We believe a real estate portal should all be about making it easy to search and view property listings and that is what we are delivering. We currently offer two methods to view property listings either by thumbnails or as a list.

Over the coming months we will be adding a raft of new features and we want you to help us. So if there is something that you would like to see on our site in 2008, why don’t you write to us and give us your suggestions in our website improvements section.

You will need one of the latest browsers, but from there all you need to do is click on Propertypoint RSS Feed Sales or Propertypoint RSS Feed Lease and you will be kept up to date when there are new properties added to this website. Propertypoint will be adding more specific feed types each month. SO we can easily target more specific types of properties for you.

Have you noticed those little orange XML or RSS tags on all of our pages? They mean that the page is available in RSS or Really Simple Syndication. To simplify, RSS is the “code” that underlies a website. It includes a property type, address information, headline, bed bath cars, a description and a photo of each available property. You will need one of the latest browsers and our website is compatible with all major browser releases.

A little further explanation
As web browsers are FREE you should always keep up to date with the latest and greatest browsers. Here are some links.

If you would like to know more about RSS and readers visit whatisrss.com

Internet Explorer 7 [you upgrade from IE6 ASAP]
Firefox 2 [the fastest growing browser in the world]
Safari [apple's lighting fast browser]
Opera [another alternative and very popular]

Upgrading is pretty straightforward. If you are using Internet Explorer 6, we suggest you upgrade immediately, we also suggest you give Firefox a chance as it is faster, has better security and more features than any of the other available browsers.

If an agent is going to go to the time to create a response then we should all have the courtesy of giving them an option on how to respond to your enquiry.

Keep the enquiry comment brief but provide all of the information you require. Once you submit your enquiry all of the property data is sent with the enquiry to the target person, so you do not need to tell them about the property you are enquiring about.

Note: Please do not send the webmaster of this site enquiries on properties, we just do not have the time or information to respond.

Get Photoshop Elements
Photoshop will make preparing images for the web a breeze. It should cost about $175.00 AUD and is simple to learn and install.

Importing Images into Photoshop from your Camera
Photoshop Elements should recognise your Camera once it is plugged into your computer. Simply open Photoshop Elements – Click on File and Select Import, you should see your Camera listed. Just select this.

Resizing Images
This can be done in two ways, image by image or batch (which basically means all images at once).

Image by Image
Click on Image from the menu and then resize. The perfect size is 800 x 600.

Batch
Click on File – Batch Processing and Select:
- Open Files (these are all images you have opened on Photoshop)
- Convert File Type (JPEG or GIF are your only choices for web)
- Convert Image Size (place 800 in first column and make sure Constrain Proportions is ticked. This will ensure all images do not stretch or shrink and look terrible)
- Destination (select the folder you want all the images to be placed in)

Saving Images for the Web
Click on File – Save For Web (make sure the settings are for JPEGS this way you can work the quality from 1 – 100%. The lesser the quality the smaller the file)

Have a little play with this, you should save it with the quality setting as low as you can without compromising the image quality. Photoshop Elements shows you both images when saving for the web so you will be able to see if quality is compromised.

Other options: FREE Google Picasa

Sometimes the hardest thing to do with selling anything you love, is finding someone to sell your pride and joy who loves your property as much as you do. Remember this is not the agents role. The agents role is to maximise the return for you – and by doing so they maximise the return for them.

The best way to gauge an agents care is to look at their own websites and see how they present other vendors properties. Look at how much effort is placed into photography, descriptions and other property information.

Ask your agent where they advertise their vendors listings, you will find that in Australia realestate.com.au is number one, followed by domain.com.au. Agents in Tasmania also can list with Propertypoint for FREE, so their is really is no excuse for them to not advertise on a site like this that attracts so many visitors. You will find a range of excuses why they do not, but it usually comes down to the 10 or so minutes it takes them to actually place the listing on this site.

As for being patient, the average time it takes to sell a listing is between 45 and 65 days, so you must be patient. There is no magic recipe. I would suggest holding off on any expensive marketing to begin with. Remember advertising in a newspaper is very expensive and lasts for only one day. It still has some bang, but the bills can rise very quickly. So my suggestion is to concentrate on the Internet and critique your listing and always ask for a phone call at least once a week to gauge your listings success.

1. Here is the gig, your main image is everything, it must be the best photo you have of the property. A good headline also helps, but our eyes are trained for what we like to see.

2. Use short informative sentences that tell the story of how it could feel owning that particular property, think of the description as a word by word guided tour of your property. Emotive words that describe the home and surrounding neighbourhood features work best. Just don’t ramble on about how great a deal it is or how cheap it is.

3. Give some thought to the images you select. Photographs of different rooms, floor plans allow property seekers to assess their interest in the property and increases the chance of your listing making it to their shortlist. My advice is to take a number of photos of each feature and pick the one best feature. Also helps to read the cameras manual!

4. Property seekers want to know the price or at the very least a price indicator. You don’t want a potential buyer or tenant thinking you have something to hide.

Here are some things to consider.

1. What are the features of the property.
You should try to take 4 shots of the features of a house. The photos on your website should be a tour of the property that informs and excites potential buyers.

2. The best go live
Pick only the best quality images. Remember poor quality images reflect badly on your companies professionalism and without knowing it, could cost you vendors.

3. 800 x 600
All your photos should be the standard which is 800 x 600. In the coming years this might increase to 1024 x 768 pixels (the bigger the better) but most portals do not support this because their are still around 30% of the consumer market with only 800 x 600 monitors.

4. Include your website address and logo
No Agent does this, but I believe that any image that goes live on any portal other than your own website should have a small clean logo with your domain name clearly marked. Do not make it overbearing, it should be clean and crisp and located in one of the corners (pick a corner and make it consistent through all of your images). This will promote the listing and your website and costs nothing but a little time.

5. Minimum 5
Each property listing should have a minimum of 5 quality images. This informs site users. Sometimes for listings such as land it is difficult, but in the information age the last thing you want to do is waste time and frustrate potential buyers and your staff by wasting both their time.

Note: Never, ever upload poor quality images.

Example: (Note this was designed by myself and not the client)

Basically every listing on our website comes from a suburb and each of these suburbs appear in our ‘cloud’ areas. The more listings under a cloud from a particular suburb will result in that cloud getting larger and larger.

You can click on any suburb and all of the listings in that particular suburb and category will be presented on a page.

• Internet Explorer 7
• Firefox 2

(my favourite)

• Safari
• Opera

Download and install today!