Fresh arrival backs technology

By RICHARD PAMATATAU

American real estate juggernaut ReMax is banking on technology to help it carve out a place in the New Zealand property market.

Gary Ahearn, ReMax New Zealand's new chief executive, said that after people and properties the business was based on IT.

Denver-based ReMax is one of the world's largest real estate companies and since opening in New Zealand about a year ago has opened 30 offices and sold about 800 properties.

It planned to have about 90 offices and over the next two years it aspired to becoming the dominant player in the market, he said.

Ahearn came to New Zealand about a month ago after selling his ReMax franchise in Sydney where he had about 30 agents or sales associates.

An industry veteran at 41, he sold his first house at 17 for A$26,500 ($30,500) and was Australia's youngest real estate agent.

In those days the office did not have a fax machine or photocopier and agents kept in touch with the base by using CB radios.

Now ReMax has a global site that lets people search for property. Two further private websites offer staff everything from marketing and contract advice to economic data, zoning information, local knowledge and a directory of every agent and what they are selling.

Every real estate company was using the web to advertise its properties, but the key was adding value so that potential buyers were better informed.

"I think the New Zealand property market is possibly undervalued and I would like to think that people should be looking at what is on offer here over the web."

He said staff working with ReMax were expected to operate a PC with a Pentium 3 chip or higher, but were allowed to create their own domain name.

Training was delivered over the internet almost every day from the company's television studio in America.

The marketing, contract and sales templates on the private site also gave agents access to the organisation's library of case studies.

"You can bet any problem that a Kiwi agent is having has been handled by another agent somewhere else, so pooled information goes a long way to sorting out blips," he said.

Another benefit of the private global site was that agents were able to display not only listings, but also any other attributes such as language skills and "local knowledge".

That meant if an agent in the United States had German-speaking clients looking for something in New Zealand then a quick look on the database should find an appropriate agent who had the right language skills.

Ahearn said the company also provided its people with customised software called AgentOffice2000 which generated the paperwork as well as managing property databases.

It could also be synched into an agent's palm pilot or mobile phone so that more time was spend in the field rather than being tied to a desk.

While some were saying the New Zealand property market was cooling, his view was that decisions were just taking longer, and because of that some were possibly better.