This is an article I read today in the Illawarra Mercury. It made me smile as it has been a while since we have seen these types of articles.

Excuse me for being a pessimist, but I might just wait until I start celebrating the start of the next property cycle (when property prices will start rising again). I think the best that we can hope for at the moment is that the market has stabilised. If so then buyers will come back. I believe that we are getting close to that point now. With interest rate falls and a stabilisation in the stock market, with overall economic conditions are far less erratic than last year, I can see buyers entering the market with enough confidence to take action (purchase).

The real risk in our economy now are further macro-economic events from the world economy. Another Leahman Brothers or , more likely in my view, a geo-political event in any of the developing world, must still be rated as being of significant risk. I have not seen any recent surveys on business confidence, but I would be guessing that it would only have slight improvements so far. I think we need a few more solid month’s under our belt before business confidence can start to rebuild. In the property context, this means less supply of new land, houses and apartments.

I can really see a unique environment developing in the property sector. The low interest rates and first-buyer grants will continue to produce demand for property in this sector. The very poor economic environment world wide, with the resulting poor confidence and lack of readily available finance, will result is significantly reduced supply of new properties. The two obviously don’t sit well together. So the great irony will be that at this stage those developers who do have suitable stock available or in the pipeline, and who have managed to sort their finances, there is probably the potential for price increases in the near future.

http://www.illawarramercury.com.au/news/local/news/general/buyers-flocking-back-to-property-markets/1427851.aspx?src=rss

According to Comscore, a company that measures pretty much anything digital, the world now has over 1 billion internet users, with China being the country with the most users. as you can see in the below stat’s, the largest number of users are in the Asia Pacific region (which includes Australia).

China represents the vast majority of these users, and will continue to do so into the future as the % of internet users in that country continue to increase. Japan, India and South Korea also feature in the top countries.

You can find the full article here – http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=2698

What does this mean for property companies around the world? Well most do not currently focus at all on any market other than their immeidate local market. Many do not even look at the entire domestic market let alone the international market. However as capital continues to flow from the western economies to the developing world, it will be essential for leading property firms to establish a solid understanding of these markets, and mechanisms for penetrating them. This means have multi-lingual skills, networks and systems that support international property transactions.

Brightfox is one of the few genuinely international technology firms in the world that focus exclusively on the property industry. With offices in Australia and the UAE, and customers in many countries around the world, we have developed significant experience in assisting our clients open up and do business in a wide diversity of markets. We have also spent many years now customising our software and systems to ensure they meet these specific requirements, which is also very unique.

I suppose the best example of the international focus of our business is the range of languages we speak. They include Arabic, English, Mandarin, Cantonese, Hindi, Portugese, Spanish, Farsi and Sinhala.

In a pretty significant annoucement domain.com.au has done a deal with ninemsn.com.au to run the property section of the ninemsn.com.au website.

Going to property on the site will take you to this site – http://ninemsn.domain.com.au/ which is similar to how realestate.com.au was integrated with ninemsn.com.au. It brings domain.com.au content into the site but displays in a separate site to the normal www.domain.com.au. The reason for this is no doubt to give ninemsn.com.au control over advertising on this site, which Domain can not do on its own site for obvious reasons.

This will no doubt significantly increase traffic to domain.com.au, and I think is a very wise move. For many years now I have felt that domain.com.au has not been aggressive enough in competing against realestate.com.au. This and the ebay deal mark a significant change in strategy and indicates that they are getting serious about trying to take realestate.com.au on and not simply remain the distant 2nd portal in Australia.

To catch up to realestate.com.au is a big task and it is going to take a lot more than just this deal, but I think it is a real positive and is certainly making me look at domain.com.au in a different light (a more favourable one).

Every year we exhibit at Cityscape Dubai, with this years exhibition due to start shortly.

As the largest property exhibition in the world for property professionals it is a huge show. This year they are expecting over 60,000 people!

For any of our clients that will be attending Cityscape Dubai, please let us know that you will be coming as we would be more than happy to help show you around and give you some ‘inside’ knoweldge on the UAE market.