Many thanks for attending Perth's first ever social media bootcamp for real estate on MAY 12TH - we booked out Challenge Stadium! We were thrilled with the turnout, and thanks too for your fantastic feedback and comments.

SLIDES of the Bootcamp are on Slideshare: CLICK HERE

To view PHOTOS of the Bootcamp: CLICK HERE

We had over 100 people on the day, most at both sessions, and although that's great, it still represented a small minority of aussiehome.com clients, and WA real estate professionals overall.

So, while the others are not getting in on this, NOW is the time to get your own social media policy going in your office, and to deploy social media to have meaningful conversations with your marketplace using Twitter, Facebook and the rest.

To put it bluntly - now's the time for ACTION, before the competition moves. WHICH (we hope) IS WHERE WE COME IN...

THREE more Social Media Sessions in June and July! with Charlie Gunningham and Peter Fletcher These will be in the brand new UWA Business School's COMPUTER LABS, one computer per person, MAXIMUM 20 people each session, HALF DAY sessions. You will get to actually START and DEVELOP your social media platform/policy, right there and then, with the experts on hand to guide you. A mix of classroom instruction and actually doing it! ** Tues June 30th  - Using FACEBOOK business pages to drive more business ** Thurs July 9th -  How to be a TWITTER SuperStar! ** Thurs July 30th - Social Media 101 Early bird special (up to 2 weeks before each event) - $150 + GST per person, each session PLACES ARE STRICTLY LIMITED, so book early to avoid missing out. We can run sessions in the morning or afternoon, so please let us know which you prefer on these dates. MORE DETAILS & BOOKINGS - CLICK HERE! or Call Joanne Lu (9389 5833) or email joanne@aussiehome.com

    

 LOOK FORWARD TO SEEING YOU AT THESE UPCOMING EVENTS!

 "Together, we can take on big media, and have meaningful conversations with our marketplace"

www.aussiehome.com  and  www.therealestatemarketingmaven.com

A new feature on aussiehome.com from NEXT week is the ability to show MID WEEK HOME OPENS.

Our system was initially designed as weekend home opens only, with us deleting them Sunday midnight. With one entry point for all home opens updating a weekend home opens guide, our desire to make it really easy to update (in one form) and also help reduce the power and influence of those expensive weekend real estate newspapers. (COMING SOON - we will be doing planning your home open route on a map - the ultimate guide!)

We do realise that weekday home opens occur too, so from next week the home open entry console will default to Sat/Sun, but you can override this and enter any date you like. After the date has passed, the home open time is deleted.

? Do you have a great idea that will make your life easier - love to hear from you ?

Get your buyers moving - Perth's affordability is at a 7 year best level, meaning this is the time to get into the market, trade up and get the activity happening. Plus, according to today's GDP figures - Australia is not in recession!

Just when things are gloomiest, that's the the time - "the darkest hour is just before dawn" (Mamas and Papas lyric?)

AAP reported that "Static house prices and low interest rates have improved housing affordability for first time buyers to their best levels in seven years". The Housing Industry Association-Commonwealth Bank of Australia housing affordability index for first home buyers rose 22.3 index points in the March quarter to 175.8 points.

"This took housing affordability to levels not seen since 2002," said the AAP report (published 18 May 2009).

This week interest rates stayed on hold at a 49-year low (3%) and the RBA suggested that things were levelling off - see our latest BLOG post comment.

In many ways, the internet medium is one of the most honest, democratic media around. It's instant and available everywhere. But it's only as good as the information entered.

We want to keep aussiehome.com clean, honest and reliable. The better the information, the more people come back to the site (as they have been for 10 years now) and that's to all our benefit. We will always take steps to ensure the site is up to date, accurate and not misleading.

The biggest criticism we receive about aussiehome.com is that some 'old' listings get re-entered on the site as if they are new. These old properties then go out on alerts, have 'newly added' next to it and climb higher on realestate.com.au (presumably, that's the intention). However, an old listing pretending to be a new one on a web site is verging on misleading public advertising. This is in contravention of Clause 5 of REBA's code of conduct (pertaining to misleading and disceptive behaviour).

From next week therefore, a WARNING will appear if a property is entered that has been recently archived - we also get copied in on this. At this stage, you can then decide not to enter it again, and pull back the existing one from the archive. Please do so.

Please keep the playing field fair and honest for all, including the 10,000 visitors A DAY that view properties on aussiehome.com, and the thousands more on the other sites we feed your listings to.