Dubai Property Sector continues to consolidate

June 28, 2009 – 12:16 pm

Further mergers and consolidations are bringing clarity to the Dubai property sector as developers look to restructure debts and the government reorganizes developers under it’s umbrella.

At it’s high RERA, the Real Estate Regulatory Authority, recorded 447 approved developers, however this number is now being scaled back as it developers look to best manage assets and resources and deliver on projects, such as middle income housing which have greater momentum amidst the current economic climate.

Emaar, the largest developer in the Middle East, and now close to completion of the worlds tallest tower, Burj Dubai, stated last week that it is in talks to acquire the property interests of Dubai Holdings. This would bring three large entities – Sama Dubai, Tatweer and Dubai Properties – under the Emaar brand, creating the largest property developer in the MENA region.

“Consolidating these three companies with Emaar is a natural progression in the evolution of the Dubai real estate landscape, providing benefits to all stakeholders,” said Mohammed al Gergawi, the chairman of Dubai Holding.

Dubai World, also last week said that it was in the process of consolidating Leisurecorp, Dubai Maritime City and Dubai Multi Commodities Centre under the Nakheel brand.

“The move aims at consolidating activities of the same nature to better accommodate current market conditions and optimise resources and expertise,” a Dubai World spokeswoman said.

Also still on the cards, is the continued discussion of a merger between Deyaar Development and Union Properties.

“Consolidation is gathering momentum, driven by structural, market and regulatory factors,” said Dirk Buchta, the Middle East managing director of the management consultancy firm AT Kearney, in a report this month. The firm is said to be advising Deyaar and Union Properties on merger options.

From it’s high of 447 registered property developers, it will certainly be interesting to see where we end up. However, one thing is for certain, these mergers are for the good of the Dubai property sector in the short, medium and long term and will help deliver stability for both these companies and their clients and investors.

So, the only question is, who’s next?

By Mick Bucknell | Posted in Property Market Commentary | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a Comment

How to successfully use technology in the Retirement Village Sector

June 16, 2009 – 11:28 pm

Below is an interview I had recently with the Sales & Marketing Director of publically listed retirement village operator Aevum Ltd in which we discussed how to use technology in the retirement village sector.

Cameron: Much is made of the need to use technology in a modern company to improve sales & marketing. In your experience what effect has technology actually had?

Karen: Having grown from an owner/operator of 4 villages to 21 villages in just over 2 years, part of our growth strategy had to encompass significant improvements to our internal technology. To summarise, the investment in technology has resulted in huge improvements in the integration and streamlining our sales systems and processes, the creation of efficient and relevant reporting, the creation of great direct marketing opportunities and significant improvements in the communications process, both internally and externally with all stakeholders.

 

Cameron: Technology such as the internet and email marketing are usually associated with today’s youth, and not people of retirement age. Are these technologies relevant to your business and if so, how are you using them effectively?

Karen: It has been clearly researched and reported that Ageing Australians are driving Internet Growth. In mid 2008 we revolutionized our website to ensure that we were in a position to capture the growing number of ‘web generated’ enquiries. We also realized that our target market have a lot of time available  to research their retirement options on-line, hence a key objective was to ensure that our web was rich with relevant information. Marketers who assume that a large percentage of our primary target audience is not ‘web savvy’ are missing out on huge opportunities. We also know from experience that the influencer (family or friends of our primary market) play a large role in the decision making process and are definitely predisposed to doing their research on-line in the first instance.

 

Cameron: I know you recently implemented a new CRM system. How important is building this client and prospect database to Aevum?

Karen: This is marketing 101 for Aevum! Today’s prospects are tomorrow’s purchasers in this industry. Our broad marketing strategy is underpinned by a very strong direct marketing focus that is targeted at maintaining a consistent dialogue with all the prospects on our database. Building upon our database strategy, we also take this one step further by focusing on building quality ‘Priority Waiting Lists’ for our villages where a prospect registers their interest in a specific style of unit for a refundable fee of $200. This strategy significantly reduces our reliance upon expensive above-the-line marketing when dwellings become available for sale.

  

Cameron: One of the difficulties in implementing a CRM system is ensuring that your staff use it. Given that the average age of salespeople in the industry is high, has computer skills been an issue in getting your staff to use CRM?

Karen: No matter what the age, we are all generally reluctant to adopt change in the first instance unless we can see the ‘perceived benefit’. The vast majority of our sales staff is up-to-speed with a basic windows environment and have reacted positively to the introduction of a new CRM system. The key to success I believe lies not only in the initial training, but re-investing in regular on-going training to maximize the functionality of the system for all users.

  

Cameron: Late last year you also launched the new Aevum website. What has been the effect of this on your sales and marketing?

Karen: This has made a huge improvement to our lead generation and subsequent sales conversion rates, not to mention the marketing cost efficiency. As I noted earlier, an integral part of our re-design strategy was to ensure that our site was rich with relevant information. The integration of a dedicated ‘For Sale’ section that allows the user to search for specific retirement accommodation options by location, village name or price has generated extremely positive feedback and more importantly, great results!

  

Cameron: How common is it to find personal PC’s in your resident’s units now? Do you see this becoming a more common trend?

Karen: This is a huge emerging trend. We proactively survey our residents on a regular basis to obtain feedback in relation to their social interests, internet usage, resident satisfaction levels, suggestions for improvements, etc. Not surprisingly, internet usage continues to increase year-on-year. In support of this growing trend, we have also introduced computers and internet access into some of our village community facilities for the use and benefit of all residents.

 

Cameron: It is now pretty common place in many business sectors to communicate with clients via email and even customer service websites?

Karen: I think it is far to say that the Aged Care Sector has been slow to adopt using technology in this way. Do you see technologies such as these playing a role in the future? I think the industry as a whole is becoming a lot savvier when it comes to the options available in relation to communication technology and its subsequent benefits. The evolution of websites in this sector over the past 12-18 months and the increasing integration of customized systems is evidence that the industry is adopting new technology and I am sure you will see a lot more of this in the near future as operators look to improve their levels of communication and customer service.

————————————————————————————————————————————————-

Brightfox developed the Aevum Ltd websiteand also supplied to Aevum Ltd its leading software, foxEnterprise, that Aevum use as the company wide CRM, Sales Management and Property Management software.

By Cameron Black | Posted in For Property Owners & Managers, For Retirement Village Operators, Property Software, Sales Management | Tagged , , , , | Leave a Comment

How to measure if your website is successful

June 10, 2009 – 4:26 am

This is an excerpt from one of our weekly emails sent FREE to subscribers of the 50 Bright Ideas email campaign. To read this article in full, and to get another 49 great tips and action lists on how to improve your property business, visit http://50ideas.brightfox.com.au and sign up – it is free. ”Last week we talked about using Google to promote your business. We will talk more in coming weeks about how to optimise your website design to improve search engine results. But we digress this week to answer a question from one of our readers regarding last week’s email. Charlotte asks us:

“Thanks for the information on Google. I understand a little more on how I can use it to increase visitors to my site, but how do I know if it is working or not?”

This is a good question, thanks Charlotte, and the answer to your question is this week’s Bright Idea.

So you’ve built a website and spent money on Google Adwords, how do you know if your website is working? To get the best out of your online marketing you need to understand the basic metrics that are used to measure the performance of your web site.

Most web development firms would point you immediately at a weblog statistics package that will analyse the technical details of how many visitors came to your site, how long they stayed and so on. This is all important, and we discuss it below, but we believe in analysing the success of your site more deeply than this. We recommend that you use three forms of measurement. They are:

(a) Lead Tracking: There is nothing more important to your business than generating actual leads that convert into sellers, purchasers, tenants or landlords. The true and absolute measure of any advertising medium, including your website and online marketing, is the amount of business your website generates.

We would say that a website that brought 10 leads is better than one which brought a million page views but no new potential clients. I think this is pretty obvious to us all however, we have found that many clients fixate on the web traffic analyses and don’t track nor analyse the number and quality of leads generated from the site.

So the number 1 measure of success is simple: the number of leads and the % of those leads that convert. We recommend that you track both and report on them weekly.”

To read the rest of this article and to get a detailed action list of how to measure success on your website, subscribe for FREE to http://50ideas.brightfox.com.au.

By Cameron Black | Posted in For Developers, For Property Owners & Managers, For Real Estate Agents, For Retirement Village Operators, Web 2.0, Websites | Tagged , , , , | Leave a Comment

A 3rd wave of foreclosures in the US heralds more bad news for the world economy?

June 8, 2009 – 3:41 am

A recent article on MSN Money (link here) by Michael Brush discusses the coming 3rd wave of foreclosures – namely housing distress and foreclosures from prime lenders. These are people who have never come under the banner of  sub-prime mortgagee’s. These loans are thought of as your traditional house mortgage starting with a significant deposit and home owner equity. Economists have been discussing for some time the possibility that these prime borrowers would ultimately come under distress just as sub-prime borrowers have. It would seem that that is now happening.

So what does this mean to the world economy? We are seeing signs that growth in China and India are returning somewhat to previous levels, or so it would seem. The questions remains is that is this growth being driven by underlying demand or the build up of depleted inventory. Once inventory levels return to normal for these companies, growth of any kind will be driven by demand. 

As the US represents almost a quarter of world GDP (reference wikipedia), continued and extended weakness in the US economy, leading to significantly reduced demand, must continue to push down growth rates in all economies, including China and India. Short term stimulus packages driving short term domestic demand will only last so long in these economies.

Further we have the prospect now of interest rate increases in the US. 30 year fixed rate mortgages in the US  are now at 5.45%, up from around 5% in April. This is primarily being driven by concern over the US Bond Market where yeilds have been increasing over the past few months on concern of the US Federal Reserve’s ability to continue purchasing bonds.

There is no doubt the rate of decline in almost all of the benchmarks for the economy is slowing. No doubt they will soon bottom. The question will be however how long until we see real growth again. A turn around to seeing actual growth in employment numbers for example. We then have the specter of interest rate rises being driven by the huge borrowings of governments around the world, immediately stunting any possible growth as it tries to emerge.

So where will this leave us? Some econmists believe that the world ecomony, or at least many of the developed economies, may end up with a Japanese still ‘lost decade’ – long periods of no or very limited growth. Personally I am starting to lean towards a 70’s style era of boom and bust. I can see many economies having an inflation lead boom followed by a series of busts, with quite wild cyclical variations.

By Cameron Black | Posted in Property Market Commentary | Tagged , | Leave a Comment

All your essential property news in the one location

June 4, 2009 – 3:50 am

Searching for the most update to date and topical news on the property industry is always hard. That is why we developed www.propertymash.com. This site brings together property news from around the world so that you don’t need to go looking for it. Its nice and simple – but it works.

I know – we built it so we have to like it! But seriously, I use it everyday to find out what is happening in property markets around the world and find it invaluable. Most of the information I reference in this blog, whether they are opinion, articles or market commentary, all comes from www.propertymash.com

So I suggest you try it out and see what you think.

By Cameron Black | Posted in Web 2.0, Websites | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a Comment

Which property markets are most susceptible to big price falls

May 31, 2009 – 4:41 am

In a post back in April I talked about the forclosure rates in the US and how these were predominently (87%) occuring in a select number of states. It is an interesting paper and well worth a read, but todays post is about another item that really caught my attention in that paper, namely the relationship between foreclosures and the reduction in housing affordability leading up to the crash. So this got me thinking. One would assume a relatively linear link between falling housing affordability and foeclosures. A simple eqaution – when housing affordability falls, an increasing % of the individual or family’s income must go to meeting mortgage payments.

Another report on topic, the 5th Annual Demographis International Housing Affordability Survey said:


“Much of the reduction in prices has occurred in markets that have experienced the greatest loss in housing affordability in the past. The largest house price decreases over the past year occurred in susceptible Ireland, New Zealand and the United Kingdom, where housing affordability in nearly all markets had reached “severely unaffordable” (Median Multiple over 5.0). In the United States, the house price declines have been far higher in those markets that had experienced the greatest housing price increases, while markets that experienced much smaller price increases experienced far more modest losses.” For the full report go to  http://www.demographia.com/dhi-ix2005q3.pdf

And yet in the University of Virgina report, the writers find the following:

“Restoring balance between house prices and incomes is complicated by imbalances between a shortage in supply of dwellings where people prefer to live and an overabundance of dwellings in other locations. Metropolitan areas vary in the range in their political jurisdictions of house value to family income and in foreclosure rates. San Francisco provides an extreme, but clear, example.

In 2007 the ratio of house values to family incomes was excessive in each jurisdiction. The lowest house value to family income ratio, 5.7 to 1, was in Solano County which also had the highest foreclosure rate, 3.69 percent of housing units. The house value to income ratio suggests that Solano County on the edge of the metropolitan area had more dwellings relative to demand than other jurisdictions. The high foreclosure rate indicated that buyers’ capacity to pay mortgages was fragile, and, perhaps, that an accumulation of foreclosures hampered new sales.

In contrast, the highest house value to income ratios were in central jurisdictions—City of San Francisco, Marin County, and San Mateo County. They had house value to income ratios of 9.7, 8.5, and 8.5 to 1. But their foreclosure rates were the three lowest in the metropolitan area. Perhaps more residents in those jurisdictions had purchased when prices and mortgages were lower. Or, perhaps owners unable to pay mortgage costs were able to sell at acceptable prices because demand was strong (Appendix 1 San Francisco Metropolitan Area).” 

This shows quite clearly that housing affordability alone is not a guide to the success or fail of a specific market.

So what can we use as a guide. This is by no means meant to be a conclusion, as from my readings no one is really sure, but here are my ideas:

1. Housing Affordability. This has to be a factor. A Housing Affordability drops, so must demand.

2. Purchaser Profile. Without doubt foreclosures have been high in markets with high % of first home buyers. These transactions in recent times are characterised by large incentives from governments and very low (or non-existent) deposits (and therefore high mortgages). If we think of a home owners propsensity to work through troubled economic times (lets call it their Home Ownership Price Elasticity – HOPE), it is lowest in these purchasers. Owners who have significant equity in their home and a history of saving, obviously have a greater ability to weather financial difficulties, which reduces foreclosure rates and hence provides stability to prices.

By Cameron Black | Posted in Property Market Commentary | Tagged , , | Leave a Comment

Broadband Internet User Penetration Rising – What does this mean for website development?

May 31, 2009 – 4:28 am

The OECD has released the rate of broadband internet usage around the world. It is increasing as one would expect.

Visit this link on The Economist website for a short but concise analysis of the OECD Report – http://www.economist.com/research/articlesBySubject/displayStory.cfm?story_id=13721090&subjectID=348963&fsrc=nwl

What is the relevance of this for building websites for the property industry? With an average of around 25% of people having broadband, websites still need to be optimised for dial up speeds – which means limiting the use of slow to load multimedia sites. Some use of flash and video is a must, but this report reminds us that we are a long way away from a world where everyone view websites that with live streaming video or deeply immersive multimedia. These types of sites should still be restricted to niche segements of the market where adoption of broadband is much higher than the average – such as sites for IT professionals.

By Cameron Black | Posted in Websites | Tagged , | Leave a Comment

The UAE’s No 1 Property Software now enables Developers and Brokers to spread the NET wider with automated uploading to Dubizzle.com

May 28, 2009 – 11:10 am

Press Release

Brightfox UAE, the leading supplier of CRM and property management software to the property industry, has recently announced a major upgrade to its foxEnterprise software that now automatically sends listing data to the leading UAE Website, Dubizzle.com..

 foxEnterprise is the software choice of UAE’s leading property developers, brokers and property owners. Developed specifically for the needs of the property industry, foxEnterprise manages the complete sales and leasing process.

 “As foxEnterprise captures all of the core sales and marketing information for a property company, it is only natural that it would automatically update the websites of our clients. In many parts of the world we already automatically upload properties for sale and lease to a number of leading Portals, and we have now completed integration with Dubizzle.com to provide our UAE customers with this same feature” commented Brightfox’s Regional Manager, Mr Mick Bucknell.

 “As a leading website in the region, Dubizzle.com attracts over 26,000 visitors per day, many of whom are naturally interested in property. Enabling our clients to automatically load their properties for sale or lease onto Dubizzle.com provides another fantastic marketing channel for them.”

 “This opportunity for Brightfox clients is an example of how progressive companies can take advantage of a changing real estate market to ensure their future. In a buyers market such as Dubai, those companies that want to succeed will be investing in quality content across quality portals.” – Sim Whatley

 If you would like to learn more about using foxEnterprise, visit www.brightfox.ae or contact Brightfox on the details listed below.

 

For additional information:

 Mick Bucknell                                       

Regional Manager                     

Phone: +971 50 3970 741                               

info@brightfox.ae                                  

             

About Brightfox:

Brightfox is one of the worlds leading providers of IT solutions exclusively tailored to the property industry.  From high-calibre website design to industry specific sales and marketing software, Brightfox creates personalised solutions designed to improve and increase business.  The company enjoys many long-term relationships with successful, forward-thinking organisations throughout Australia, Asia Pacific, USA, the Middle East and Europe. 

Brightfox’s flagship software is foxEnterprise, a high performance software solution created specifically to manage the complete sales and marketing process for property developers, project marketers and real estate agencies.  Brightfox has also developed foxAdvantage – a sales and marketing software solution for individual real estate agents and small property firms.

By Cameron Black | Posted in Company Information & Annoucements, Property Portals | Tagged , , | Leave a Comment

A very misleading and poorly researched article on working in Dubai

May 27, 2009 – 9:52 pm

I was very disappointed to come across this article when reading www.propertymash.com this morning. Published by The Australian newspaper, it really is the epitome of poor reporting – limited research and trying as hard as possible to create some spin for interest sake alone.

You can read the article yourself here – http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,,25547622-25658,00.html?from=public_rss

Lets get a few facts straight about employment conditions and laws in the UAE. First of all if you are not a UAE national, you will need to get a VISA issued by your employer. If you cease to work for that employer, that company needs to release you and yes, they can place a ban on you working for other employers (by not releasing your VISA). This can however be challenged in local courts, and I have seen this done successfully. 

Is it harder to change jobs in Dubai? Undoubtedly. By virtue that employers control the issuing of VISA’s for you, this does give them a significant negotiating tool when things turn sour. Yes, employers can use this to manipulate employee’s. I have heard of many examples where the threat of not releasing an employee’s work visa is used as a negotiating tool to get an employee to stay, or take a revised package or even to leave and not take severance pay or, in the case of the property industry, not be paid commission that is owing to them.

However this is the exception and not the norm. Many companies are struggling in Dubai at present, just like in the rest of the world, so the temptation will be strong to use whatever means possible to reduce costs (paying severance pay and outstanding commissions).  This isn’t of course a valid excuse for not paying amounts due, however when dealing in emerging markets anywhere in the world, you need to be far more mindful of the balance of power in all forms of negotiation. The relatively equal balance of power between employers and employees  that Australian’s are used to is not the norm in most developing economies. So when taking a job in Dubai or any other emerging market enter it with your eyes open – and don’t be naive about what can happen if your relationship or the company’s prospects go south.

One more thing – the comment in the article on “These people also face financial hardships such as locked-in rental payments and relocation costs.”

A couple of things on this. I have not heard of a single management level executive working for one of the large developers (the examples cited in the article) who isn’t provided a very significant rental allowance or an apartment or villa rent free. It is almost always a standard part of a senior executives package. Similarly in my experience relocation costs are generally paid for by the employers for these senior executives.

What the article doesn’t tell you is that everyday people skip town, reneging on all of their financial obligations, whether they be car finance payments, mortgages, leases and of course, employment obligations. In this case the immaturity of the financial and legal system enables the employee to walk away from all of their obligations, with significant impacts of property owners, banks, employers and so on.

Like most things, there are two sides to every story.

By Cameron Black | Posted in Property Market Commentary | Leave a Comment

Property in New Zealand overpriced?

May 18, 2009 – 11:16 pm

Read this morning a great article I found via www.propertymash.com. This is a website that we run that amalgamates the best property news from Australia, New Zealand, the Middle East and Europe so that you can easily find important information of interest to property professionals.

One great article I found today on www.propertymash.com is this one – http://blogs.nzherald.co.nz/blog/show-me-money/2009/5/17/graphic-proof-house-prices-are-overvalued/?ref=rss&c_id=8 from the New Zealand Herald dissecting a recent Reserve Bank paper. In essence it explains why the Reserve Bank believes NZ property is still too expensive. If you are a property owner or investor in New Zealand it is well worth reading.

By Cameron Black | Posted in Property Market Commentary | Leave a Comment