Real Estate 2.0 North
Among other things, my recent visit to Vancouver reassured me of two facts. First, the city remains an anomoly in a sea of bad real estate news. The city is on fire. Non stop foreign investment, the 2010 Winter Olympics and a constricted downtown core means there’s a forest of construction cranes and growing canopy of condos blanketing the city.
Second, Vancouver gets Web 2.0. But while it’s already spawned a number of success stories (Flickr, NowPublic) there hasn’t, to date, been much crossover between these two worlds.
Thankfully though it looks like that’s beginning to change.
And while speaking at the Real Estate Tech Meetup last night, I had a chance to meet with a couple of people who might be in a position to affect that change.
Jonathan Lyon is co-founder of MyRealPlace, a brand new Canadian real estate community web site. Realtors can blog about their local market conditions while consumers can search from over 20,000 properties pulled from MLS feeds.
I haven’t had a chance to explore it completely, but it sounds to me like a mix of ActiveRain and Trulia. If it does what it promises, it might just fill a curiously conspicuous hole in the Canadian market right now.
If there’s anyone out there who can help local Realtors understand Web 2.0, it’s Jordan Behan - president of Tell Ten Friends, a word of mouth marketing agency that helps business owners and fellow marketers understand the power of social media. Jordan’s a sharp guy and has lots of passion for the topic and it was great to meet him at an event like this (small world too, he was college roommates with my sister’s husband).
I covered a lot of ground in my 45 minutes on stage, and it sounds like the guys from Video Openhouse got a kick out of my presentation (so did the guy from MovieTours.ca) - I sure they especially liked it when I talked about why Realtors should be using video to market a property online.
Finally a big thanks to local condo sales powerhouse Ian Watt and regular FOREM reader Craig MacKenzie from Sea to Sky Premier Properties up in beautiful Whistler, British Columbia, for stopping by and saying hi after all was said and done. It was nice to see so many people out, despite the beautiful evening that I’m sure was beckoning people to the beach. For those of you I didn’t meet in person, thanks for coming out.
Of course, thanks again to the folks at Ubertor for organizing the event and having me come speak. Hopefully we can do it again soon.
Update: Vancouver Real Estate Meet Up Summary from the Sutton Blog.
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5 Comment(s)
8 Trackback(s)
- From Ubertor Real Estate Blog » Blog Archive » Real Estate Meetup Summary - Joel Burslem, Social Media Manager for Inman News | Sep 13, 2007
- From Tell Ten Friends» Blog Archive » Real Estate Week Update | Sep 13, 2007
- From Ian Watt (www.vancouver-penthouse.com) : Blog | Sep 14, 2007
- From coComment - Site comments by Rebeccalev | Sep 14, 2007
- From Viewed.mobi » Real Estate Meetup Summary - Joel Burslem, Social Media Manager for Inman News | Sep 14, 2007
- From Ian Watt (www.ianwatt.ca) : Blog | Sep 16, 2007
- From Ian Watt (www.vancouver-luxury-homes.com) : Blog | Sep 19, 2007
- From Talking About the Future | Future of Real Estate Marketing | Oct 3, 2007
Steve Jagger - Ubertor.com | Sep 12, 2007 | Reply
Thanks for coming up to Vancouver!!
Lots of excellent feedback from your presentation… even from agents who missed it but heard it was excellent.
Thanks again
Hawaii Life | Sep 12, 2007 | Reply
MyRealPlace looks like an interesting site. Having a social avenue that allows realtors to blog hits the mark as far as I’m concerned. I tried searching properties but it said that the feature was temporarily unavailable, so I was not able to see how it worked.
Rebecca Levinson | Sep 13, 2007 | Reply
I have just added MyRealPlace to bookmarks and will check out this site today, thanks for the heads up.
I would assume that the agents in Vancouver, as well as other cities and provinces throughout Canada, would embrace Web 2.0 and social networking. Most of the agents I have spoken with in Canada have really embraced internet marketing. Also, Canada has a public MLS, mls.ca, which has been empowering the consumer for years. And somehow the agents are still making a living. Hmm…go figure.
Jordan Behan | Sep 13, 2007 | Reply
It was great to meet you too Joel. You’ll have to make the trip North more often. (Say hi to Patrick and Joanna for me!)
In response to Rebecca’s comment, yes there are a number of agents here that make great use of the web and various social networking sites. And now we finally have our own real estate social network in Canada; a meeting place for all of those agents and well-informed buyers and sellers to congregate and share ideas.
I suspect by your comment that you feel the same way I do- that making the information available to the public only makes it easier to have successful transactions with agents.
And don’t worry Joel- you’ll inevitably see a lot more web-based real estate products coming out of the Rain City…
Real Estate Abbotsford BC | Sep 22, 2007 | Reply
Yea, I find there is not as may Canadian real estate resources available online. I’ll be sure to check out MyRealPlace. Thanks for sharing.