It also seems that it’s there to future-proof the data.

Previously expressing his concerns about data being taken out of the industry, Davoren noted that it can quickly become a lead generation product that would see the industry charged for using its own data, along with repercussions for consumers.

“With the intention of helping to control prices and value offered, real estate industries in several countries have moved or are moving to take control of their data and to protect real estate customers from exploitation by non-real estate industry groups,” he said.

Current members:

RE/MAX

LJ Hooker

Ray White

Harcourts

Raine & Horne

First National

Century 21

PRDNationwide

Belle Property

Coronis Realty

A number of independents (via IRENE)

Founding directors of SQUIIZ:

Angus Raine (Raine & Horne)

Brian White (Ray White)

Mike Green (Harcourts)

Peter Hanscomb (Belle Property)

Michael Davoren (RE/MAX)

George Collins (IRENE – Independent Real Estate Network of Excellence)

Tony Brasier (PRD Nationwide)

David Whitbread (Ind Chair)

Nick Christian (CEO)

Charles Tarbey (Century21)

Ryan Campbell (LJ Hooker)

It’s likely that real estate fans are set to see signboards and marketing collateral, including sold stickers, online banners and printed material with SQUIIZ branding, with the site asking the industry to help the promotion of the brand. Letterheads, business cards and brochures, for instance, may include the branding.

The shareholder’s agreement currently states that profits are put back into the technology until it becomes the “number one” portal in Australia – knocking realestate.com.au off the perch. After this time, it’s unclear how profits will be used.

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The mobile application

The other point of difference SQUIIZ is actively marketing is their new smartphone application. It will offer a ‘Mobility in the Moment’ concept. Effectively, you enter in your criteria for a property and if you travel within 50 metres of something that fits it then you will receive the details from a voice prompt.

The patent-applied app, which is yet to be launched, will include all the content on the site.

This sort of geographic tagging capability was something foreshadowed by Century 21’s Charles Tarbey, who has been involved with SQUIIZ.

Back in May, when discussing the future of signboards and real estate advertising, Tarbey suggested that the future may be in technology that alerts you to where properties are via your smartphone. At the time, he suggested a signboard that emits a signal. It appears the app will do this basic task on its own.

“The much anticipated, free to download, industry first app will be released and available soon, giving the site a short settling-in period,” says Davoren.

Christian says that he believes it will change how people look for property.

“People want instant gratification. Apps are designed to make life easier and this is definitely taking a step out of the process looking for a property, pulling the car over and actually fiddling around with an app to find out about the property and look at the details of it. This app will talk to you upon passing the property,” he said.

The 'Property finds you' tagline trademarked last year suggests that this has long been on the cards.

What has it got to do with New Zealand?

Plenty of comparisons have been made between the www.squiiz.com.au site and the www.realestate.co.nz site, which was established 10 years ago. At present, the New Zealand site is the number one listing website in the country.

Launched in 2005 the site has 100,000 listings at any given time, or 95% of the listings currently being marketed – excluding private sellers’ properties. It is used by over 1,000 real estate offices and has 900,000 unique visitors per month. They also have a farm property sales site, a commercial site and a business sales site.

Like SQUIIZ, realestate.co.nz is 100% industry owned, in this case by the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand and Property Page.

This also lines up quite closely with Australia’s current third most popular listings platform, RealestateVIEW.com.au, launched in 2001, which is jointly owned by the REINT, REINSW, REIT, REIV and REIWA. The REIV is the controlling shareholder. They also feature commercial, business, rural and holiday rentals platforms.

SQUIIZ's Nick Christian has previously pointed to the New Zealand model, sharing the point that the model was launched at $200 per office per month and all these years later now sits at $250 per office per month.

But is it feasible for consumers using it?

Earlier this year, realestate.com.au shared that it had 23 million visits per month and remains the most popular option for those seeking property in Australia.

Can SQUIIZ take a share of the pie? It will largely come down to what they offer the consumer and how they market themselves.

The properties are listed in order of the time they were uploaded, which makes a logical sense that currently sees other portals struggle. At present, agents can pay for their listings on some major portals to appear higher, regardless of the search made by the consumer.

The interface doesn’t have the sleek style of Homely, though keeps things simpler than our current leading portals - perhaps as a result of having no banner advertisements. It is arguably not that easy on the eyes, with small thumbnails that render the properties’ facades underwhelming in the larger lists.

Clicking into a listing is a little more fruitful. It’s easy to use and navigate, with a large map offering.

Already, Facebook fans are asking for more features. Some have lamented that they cannot filter the listings by square metres, or by a more specific type of property. Refined searches have been, largely the desire for many consumers in the real estate industry – particularly investors.

“This being a first release of our portal, we'll be continuing to improve along the way. At this stage we don't but we'll be looking into adding more refined searches down the track,” the SQUIIZ team responded on Facebook when asked if they offered other refinement capabilities.

Current refinements include property type (house, apartment and unit, townhouse or villa), price (maximum and minimum), number of bedrooms and number of bathrooms.

They’re now at almost 1,500 likes on their Facebook page, compared to just under 60 in August. Their Twitter account sits at about 65 followers, up from nine in August.

Of course, for the user experience to match that of the leading portals it will need to offer close to the listings capacity on those portals. While at present it offers 200,000 listings, quick comparisons between the site and the leading portals shows that it falls a little low by area.

However, it’s early days and no doubt the industry and competitors will be watching closely as momentum builds, particularly with the new app yet to be officially released.