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Showing posts from 2011

IE looses ground and Chrome overtakes Firefox as 2nd most popular browser on Entegral real estate portals

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The latest Google Analytics stats shows how IE lost grown to Firefox, Chrome and Safari on Entegral’s real estate portals like MyProperty . It is interesting to see the historical trend of browser usage since 2005. Bottom line : make sure your real estate website is optimized for all the major browsers: IE, Chrome, Firefox and Safari. November 2005 browser stats IE had a massive 93% market share. At that time it was perfectly fine to optimize your real estate website for IE and forget the other browsers. It was also still acceptable to display a message on your site, saying that it is optimised for IE. This made the work of web developers easy. November 2010 browser stats 2010 is a different story, and real estate web developers had to ensure they optimise sites for IE, Firefox, Chrome and Safari with The 2d,3rd and 4th browsers taking up about 25% of the browser stats for visitors. Fail to optimise your websites for these browsers and you loose out on about 25% of your lea

World Estates new at Entegral Technologies

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One of the most successful estate agencies in Plattekloof and Goodwood near Cape Town, World Estates International, approached us to create a brand new image for them online. Owner, Suzann Botha and her team trusted us to create a custom solution for them, they are using our OMS system to manage their own website and also making use of our ability to feed listings to all other partner portals .     To view all their exclusive listings visit their new website @ www.worldestates.co.za or contact estate agents in either the Goodwood or Plattekloof office.   Property listings for sale by them can be found in popular areas like Plattekloof, Goodwood, Blaauwberg, Parow.  Look out for their for sale boards near security estates Baronetcy, Kleinmeer, Villa Caponero, Little Rock Villas, Leopard Rock.

Cloud file storage now available for all our OMS clients

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3 weeks ago we’ve announced a major new industry first feature to be launched in the OMS . We are now proud to announce the availability of the OMS Document Library for all users and offices.  This industry first feature allows integrated file storage in the OMS using our ground-breaking cloud infrastructure. Share files in the office or manage a personal file library. Every user and every office gets a set amount of storage space they can use at free will. The amount of space depends on your OMS package and can be viewed here . The top of the range Expert package provides a massive 250MB/user and 2GB/office storage space – all at no additional cost. National clients have custom storage space allocated to them.  Users or offices who need even more space can upgrade to our custom package and get even larger space. (we have tested an incredible 100TB, that is 104,857,600 space per user thus far with success!) The new document library is split into 3 regions: 1) Personal : Provide

Yahoo Real Estate still tops USA real estate portals

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Here are the top 20 USA real estate websites for October 2011 accordin to Hitwise . No single property portal has more than 8% market share with only the first 15 having more than 1% market share.

Unlock the power of the cloud for your documents

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Imagine a secure, central storage area for your personal files and a central, shared office storage area where all agents can access those files from anywhere, anytime - all through the industry leading OMS . This is another industry first feature that will soon launch in the OMS and is undergoing testing before the launch in the next few weeks. Although a similar feature is currently available for national groups the new feature will be launched on an office and personal user level, and introduces several new ground-breaking features . It will provide an industry best cloud storage area designed for mission critical and primary data storage. All files uploaded will automatically be made redundant by copying your files across multiple devices and data centres, without you having to worry about anything! All files is furthermore encrypted providing a highly secure environment for all your office files. Earlier this year Entegral was the first (and still is the only) service pro

Invest in a good camera and wide angle lens for your property photos

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We all know that a good photo can sell a house , or at least, get that all important new buyer or seller lead . Wide angle lenses provides a wider angle view of a room as can be seen in the following 2 photos, and it all makes for better first impression when buyers view your listing: A good place to start your camera search with wide angle lens is on www.sacamera.co.za They recommend the following 2 entry level digital SLR cameras which comes with wider angle lenses: Sony NEX-5N with 18-55mm and 16m f2.8 lens for R7631 http://www.sacamera.co.za/product/1027413// Nikon D5100 with 18-55mm VR lens kit for R8772 http://www.sacamera.co.za/product/1022443//   Photo stitching software Another way to achieve wider angle photos with a standard camera is through the use of photo stitching software ( log into the OMS and look under Help/Virtual Tours for a free copy or to start making your own free virtual tours). Have a look at the standard photo on the left and then

MyProperty Location, On Show, Price Reduced, Virtual tour icons

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If you haven’t noticed it yet, there are new property search results on MyProperty South Africa . This includes: - a location marker to show properties that have been geo-coded in the OMS with the ‘show on map’ option selected. - a priced reduced banner to show properties where the price was reduced (this is automatically tracked). - a on show icon if the property was marked for on show - a virtual tour icon for virtual tours done using the free and unlimited virtual tour function in the OMS . We are seeing a trend where these properties are getting more hits compared to properties with none of these options on. In the near future these properties will also get higher ranking in the search results.

Industry first: unlimited bandwidth for real estate websites

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In an industry first, Entegral today announced that all its real estate clients will enjoy unlimited bandwidth on their hosted websites. This includes all Entegral website packages; namely National Websites, SEO profile, template and custom websites. Entegral founder, Adriaan Grove, says that the cost savings are significant for national groups who normally generate excessive traffic every month. For most large South African national real estate groups, the cost of bandwidth can total up to significant amounts and can easily total to 50% or more of their IT bill. Entegral already provided a bandwidth cost which was around 40-90% cheaper than competitor offerings. With the launch of our cloud computing infrastructure (another industry first) this year, we have managed to bring the bandwidth costs down to insignificant amounts and today announced that all clients will enjoy unlimited bandwidth for websites hosted through us. Cost savings through the Cloud The costs savings ar

Going the solo route without a property portal?

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Property portals assist real estate organisations in marketing their property listings on more websites and therefore get more exposure and leads. This is an interesting story from Edina Realty , a USA based agency who is going the solo route and pulling their property listings from 3rd party portals like Trulia.  According to Edina Realty: “…Third party aggregators are not brokers. They get listings for free from brokers around the country and then display them online, collecting and distributing leads for profit.  We believe it makes the best business sense for our agents and Edina Realty to control our own listings in order to ensure that: • Our agents don’t lose future business opportunities because a non-listing competitor pays to present themselves as the contact for your listing. • Our agents don’t have to pay – directly or indirectly – for leads on their own listings. • Our sellers can be assured that leads on their listing are being handled by an expert – The qua

OMS detailed views per day graph – correction

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We’ve corrected a problem on the property details, detailed views per day graph where dates weren’t sorted in the correct order as shown below: It will now correctly sort the dates from oldest to latest as shown below:

Improved new property search results for MyProperty South Africa

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We have launched the improved property search results for MyProperty South Africa . Check it out, a more friendly search layout that now also includes: a) map icon that shows properties marked for geocoding and display on a map. (good indication to visitors that Google Street View is also available). b) On show icon that shows if a particular property will be on show in the near future. Quality scoring We are passionate about providing high quality and up to date property listings to visitors. The new on show & mapping icons will contribute to the quality score on listings and may in future receive higher rankings. So make sure you mark all your on show property listings . Watch our for more updates on the property details and home screens in the near future.

Google’s latest algorithm update impacts 35% of searches – impact on Real Estate

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Google announced a new search ranking algorithm that will impact about 35% of searches. Google says that the new search algorithm knows that different types of searches have different “freshness needs”, and will weigh them accordingly. “Different searches have different freshness needs. This algorithmic improvement is designed to better understand how to differentiate between these kinds of searches and the level of freshness you need, and make sure you get the most up to the minute answers” Google will start ranking results based on their ‘freshness’ but there are plenty of cases where results that are a few years old might still be useful for you – e.g. recipes. Impact on Real Estate? Nobody knows Google’s secret ranking formula (and it is based on a large number of factors) so it is difficult to estimate the exact impact on real estate websites. Based on the above ‘freshness’ info however, there is likely to be some kind of impact on real estate, as properties for sale an

Who owns your real estate data?

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I recently had an interesting meeting with a prominent agency where we reviewed a contract from a potential service provider. I was left a little rattled (and the client even more), so I thought I'd share this info with you. Ever cared to look into the fine print of your service providers terms & conditions? You'll be surprised that some claim ownership of data YOU entered into the system.   This includes seller, buyer, listing and sales data. Some of these contracts often contain pages and pages of legal jargon and, in the case we’ve looked at, stipulated that the service provider can use the data entered by the agency as they wish. Do you realize that your data (sellers, buyer,tenant info) is one of the most valuable pieces of information your business thrives on and should be protected at all cost? Protection your clients personal data is also critical for building long term relationships, required by the new consumer protection laws in South Africa, and ... running

Increased file size for website news

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The OMS Marketing & Content module has an external news section which provides functionality to load news for your website. Included is an image upload and document upload manager . The document upload manager can be used to upload files (pdf, txt etc) that is included as a hyperlink for visitors to download. We have increased the maximum file sizes for the document manager as follows: - 5MB files for offices. - 10MB files for national websites. To upload a document first enter the text for the download e.g. ‘download file’. Highlight the text and click on the document manager and select a file (or upload a new one).

View Referrals from email link – problem corrected

When a new referral is captured or the status is updated an email is automatically sent to both send and receiving offices. Clicking on the referral link on the email will open up the referral. There was a problem where a blank referral was shown due to the particular user not logged in. We have addressed the problem and the system will now force you to login to view the referral if not already logged in. Note: the referral system module is only available to national clients

New property On Show add to calendar function

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An innovative new feature on property portal MyProperty.co.za was just launched. If a property was marked on show an Outlook and GMail add to calendar function is added to the property listing. This allows the end-user to add the showhouse to his calendar including date, directions plus agent name and contact number. The functionality will make its way to our website solutions in the future.

Have a good real estate domain? Use it for improved SEO results

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So you have secured a couple of good real estate domains. Now what? Well one option is to build a website for each which is a time consuming and expensive exercise.  Entegral provides a quick & easy solution to use your real estate domains more effectively through our SEO Profile real estate websites . With a fee of only R165/year for .co.za, .com or .net domains and no monthly fee , it provides the most cost effective & quickest solution available for estate agents to setup a website. It features your property listings loaded through the OMS or imported externally through our GRID solution. It features advanced SEO features as found in our template and custom websites. E.g. search for ‘ Menlyn Properties ’ and you’ll notice feature on Google Page #1: The domains need to be hosted through Entegral. There is no limit on the number of domains and sites you can setup, so try find domains with prominent keywords in the domain name e.g. property,real estate, house, for s

OMS enhanced dashboard with Live Inbox

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Keep track of your website leads, referrals, mandate expiries and other important info with the unique new Live Inbox feature in the OMS. A first phase launched today will notify you of new leads from websites and alert you on this in real time (with no need to refresh the page – as per normal operation you will still also receive an SMS + Email on leads).  You can action items, review the waiting time, open the details and also review completed items. Depending on your user role you can also view outstanding inbox items for your whole office. Click on the help icon in the OMS for more info. We’ve also launched various other updates for the dashboard including: - sleeker Calendar view which shows you colour coded personal, office and group events. - graph showing website leads for the last 15 days with links to your leads archive. - active listings dashboard showing a summary of the number of listings by status and mandate type. We’ve also included the average number of days

Sneak Preview: Improved OMS Dashboard to be launched

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For heritage day in South Africa we decided to put the OMS dashboard on the grill and server up an improved interface.   We are busy finalizing an improved OMS dashboard which will launch in the next day or two. Some of they key features will include: 1) Inbox – see and action new leads, referrals, property mandates expiring etc. 2) Quick detailed views graph. 3) Quick Active listings dashboard view including average days on market. We also slightly tweaked the calendar view. Keep an eye on our product blog or facebook page for the launch.

OMS: Organisation Manager Access viewing office properties update

Organisational manager users (typically franchise head office users) have rights to open properties for any of their offices. We’ve enhanced the system to show the correct mandate agent against the property when opening it up (so typically your listing or selling agent).

OMS performance improvements for property views & leads

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The OMS allows you to easily analyze your property views and leads  interactively for the whole office or single agents. There is also several views available including per day, week and month views. For franchise groups the functionality is expanded to provide analysis into each of your offices. We’ve made minor performance improvements in running the statistics.  We know that every second (or even milliseconds in this case) in using the OMS, counts. above: sample property views & leads for an office over last 30 days by day.   above: sample property views for an office over a 180 day period. Here we can see a clear improvement possibly due to SEO and other marketing effort from the office.

OMS: Coming Soon! Automated Property Valuation Reports (in the Cloud!)

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We are proud to announce that you will soon be able to produce industry best Automated Property Valuation Reports in the OMS . The Automated Valuation Report produced a fair market value of a property anywhere in South Africa using an advanced statistical model.  Users in the OMS will be able to search on a number of criteria to locate a specific property including address or owner details like an ID number.   Details included in this report includes amongst others: - Property details (title deed number, address, erf details etc) - Owner details (as per the Deeds registry) - Valuation details (including last sale price and date, estimate value etc) - Municipal Valuation details (including assessed rates and zoning) - Satellite aerial image showing location of property and 20 most recent comparable sales The beauty of this is that the reports will branded in your company logo & name and will be saved indefinitely in the OMS for your office for easy access. Since th

OMS Map Explorer bug fixes & enhancements

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We have corrected a bug in the OMS Map Explorer that resulted in some users unable to view their listings on the map interface. We have also enhanced the system to show up to 1000 property listings at one time on the map. As illustrated in the screenshot below it provides you with an excellent overview of properties in your area based on the filter criteria you entered. This is a great interactive tool to use and the filter on the right makes it for instance possible to view sold listings in an area or for sale listings within a certain price range and type.

Now search surrounding suburbs with MyProperty’s new search

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Last week we’ve introduced a brand new search on MyProperty. Some of the key features include: 1. Enter multiple suburbs or towns in your search criteria. 2. A keyword suggest is available, as you type matching towns/suburbs are shown. 3. You can now include surrounding suburbs within a specified radius. Visitors can now pick an area and include nearby suburbs in a specific radius. Quite useful if you don’t know the area or want to compare properties in nearby suburbs. 4. You can pick the main property category including residential, commercial or agricultural. 5. You can pick the price range and status (for sale, rental or auction). The new search will allow for more accurate and faster searches to be performed, while the ‘surrounding suburbs’ feature is unique to a South African property portal.

OMS: universal search enhancements, now also search contacts

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We’ve enhanced the new universal search with new features. You can now search property or contact records.  By adding contacts to the search you are now able to quickly find contacts without having to go to the contacts module first. PROPERTIES Search property reference number, loan account number, street name or complex name. This searches all your property listings and also office listings if you have rights. It will search all property statuses including for sale, rentals, auction, expired and inactive. CONTACTS Search first name, last name, email address, mobile number, home number or office number. This searches all your contacts including buyers, sellers, referrals etc. It will also search all office contacts if you have rights. It will also search all property transactions where you were linked as an agent e.g. if you were the listing agent on a home that was since sold, you can search on the seller name at that time, and it will find the person. Simply enter the sear

OMS: New universal search

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We have upgraded the search on the OMS to be more universal, you can now search on a number of items to find a property: - property reference number - loan account number (or part of it) - street name (or part of it) - complex name (or part of it) Depending on your rights, you will only be able to search your own listings or that of the office. In particular the following user accounts can only search on their own data: view access & personal access own data.

OMS: seller loan details

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You can now capture optional seller loan details on a property mandate. The following info can be captured: - Financial institution (financed through) - Account Number - Outstanding amount Our next update will include an upgrade to the search facility to search for a property based on the loan number entered.

OMS update: add existing contacts to property mandates

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We’ve improved & activated the ability to add new or existing contacts on property mandates. From the property mandate screen, you can add a new contact. The system then automatically checks for any duplicates using a number of criteria including first & last name, mobile number and email address. It will warn you if a duplicate is found (A). A list of duplicates will be shown with the option to open the contact in a new window or link it to your property that you have opened (B). When an existing contact is linked to a property you will of course see it as a linked property under that contact. The system caters for linking contacts to multiple properties thus having a global and single view of a contact. This way you can keep track of any previous mandates for your contacts.

OMS: improved property mandate screen

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We’ve launched an improved mandate screen with the focus on making it more user friendly and having all info in one view. A) Mandate history now accessible through a dropdown menu. B) Commission details moved to the right in a separate column. C) Mandate contact details now visible on the same page where you can easily add a new contact. D) Days on market indicator shows you the number of days the property is on the market and days to expiry. A thin bar graph at the bottom also shows you how many days you have left on this mandate in red & green.

OMS: New, checking for duplicate contacts

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We’ve enabled a new feature in the OMS contacts that automatically checks for existing duplicate contacts when you add a new contact. It will check the email address and mobile number fields, if a duplicate is found you won’t  be able to add a new contact. It will also check the First and Last Names and warn you of duplicates with the option to add a duplicate name if it is a coincidence. A) Message informing you that a duplicate was found B) Override adding a duplicate contact name where the first and last names are duplicates.

Service failures 09 Aug (Back Online)

We have experienced a major outage on our servers due to a outage on the main and backup power supplies at our host, but have recovered all services: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/08/08/bpos_amazon_power_outages/ Update 10.20am, 10 AUG 2011 – All services are back online including the OMS. Update 11:14pm, 09 AUG 2011 – all websites are now back online. OMS by tomorrow morning 10 Aug latest. Update 05.00pm, 09 AUG 2011 -  our one affected mail server is now back online. this affected 10% of our email users (other email servers were fine). Update 08.28pm, 09 AUG 2011 – senior engineers from Amazon AWS are currently assisting on the recovery process. We will provide an update in the next hour. From Amazon AWS where our servers are hosted: “We understand at this point that a lighting strike hit a transformer from a utility provider to one of our Availability Zones in Dublin, sparking an explosion and fire. Normally, upon dropping the utility power provided by the transf

New property partner, Junkmail.co.za for all Entegral OMS clients

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How does 750,000 unique monthly visitors sounds to you? This is the number of people visiting South Africa’s leading classified website, JunkMail on a monthly basis, making it one of SA’s top most visited websites. How would you like to target this massive visitor base? Now you can with Entegral. A new partnerships with JunkMail allows property listings from the OMS to be automatically advertised on SA’s leading classified website.  JunkMail now forms part of our extensive range of partner portals . The JunkMail portal is available exclusively to agents listing their properties through the OMS. We are currently advertising the latest 10,000 property listings on a daily basis with plans to increase the number of listings on a weekly basis.  The additional exposure is free for OMS clients until further notice.  We will only interface quality listings, your listings should include photos & description. Property listings on JunkMail links directly to your listing on MyPrope

More Google Streetview towns for South Africa

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Great news for all our clients is that Google has just released StreetView for more South African towns.  Entegral was first to launch Google Streetview for a property portal in South Africa +- 12 months ago and have since rolled the functionality out to national and office clients. Estate Agents can Geocode their properties for maximum effect, full instructions here . The result of the latest Google streetview enhancements, is that streetview may be available in your area and you can use it to your advantage for securing listing mandates. Read the full Google press release here . A wide array of imagery is now available for Limpopo, Western Cape, Northern Cape, Free State, North West, and Mpumalanga provinces. The southernmost tip of Africa has made its debut on Street View, with the addition of Cape Agulhas , the notoriously hazardous place for sailors where the Indian and Atlantic oceans meet. Coastal fans can take a drive through the beautiful West Coast National Park ,

Some great QR codes ideas for Real Estate Agents

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We’ve had a great response so far from our clients on the new industry first QR codes integration into our OMS product: http://productblog.entegral.net/2011/07/introducing-property-listing-qr-codes.html We were also the first SA website to integrate a QR virtual business card on MyProperty.co.za on every agent’s personal details : http://productblog.entegral.net/2011/07/new-qr-code-business-card-on-myproperty.html So here are some cool ideas we’ve gathered on how to use QR codes in Real Estate: 1. On the back of your business card : a no brainer really. People can scan your business card QR code and your contact details are instantly added to their phone. A time saver for your contact. 2. On your car . Someone snaps your QR code in traffic and have your details. Plus you will look super high tech! 3. On property flyers. Want more info on a particular property, just scan the QR code. 4. Yard signs (for sale / rental). Get more details on a property by scanning t