Nestoria UK Blog

This month we have the pleasure of chatting with Peter Le Masurier, the man behind UK property social network Juicy Red Apple. He is a serial entrepreneur, has just joined forces with regional property portal (and Nestoria partner) Southern Property Finder and looks after property software provider Property Owl.

Peter, thanks for speaking with us.

1. The intersection of technology and the property industry isn’t always as smooth as everyone might like. What’s your opinion of the current state of play? How has the downturn affected things?

When I ventured into this industry I thought it was crying out for technological change. One of my first published articles was titled ‘the online revolution’. That was 18 months ago and sadly it has not moved on as much as I anticipated.

I recently sat on an advisory panel for technology in real estate and we discussed a number of issues, concluding with two overriding themes, namely, acceptance and education. Agents need to first accept that they need technology, websites, online marketing and then they need to be educated in what best suits their practice. With reference to acceptance, I believe the continuing downturn is forcing agents to begin to accept that they need to consider the ‘technology’ issue. The herculean task will be once they have accepted it, how best to educate them. I have come to realise that perhaps technology has moved too quickly for agents who were not required to understand it in the good old days when property sold itself.

The landscape has now changed dramatically and exposed technology to agents and they simply don’t understand half of it. We all talk about measuring statistics, but a huge proportion of agents don’t understand the basic fundamentals of a website. So here we are with technology that is arguably too advanced for agents at the moment and too much of it.

2. Explain your recently launched projected JRA. What role do you envision it playing in the industry, and how are things going?

I set up JRA to be an online community where like minded industry professionals could come and interact. I have long been an admirer of Active Rain in the USA and its powerhouse of circa 140,000 members. I see JRA as a similar tool, an essential conduit that every industry professional will have access to and where all can interact and communicate with one another. As Active Rain say ‘… our goal is to “Empower the real estate professional‘ and as an extension empower the consumer…” which I tend to agree with.

It is going very well. JRA has a solid membership, but needs more agents to start to embrace the concept. I heard from one agent recently who said he wouldn’t want to talk to his competitor down the road. This attitude still exists in this space and will be a challenge (not just for an online community), but for every such agent there are more willing to give it a go and get involved. The bottom line is that it works, advice is being sought, discussions are being had and business is being conducted.

Given my earlier comments I am not expecting a stampede. The innovators are on JRA, the early adopters are coming and I believe over this year we will see the early majority take it on. My ambition for JRA is to see it as part of agents stable diet of online resources in the future and in every educators handbook of what an agent should be doing when embracing this space. Indeed, I believe eventually it will be a ‘necessity’ to be involved in this space.

3. Given your role at Southern Property Finder, how do you see regional portals competing with the large national (or even international) brands?

I have for a long time moaned that there are too many portals so it may seem somewhat hypocritical to become involved in yet another portal. That said, Southern Property Finder has been around for a while and had built up a decent following of local agents (South Coast). It was this local following that attracted me. Indeed, I had just written an article on niche portals which indicated that perhaps a more locally focused portal could offer an additional service to agents and users alike.

I was involved in the online travel industry a while back and saw how niche products developed in that space and also saw how ‘local’ search developed. If we can get the SEO right then a local portal ought to be able to offer its agents the attractive proposition of good quality, relevant leads at a reasonable price. Can it compete with the large national portals? I see it as complementing them and offering the agent a reasonably priced marketing channel that the larger portals sometimes struggle to fill, i.e. local. The Brand is strong and can grow stronger and will offer local agents more of an opportunity to promote their local area.

With reference to my responses to your first question, I would like to point out that the technology aspect of the continuing development has been a headache and dealing with near on 300 agents all using different software providers continues to be a royal pain. I do take from this a small positive however in that agents are at least now more focussed on where/how their property is being displayed online.

4. As a regular and often very entertaining blogger, what is your advice to estate agents contemplating making the plunge and embracing the online dialog?

Thanks Ed, I am still deeply humbled that anyone reads my stuff.

My first advice would be start a blog. Commit yourself and a few people to write anything they like, but make sure you get at least three posts up a week. Research the many good blogs that are out there and just start writing. Commitment is key and as much as I enjoy writing there are times where I have to force myself to write.

There are many sites in this space that report on the daily news in the property industry. Pick one story and give your opinion, simple as that. You don’t have to disagree with it.

People often ask me what makes a good blog? To be honest I have no idea, I have written blogs I thought were good and no one has read them and then the one I wrote at midnight because I had to gets rave reviews. It is probably easier to say what not to do. Do not write for search engines, stuffing your content with keywords will not read well. The relevant keywords will be in there if you just write as it is. Do not self promote, you are not there to say how your product will change the world. Always give credit to other authors and link to sources, references.

Perhaps in this industry the one piece of useful advice I would say take heed of is: Be Honest!! The industry suffers enough in the opinion polls and agents embracing this space should bear that in mind! Your readers are a clever bunch and will spot a blagger a mile off.

Second, open a twitter account – yes it is the darling of the moment and may not be as popular in 12 months time, but 6 months is a long time in this space and you are already 6 months behind your competitors who are on there. It is hugely popular at the moment and will continue to be so for a while. So what you don’t get it, get on there and play. Half the people on there don’t get it and this is part of the fun. You will learn what works, what doesn’t, but simply interacting in this space will increase your brand awareness. It now has SEO value as well.

I will of course say join JRA, not only will this increase your knowledge and open up endless possibilities but it will help give you ideas of what to write for your blog.

Anyway, many agents now have time on their hands and blogging is an excellent way to inform potential customers what is happening in the local area, additional content, and therefore additional opportunity to be found through organic search. But this leads back to my first point, they have to accept they need this and then be educated as many have no idea of the real benefit of a website and what organic search may be.

Thanks Ed

Thanks very much Peter for the insightful and comprehensive response, and for your ground breaking work as a pioneer in moving the industry forward.

You can keep up to date on Peter’s many projects by joining Juicy Red Apple, subscribing to the PropertyOwl blog, or following @propertyowl on twitter.

past Nestoria interviews: Henry Yates, Andy Allan, and Stephan Uhrenbacher.