Gob stoppingly poor standards

This has got to be the worst-ever description of a property Agent PW has ever come across. It's for a 1-bed cottage bang on the coast in Co Clare between Kinvara and Ballyvaughan.

"The Mother Of All Locations!!!
Stunning Holiday Cottage Which Offers Privacy Most Rarely Seen In A Setting That Is Eye Watering"

At €500,000 one would hope they'd have more to say about it in the description than this drivel. If I was the vendor I'd have them taken off the instruction immediately.

How to join the church of latter day ethical estate agents

This gimmick is not just very funny, clever & up-to-date, it actually works as marketing.

http://www.tedtruitt.com/

Having looked at it, you're ready, you're primed & receptive in fact for a really interesting angle on the difficulty estate agents have in terms of their public image.

Unfortunately, what you get in the target website on an ethical code for estate agents is packaged very badly - a failure in terms of marketing/communications - totally over the top, too "clean" & idealised, not direct enough:

http://thecodeisgoodbusiness.com/

Therefore, as a combination, it's a strange juxtaposition of what you might call a European-like, satirical piece of marketing with a classic bit of po-faced American preaching.

Imagine giving out badges to your employees who had shown respect for a code of ethics! They'd laugh in your face & rightly so.

Euphemistic Madness, Propertymonkey to the rescue.

Estate agents have conducted some excellent research over the last ten years or so as house prices have experienced unprecedented growth levels. I always wondering though, how news would be managed if prices began to go downwards instead. This finally started to occur over the last few months. One leading agent/economist describes how “the average price of a second-hand property in Ireland eased back moderately by 1.1% during the first three months of 2007”. Also "House prices eased further in the Dublin second hand market in the first quarter of the year with prices falling back by 2.3%". Correct me if I’m wrong but is “eased back” not a fall, drop or decrease? In conjunction with this we are told that if certain areas are excluded from the analysis, even a slight increase can be detected from the figures. Is there any need to soften a soft landing? Enough of this fluffiness I say, let’s call a spade a spade. Propertymonkey is no fool!

Worth a wager?

With the political parties' promises to abolish or significantly extend stamp duty exemption levels for first time buyers, Paddy Power is offering odds on how the election outcome might impact on non First Timers. 4/6 is being offered on stamp duty being abolished on second hand homes (up to the value of €500,000) while 11/10 is available for those who fancy No.

The mighty Quinn

This image reflects one of the most bizarre phenomena of the Irish property market: that some agents do not include the asking price of the properties they are selling on behalf of their clients in the advertising that those same clients ultimately pay for.

I find it hard to believe that some agents don't record other details of properties: floor area, year of construction, size of plot etc. But PRICE, the damn price they are seeking - how can it be that they wouldn't advertise that? If I'm searching in a particular price range, how am I to know they have properties that match?

What do the clients think? Well, if John Quinn's success in Galway is anything to go by - they are not too bothered. This agent lists about 15% of the properties coming on the market in Galway city, and yet doesn't include prices in either his advertising in the Advertiser or on his website. (He does allow you to search in large price brackets, but is this sufficient?) One of his tag lines on the site is: Galway's New Generation of Estate Agents. Aaaagh!

We're trying to encourage transparency in the market, most recently introducing a way for agents to exchange information on private treaty results, and yet this is what we are up against.

Mr Tayto is not alone

Ph: Paddy 087 **** ***

Just noticed an ad in the Commercial Property supplement of the Irish Independent from last week:

ONE KING sized room, €500 p/m, new house, sky T.V. in room, Ph: Paddy 087 6*4 *6*0

Good luck to you, Paddy, wherever you are!

"The state of the place"

We've been house hunting and sniffing around a particular house a few times now. I won't go into the ins & outs of the house itself, but what's worth commenting on here is the condition the vendors have the house in for selling. It's like they had no intention whatsoever of selling: a complete mess all over. They do have a few excuses - children, packing for the move, a relaxed attitude to housekeeping. But excuses aside, they seem to have completely ignored the advice of the estate agent (who is slightly embarrassed by the state of the place) and all the Tips for Selling they can't have missed down the years.

The funny thing is: it's not really putting us off. There's other things to do that.

Donegal property frenzy will make you green

Just talking to an agent in Donegal and discovered that property is selling so fast there they have trouble actually getting it up on the websites!!

There's a frenzy of buying both by investors (aware that it is THE? cheapest county for property) and by people moving from Northern Ireland where the cost of living is so much higher in terms of property taxes.

JEALOUS? Bet you are.

Pic by toasty5 via www.sxc.hu

Even artists are willing to lend a hand to the property market

Celebrated abstract painter, Felim Egan, goes along with the idea of using his public persona to promote the best possible sale terms for his home in Sandymount - as featured in the Irish Times property supplement today. And why wouldn't he!

Property websites multiplying

You've surely noticed the battle on for domination of the online property advertising market. Propertynews.com announced last week that it "has captured over 65 per cent market share of all property for sale on the island of Ireland"; it called itself "the leading and fastest growing property portal in the Republic of Ireland and in Northern Ireland" (presumably combining the two markets, in which case it might as well have said "only property portal"!!), and "number one website"; and it claimed to carry "listings from over 1,000 estate agents and auctioneers" (again, presumably combining North & South).

No sooner has a claim been made, but a counter-claim follows. In a recent radio campaign, MyHome.ie was quite dismissive of these kinds of claims. Daft.ie use its website to show the figures for their claim to be "Ireland's busiest website". And both Daft.ie & Propertynews.com are now themselves advertising on radio; Funda is on television (with snails, ducks & so on); and MyHome.ie is fighting back with all its indignant might (including the property pages of the Irish Times). There must be much to protect.

And indeed, property advertising attracts an incredible amount of entrepreneurial interest. There are so many Irish property websites out there now it is becoming hard to keep track, so we're going to do so here.

This item will be added to as we come across them, and we have a feature in the pipeline on how the main ones compare to one another:

Advertising Portals -
MyHome.ie
Daft.ie
Propertynews.com
Funda.ie
Baile.ie
Sherlockhomes.ie
Findahome.ie
Propertyfile.net
Newgaff.ie
Huntforproperty.ie
Property.ie
Mychoice.ie
Yourchoice.ie
Firsthome.ie
Propertyselector.com
(Irishpropertymoves.ie)
(Propertyplace.ie)
(Moving.ie)
(Houses.ie)

Cork - epropertygold.com
Mayo - Goinggoing.net

In the meantime, here's what MyChoice.ie has to say about their offering:

"Mychoice.ie is the better property website to deal with the properties in Dublin." At least they didn't claim to be the "best"!!!!


(Pic by James Wilsher via www.sxc.hu)

Construction or development?

According to the Business Post's analysis of the top 50 construction companies list (Business Pro), "The figures highlight the high profit margins being achieved by some property developers. ... By contrast, profit margins are much tighter for building contractors."

The analysis mentions Liam Carroll's success in the office market: "Carroll is also planning an office development in the Dublin docklands, which has attracted Anglo Irish Bank and O'Donnell Sweeney solicitors as tenants even before planning permission is granted." and suggests that "Those deals may stem from Carroll's remarkable ability to undercut the rents on offer from other developers in order to secure tenants."

Another tactic is mentioned in relation to Sean Mulryan's Ballymore: "Mulryan has made millions from high-rise apartment schemes in London's docklands, often timing the launches to coincide with the payment of bonuses by financial firms in the city."

There is speculation about Gerry Gannon of Gannon Homes: "In recent months he is understood to have bought a significant parcel of land next to Hazelhatch train station near Celbridge in Co Kildare."

Measuring effort

Austin Hughes told Property Partners that "Once growth is sustained, declines in property values are fairly unusual, occurring with only a 1 in 4 probability." But if they were your odds of surviving a storm you'd be worried, wouldn't you.

With such increased volumes of houses on the market (up 50% in Dublin this quarter on Q1 2006 according to our data), and such reduced numbers of buyers apparently putting their money down on the table, there's a whole new dynamic in the market.

In new homes, marketing services providers can expect to be asked to go to even greater lengths to promote their clients' developments. A grand piano was brought into the showhouse in Cairnbrook at the weekend release & a pianist hired to play for gathered hunters.

In the second-hand market, things are a little more difficult because most of the marketing tactics that new developments can utilise are not appropriate.

Agents are certainly having to work a lot harder to find and hook buyers right across the residential board, to be more careful about leads and follow-through. The question is will some start to think they could do better in some other sector of business, with the same or even less effort.

The bottom line is, if the fees are not paying the bills, cutbacks will ensue and people will start to (or be forced to) look elsewhere for a decent living.

Having written ourselves recently about the time agents put into each sale, we were pleased to see Mr Day in Lisney saying something similar to the Business Post at the weekend: "it was more a case of agents turning away work, based on the fact they didn’t believe the fee justified the amount of work involved. Day said the saleability of the property, coupled with the amount of time an agent expects to devote to a property, dictated the fee."

But is it amazing that a statement like this can end up in the same article: "Currently, people have to pay on average 1 per cent, which means an agent earns about €3,000 when he or she sells a house for €300,000. That’s a lot of money for little effort, especially in recent years."

"Little effort"? What does that mean? Where's the footnote for the research indicating how "effort" was measured? Does it take into consideration time? Attention to detail? Thoroughness of follow-up? Market knowledge & expertise? Skill at reading people, at negotiating?

How much "effort" has gone into creating companies & brands like Lisney, like Sherry FitzGerald that can sell homes in style? Does the Business Post's defintion of "effort" here include any aspect of how much over the vendor's ideal price the agent achieved for them? How much over the price they'd have been able to get for themselves? How much over the price another agent would get?

Or what about how much less stress the vendor experiences by not having to deal with all kinds of buyers themselves, from nosy neighbours to professional tyre-kickers to hard-nosed investors to nit-picking innocents? Or how much less stress one agent causes than another?


Art by Porter Mason at http://bassistwanted.com/

But, are YOU happy?

Fine Gael look happy. First-time buyers might be (artificially & temporarily) if they heard Bruton's speech or catch the media coverage thereof. But are YOU?

They've just told the non-propertied public not to go buying any property at least until the fine boys & girls of the gael party are either in power or have lost the election.

Do they have any understanding at all of what people need to know about reform? If they were genuine about the urgency & absolute rightness of this reform, I think we'd get less of the highly politicised rhetoric such as "Fine Gael will take no lectures from the Party of the developer and the speculator" & the simplistic & slightly schoolboyish: "we want to give home-buyers a break, Fianna Fáil don't."

Their rhetoric, too, about the stamp duty (e.g. Bruton's way of putting the issue: "The message is simple: we want to give home-buyers a break, Fianna Fáil don't.") suggests that it's all about MESSAGES and anti-Fianna Fail gestures, rather than analysis, creative thinking and problem solving.

15% OVERVALUATION?

Just off the phone from the ESRI and a chat about this 15% overvaluation idea. expressed in their Quarterly Economic Commentary, Spring 2007. It's based on a formula they have created to test the value of property against various other economic indicators. Although they have never run the formula before, they say they have been flagging this level of overvaluation for some time and that today's announcement is no big deal. Of course, if the adjustment to "sounder values" was sudden, it would cause problems but ESRI is forecasting a slower process - the soft landing. Phew!

The ESRI is sending us on some more background on the figure which we will pass on if we can process it.

Anyway, we weren't going to post at all today because we figured so many of our readers would be in Kilkenny. But no ... the user log suggests that people are at their desks & working hard. Meanwhile, those in Kilkenny are listening right now to the following talk

Dawn Raids & Requests for Information, Revenue Audits, Revenue Offshore, Assets Group. (Speaker Julie Burke, Tax Solicitor.)

Spooky, and not as interesting to us as some of the other talks:

Estate Agents & the Importance of being branded. (Speaker John Fanning, Chairman of McConnells. )

National Property Services Regulatory Authority – The Effect of Pending Legislation. (Speakers Tom Lynch, Director Designate of the National Property Services Regulatory Authority and Tim Dalton, Chair of the Interim Board.)

Property Partners & Murphy Mullan part company

Perhaps not official yet, but the boards & intenet marketing give it away - the fact that the team of Richard Mullan & Adrian Murphy that flew the Property Partners flag in Tallaght & Kimmage (& with another in Naas) has left the Property Partners network and gone out solo under the name Murphy Mullan Estate Agents (& a bit awkwardly "in association with Murphy Mullan Ward in Naas).

The branding does stand out but we can't help thinking "petrol station" every time we see it.

PP's not had what you'd call a stable presence in Dublin - going back to the likes of DfM & Craddock (no longer PPs), and of course Mason for a while (whose brand proved to be too strong to sit under another). Now, with the Murphy Mullan offices gone, it'll be interesting to see what they do next.

In Naas there was a Property Partners McAuley at one stage, but the Murphy Mullan Ward team was PP's last incarnation there. Again, perhaps an opportunity awaits someone there too.

Down? No, up. Up? No, down. UP!

On the one hand, Around the Block has this to say on supply of new homes: "Will anyone believe them [the IHBA] when builders are planning to quietly close down sites where new completions are just not selling, or at least not at the rapid rate that they have become used to in recent years. It will be a while before the market is concerned about housing shortages given that there is a rake of sites in the suburbs that won't be touched for years."

On the other hand, Around the Block has this to say on recent trends: "Rents have been rising at around 10 per cent, and this is giving hope of a pick-up in sales of well located developments... Agents will be very keen to see investors re-entering the market, particularly where there's a bit of value on offer. Last weekend, for instance, Hooke & MacDonald reported almost 70 sales of apartments at Cornmill, off Clonliffe Road in Dublin 3, while newcomers to the new homes market, HT Meagher O'Reilly, clocked up a reported 65 sales at the Pierse Homes development in Clongriffen, Dublin 13. At the other end of the market, McInerney and sales agent Savills HOK were pleasantly surprised to sell no less than 10 large detached house at Druids Glen in Co Wicklow, all of them priced around €2 million. Who said the market is dead?"

So, like us all The Irish Times Property people are in two minds ... confused ... uncertain ... one minute optimistic, the next pessimistic ... about the residential market these days. On the one hand, one feels sure that all the indicators are good and there's a lot of money still to spend in the Irish economy; everyone needs a home and so on. On the other hand, one worries that maybe property has had its 15 minutes (say, 12 years) of fame and now the public has just lost interest (faith?).

Share your comments on the market with us please, especially any good news about sales you might have - it's what the people want to hear. It'd do us all the world of good.

Marketing we admire – Jones Lang LaSalle’s staff shots loop

It is not possible to capture in a still, but JLL's loop of staff shots - casual, light-hearted, flattering - is an example of, among other things, excellent photography being combined with solid web design. See it for yourself on http://www.joneslanglasalle.ie/ and worth taking lessons from.

Head & Shoulder company shots are a real problem in marketing terms, in that they can very easily give an unintended impression. Just as beauty is in the eyes of the beholder, interpretation of facial expressions & general appearance is highly subjective.

With estate agents having such a poor public image, the use of such shots is even more problematic. The urge to present ones team of agents as friendly, trustworthy and professional is very understandable in this situation, but doing it successfully requires more effort and money than seems to be widely realised among property companies.

The photographer who took the JLL shot clearly knew what she was at, and I would guess did not come cheap. The creative director (if there was one) knew what was required and gave brilliant guidance and managed the proceedings very well, which again would not have been cheap. The web designers, too, knew how to treat the results of the shoot (although there might be room for improvement in some respects) and undoubtedly charged handsomely. And finally, JLL knew that in order to achieve that elusive balance in the shots, they would have to get the right people and work well with them, and evidently chose well & carefully by giving it the time & energy & money required.

Bottom line: pay peanuts … get monkeys.

Other bottom line? Suppliers are sometimes only as good as the client's project management skills.

A horse of an ad

We're running an ad as a favour this weekend. It's our first ever ad and we kinda had to do it cause it was supporting an organisation in which important clients of ours are involved (Youngs & the well-known property brochure experts CJ Print & design - Mr Hederman, to be precise). The ad is going to appear in a wee booklet that the South County Dublin Hunt are producing for an event in Clane on Sunday (- all welcome at Charlie O'Neills!). Anyway, favour or not, and miniscule audience or not, it has proven to be a good exercise for us. We got our colleagues in Penhire to lend a hand and have come up with something very appropriate. What do you think?

And then it occurred to us that the Irish National Hunt Festival was coming up at Punchestown and this might be a more strategic opportunity for us to place the very same ad - in the racecard. We got in touch with Punchestown & it ain't cheap (€3,000 for the full 4 days racecards), but we're thinking about maybe doing 1 day considering the audience (what percentage developers & what percentage estate agents & what percentage financiers?!).

Any one got any opinions on this as a communications exercise?

How much do you earn per hour?

Did you know that senior counsel at the planning tribunal earn €2,250 a day and juniors €1,500. That’s around €280 per hour for senior and €190 for junior.

Now, here’s an exercise for you if you're an estate agent: Divide the fee your company got for the last property sale you achieved by the total number of hours spent by different people in the company on bringing about that sale (starting from the day the instruction was won).

So, did you manage to make anywhere near, say, €100 per hour, or was it more like €8.30 (the minimum wage rate)? Perhaps you don’t know how many hours were spent on the sale of that property, and of couse it varies considerably from property to property (and vendor to vendor, more revealingly!). It’s something agents should keep records on – a job diary for each property that vendors could see and from which they would maybe begin to understand for the first time the many, varied and time-consuming tasks that are required to sell a property properly.

And wouldn’t it be interesting to perform this on a macro level – that is, that a number of property firms would perform this analysis on a large enough scale to produce a report that reveals how much on average estate agents are making per hour selling client properties.

This could be an important part of the so-badly-needed public awareness campaign on the work of estate agents.

Of course, most would agree the average rate should not be equal to that of barristers at tribunals or consultants in operating theatres. But the (somewhat less arduous) training, the inate skills, the considerable experience and the specialist knowledge that a good estate agent offers vendors access to, is certainly worth equal to the rates charged by other business professionals offering similar levels of service.

Anyway, something agents might discuss at the IAVI get-together this weekend perhaps?