Updated | 1/7/2011
This information was researched when I was working at another agency to settle an argument with someone I was working for. The stats speak for themselves.
People want home opens on weekends and people are sick of not getting replies from agents, so simply wait for home opens rather than contact the agent direct.
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On Saturday 8/1/2011 I asked all attendees to the 10 Home Opens I had between 11:00 am and 5:00 pm. I am ecstatic at the results.
Questions asked:
- How did you find out about this home open?
- How many bedrooms are you looking for?
- How many bathrooms?
- What price range are you looking in?
- What areas are you looking in?
- When would you like to view properties?
- Do you wait for home open times to be advertised or do you contact the agent for an open time?
The home opens I conducted were in:
SUBIACO 11:00 AM
FLOREAT 11:30 AM
CLAREMONT 12:20 PM
WEMBLEY DOWNS 1:00 PM
BAYSWATER 2:20 PM
MAYLANDS 3:00 PM
MAYLANDS 3:20 PM
HIGHGATE 3:45 PM
YOKINE 4:15 PM
NOLLAMARA 4:40 PM
This will affect the areas people are searching in on the survey results because these were the areas they attended for the home open. This is by no means a true indication of “hot areas” for rental properties and should not be considered when looking at purchasing an investment property.
The survey was filled in by attendees to the home opens on my iPad, people love playing with new gadgets and I had no one refuse to fill in the survey, in fact, most were very happy to give feedback to an agent. I had no involvement in their selections.
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How did you find out about this home open?
in November 2010 I received a response to an email to reiwa regarding a few complaints about their website. I find it slow and too sales orientated (have a look at a rental property on reiwa, when it eventually loads you will notice there are a few clickable links for “search past sales” and “Mortgage calculator”, not really rental property orientated at all).
An extract from that email is below:
As for “what people say” REIWA ask a market research company, Synovate, to ask various questions of the public every year and we take their reponses very seriously. Over 200 people who are active in the real estate market are sampled, and this year we have found that reiwa.com has come out ON TOP as the most preferred real estate web site in Perth – ABOVE realestate.com.au, and far above domain.com.au; and NO ONE (no one) mentioned Yahoo (who don’t actually have any listings at all, except fed in from other sites).
- The results of this independent research show:
- When asked UNPROMPTED to name a real estate web site, 33% named reiwa.com 1st, (up from 22% last year); 28% realestate.com (down from 32% last year); 9% named domain (down from 14% last year)
- When given a list of real estate sites, 87% said they knew of reiwa.com (up from 75% last year), realestate.com were at 83% (up from 73% last year), domain at 73%
- When asked which site you use to search for real estate, 64% said reiwa.com (up from 46% last year), realestate.com were at 66% (up from 60% last year); domain at 36% (down from 41% last year)
- When asked which is your preferred real estate site, 39% plumped for reiwa.com (up from 24% last year) and realestate.com were at 38% (up from 37%(; only 7% went for domain.com.au (down from 14%)
SO you can see, when you look at some recent (surveying done Aug 2010) independently, of a significant number of people (200+) randomly chosen who have been active in real estate market recently, reiwa.com come out on top, (for the first time) this year. A great result for us and our subscribers.
My results would suggest that the independent survey was stacked in reiwa’s favour. Clearly reiwa needs to work on their site and marketing if it wishes to take more market share. a good idea would be to revisit the mobile website. I would like to see an option to click “home opens in the area” taking your GPS position or entering in a suburb or post code to get all home opens in that area for the day. realestate.com.au have a similar feature on their mobile website, although the website’s local time is set to eastern standard time which affects search results with the time difference from Sydney to Perth.
At my home opens, only 1 person attended from reiwa’s site.
It was a shame to see no results from twitter for facebook but not unexpected. Marketing on social websites is more about marketing the agent and less about the property. People simply look where all properties are listed by all agents, rather than searching on social networks. It was interesting to note that none searched on our company website or called the office, I would attribute this to the same reasons as for social networks. People stick with the big websites rather than searching individual sites.
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How many bedrooms are you looking for?
Properties shown on the weekend were 2 and 3 bedroom units and houses. This would explain the results below.
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What price range are you looking in?
It is clear that there is still strong interest in the blow mid-range rental priced properties. It should be noted that on this particular weekend I had no home opens in the above $500 per week range.
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What areas are you looking in?
All of the properties I had home opens on during the survey were central or North of the river. This is why the results blow reflect such a high proportion were looking North of the river.
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When would you like to view properties?
This result was actually a shock to me. I always expected the majority of people to prefer after work and after 12 pm on Saturdays. I certainly did not expect the majority to prefer before 12 pm on Saturdays. No shock for before and during business hours to have such a low result.
Because of this survey I am revisiting my weekend home open times and intend to trial before 12 pm viewings this coming weekend.
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Do you wait for home open times to be advertised or do you contact the agent for an open time?
I expected to see a majority of people advising they prefer to look for home open times online instead of contacting agents. Out of the 1029 home opens I have conducted since 25/7/2010 the vast majority of attendees to every home open have not contacted me prior to attending the home open.
I did not expect some of the comments about this question though. Many people expressed annoyance at not getting returned calls or emails when making an enquiry to an agent, or being advised shortly before a viewing of the time and it being during business hours when they have either no time to arrange time off or simply cannot take time off. Most people are concerned about their job security and do not want to jeopardise their job when looking for a property.
A friend of a friend of mine has been looking for a property in the Craigie area for over 12 months on and off. She gives up after a couple of weeks when not getting any replies from agents. I remember similar issues when looking myself.
The below results show at least 56 percent of people prefer to wait for a home open to be advertised over contacting the agent directly. This means without advertising home opens and only showing properties by appointment an agent is losing over 56 percent of the rental market of potential tenants.
As I always say:
“if you show it, they will come, it’s not rocket science, it’s better, it’s property management!”
From this survey, more research at home opens is clearly indicated. I will take onboard these results, make changes to my procedures and will continue with the survey. I will post new results in a few months after more results have been collated.
