At around 9.20am on Friday 2nd July, almost 11 years to the day since the company was first incorporated, aussiehome.com Pty Ltd was sold to REIWA.

In a good-natured signing ceremony, along with my cofounder Nick Streuli, who I’d met while we both completed our MBAs at UWA in the late 90s, I signed the final papers that saw REIWA take over.

Nick and I went off for a coffee afterwards to reminisce. What an 11 years it had been…

In March 1999, Lisa and I attended a ‘Night with Barry Humphries’ at the Regal Theatre. During the show, we were both dragged up on stage to eat a meal with Dame Edna, which had just been ordered from the Subi Hotel. A night neither of us could forget - it was also the same night Nick rang me with his idea for a 'local property web site'. 6 months later, I resigned my secure Head of Department job at Hale School. I remember the date – 9/9/99 - as Dame Edna might have said, “spooky!” Portentous maybe.

1999 was the Year of the Dotcoms. If you had an MBA, a dotcom idea and a pulse, people were interested (6 months later, they ran for the hills). While most e-businesses came crashing down to earth shortly after the Easter 2000 'Tech Wreck', aussiehome.com survived due to its loyal following of visitors and real estate agents and some calm advice from some key shareholders. As the continual shift from print to online took hold in the 2000s, so aussiehome.com developed web site design and hosting services, print publications and online databases, enewsletters and CRMs. We moved into seminars and training, social media and mobile/iphone applications.

There have been many bumps and dinks along the way, some close calls and some great moments. Only 7 months old, we won the Asia-Pacific IT Award for WA for Best Innovation in E-Commerce (beating much larger companies such as AdultShop.com and others). 2 years later they won the Best E-Business in WA and also the People's Choice Award for the most popular web site. In 2004, the company won its first national Award,  as a BRW ‘Best Start-Up' Business, and in both 2007 and 2008 a 'Smart Company Top 40' Award (the only company in WA to do so). I also won a Business News '40under40' Award and our wonderful IT & Systems Manager Amit Sethi won a 'Early Career' Award for Computer Science graduates.

We love to innovate – Nick always insisted that we ‘push the envelope’. We were the first company anywhere to put houses on interactive maps on the internet; the first company in Perth to offer virtual tours to the real estate industry; the first (and still only) site to have a professionally produced real estate TV show (many aussiehome.com clients have featured in it) and still the only site to have 'heat maps' and the ability to 'plot your home open route on a map'. [Goodness, I'm beginning to sound like Kevin Rudd listing all his achievements - sorry about that.]

We all share a lot of pride in our accomplishments. But most of all, we've had fun, and I want to thank all our staff (past and present) and of course our shareholders (who gave us a go back in 1999) and especially our clients who could have easily gone with someone else, but plumped for us and stuck with us. And of course Nick who came up with the idea and convinced me to do it in the first place.

I'm so glad all the aussiehome.com staff are coming with me. I get to run REIWA.com. We get to bring all our services (although most of the staff will still be based in our Nedlands office, and the aussiehome.com web site will continue, at least for a while).

Coming home on Friday night I told my 2 kids that I had just sold the business. My 6 year old boy piped up with “Does that mean you have no work Dad?”

“Oh no," I replied "I have lots of work to do.”

We all do. We are all working with REIWA.com now. We can’t wait. In fact, we’ve already begun.

Meanwhile – thanks for all your support. I have met loads of people over the years who have told me how they have loved using the aussiehome.com site.

I even met Dame Edna - thanks your majesty - you were there at the beginning. As you once said: "“Never be afraid to laugh at yourself, after all, you could be missing out on the joke of the century.”

Now let's all go have some fun on REIWA.com ...

I write this as (hopefully) a more humble and aware individual than I was yesterday, having joined 98 other WA CEOs at the WACA last night in the first CEO Sleepout for the homeless, as organised by the Vinnies.

Where to start? Well I can report that the concrete floor underneath the Lillee-Marsh stand is cold at 3 in the morning (when I think I finally got off to a fitful sleep, such as it was), and I know that when I queue up for my pie and chips there in the future I will always gaze down at that corner where I slept last night (see picture left), and the experience will continue to prompt me to think about Australia's homeless people (105,000 a night, 14,000 in WA - a travesty for a wealthy country one might argue).

The pure experience of sleeping out with just a sleeping bag, piece of cardboard and pillow meant this was always going to mean more than just tipping money in for a good cause. You also lived it (at least for one night), and felt blessed that for the other 364 nights of the year you had a warm bed to sleep in. What we did was way easier than what the homeless face every night, for real, but it still made its mark.

Seeing others join you, sleeping in stairwells, down along the railings, under the chairs, and in 2 cases, actually braving the grass pitch itself (see pictures on right) added tremendously to the event. A camaraderie developed through the night, and warm smiles greeted you wherever you went as we all shared the experience. There was a diary room where you could say your thoughts to camera, a book to sign, pictures of homeless to gaze at. And being at the WACA - it was all so surreal.

At kickoff time (7pm last night), Vinnies organised a thought provoking 2 hours of presentations from homeless people who shared their stories, videos, government MPs donating $15,000, and the CEO of Burswood who raised the most ($34,000), all beautifully MC'd by Adrian Barich, who told his favourite Jako jokes. Twiggy Forrest of course stole the night with his appearance and a breathtaking $113,000 cheque from FMG and assorted groups and companies, which took the WA raising to over $420,000. $2.5 million raised nationally (so WA punched above its weight).

As dawn broke the soup kitchen, the roll, the coffee and the shared chatter were in force along with sore heads and bodies ambling around sharing rumours of rats and feral cats (didn't see any myself).

I'll not forget last night. It's startling that one in four homeless are under the age of 18, and most are females. It's a myth that the homelessness are mainly drunken old men on park benches. And hearing their stories, so lucidly put, you can see how the veneer of a seemingly 'normal' life and homelessness is quite thin, and how easy anyone could slip through and find themselves in what must be one of the worst situations to be in.

Altogether, it was poignant and meaningful. It raised our understanding of the issues for us all, and others. We must thank and acknowledge everyone involved in what was WA's first CEO Sleepout, all those that gave - there is still time to give more, and the CEO Sleepout web site is wonderfully well organised and easy to use.

YOU CAN SUPPORT THE CAUSE HERE - thank you. To see more follow the Twitter stream #ceosleepout or read my experiences at Twitter.com/chazgunningham.

Following on from our recent post "Will it be a soft landing or a dull thud?" further evidence about the state of the Perth/WA property market is emerging from the number of listings for sale on aussiehome.com:

- the total number of properties for sale peaked in October 2008 (7,929 were shown for sale on aussiehome.com that week)

- the total number of for sale listings hit a trough in February 2010 (4,428)

- this week we have 5,902 for sale (a rise of 12% off the bottom in 3 months)

- the total number of agencies that were on aussiehome.com during this time has remained fairly constant; with the number of listings per client averaging 41 (it is now at 48)

This 'half cyle' (from one peak to the next trough) measures 16 months in duration, suggesting a full cycle (one peak to another peak, or one trough to another trough) of 32 months (or 2 years 8 months) which is probably shorter than many of us would expect. So are we experiencing a "boomlet" snuffed out by the threat of higher interest rates, or price pressure? Maybe both.

With prices now almost back to what they were at the top of the last boom (December 2007's peak median price for Perth was $465,000; December 2009 data had the median price already back at $453,000), it would appear we have experienced a quick recovery from what was quite a rude shock, and things may go sideways for a while. A return to the 'Normal Market" we were all talking about in mid 2009?

Time will tell, but with interest rates strongly tipped to rise this week due to inflationary pressures, and some homeloaners already feeling the pinch, plus the increased amount of stock around, this could be a great time to buy. (There's always a silver lining.)

The newspapers and blogosphere has been alive with the news of the recent record price achieved for a property in Australia, with the sale of 43 Saunders Street, Mosman Park, for A$57.5 million.

I remember walking round the property a few years ago when it was first put on the market (for a rumoured $80mn) as we developed the individual property web site for the real estate agent, William Porteous. Everything about it was absolutely breathtaking - the views, the sheer physical size and presence, the tennis court, the multi layered levels and finishes throughout.

With the resource riches in this State, it might not be a surprise that at the very top end, WA more than holds its own and now claims the record for the most expensive property in the land.

What does this mean for the rest of us? Probably not much; some might decry the multi-squillion riches in the hands of the few, others might be proud that WA now holds the record; others might have minimal passing interest and a shrug of the shoulders for what has happened ... although I know that those involved in this sale put in the hours (years) and reaped the rewards, and to them, we say congratulations. Records are meant to be broken, and this is one amazing record.

OK - granted I'm no real estate expert, but what's going on in the current real estate market ... in Perth? in Australia?

In 2006 we witnessed a generational run up in property prices (46% growth across Perth metro), and a tightening of the market with record low numbers of properties available for sale. Anything that listed for sale sold in hours, agents has weekends off with nothing to 'open' and up, up, up went the prices. People said it couldn't last... and they were right (eventually), but prices went up another 16% in 2007.

In 2008, it all got rather nasty (I suppose it had to - the higher the rise, the harder the fall?). The property market  - certainly in the higher end of Perth - went dead. In some suburbs hardly a whisper of a sale went by, month after excruciating month. The world endured an unprecedented global financial crisis ("GFC"), which sorely affected those economies with relatively large financial sectors (UK, Iceland, USA); but in some ways, Australia - although experiencing a slower time of it - was isolated from the real nasties.

While this was going on (most of 2008 and early 2009), sellers either took their properties off the market or dropped their prices; and new sellers came in with more realistically-priced homes. Everyone started to realise that 2006 was over, it was a different market altogether.

As the world started to realise that maybe the worst of the GFC was over (all it took was enough people to think the worst was behind us and this feeling to spread), so confidence started returning to the market (sometime after March 2009) and with prices having adjusted downwards 20% or so, sales reappeared. Real estate agents pretty much sold all their remaining stock of properties during the 3 months of August - October 2009. The total number of listings fell and the market tightened again.

Which brings us to today, with (the 'other news' apart from ETS and the Libs) the Federal Reserve just having risen interest rates for the 3rd consecutive month (which is unprecedented by the way, the 2nd time I've used that word in this blog post... another record). Are we heading for another trip? A double dip recession? Did we get overly exuberant about the recovery? Do we need dampening down? Or are we going to learn from history and slowly rise out of the current market situation? Or are we OK?

What is happening? ...

In a sign of the times, and what must have been a difficult decision, REIWA (The Real Estate Institute of WA) has announced that today's Homebuyer magazine will be the last.

A fixture in the home buying scene for three decades, this full colour weekly glossy real estate magazine has fallen victim to the perpetual and inevitable shift of advertising dollars from print to online.

As REIWA President, Rob Druitt, noted "Closing the Homebuyer is like losing an old friend, but the reality is that more agents and most of the public are now using the internet to list properties for sale or to search for homes to buy."

aussiehome.com would like to salute the Homebuyer and REIWA (has any other Real Estate Institute published such a thing for such a sustained period of time?), and hold the publication with some affection (we get our copy sent to us every week). Some aussiehomers used the Homebuyer in the past to look for property, and some even advertised in it (those who had a former life as real estate agents).

Homebuyer, R.I.P. ...

In our last post, we argued how the evidence from our clients and our site pointed to the fact that the property market had already bottomed, probably in March 2009 (as we had noted, at the time).

Not everyone agreed, but as someone wise once said, 'at the bottom of the market there is no one around to ring the bell'. But, as things get better, people tend to notice, and if evidence convinces most of us that the worst is behind us, so this feeds more positive sentiment, which then becomes self fulfilling. 

More evidence is now pointing to a clear sign that property market improved in the June quarter of 2009.

Out of 273 suburbs across the Perth metro region, 71 saw their median (middle) price rise and 80 stayed the same. Put it another way, less than half fell, and the overall Perth median price remained the same at $430,000. In the previous (March) quarter, only 36 suburbs saw their median price rise, 53 stayed the same, and no less than 184 (68% of them) went down. Going back another three months, in December quarter 2008, 171 (63%) of suburbs fell across Perth metro.

As the market turned the corner from the March to the June quarter, so prices were still adjusting. In the March quarter 2009, 21 suburbs had a median price over a $1million. Three months later, 5 suburbs had dropped out of the $1million club. The top 16, as of June 2009, is shown in the table shown (together with the change in their position since March 2009).

Saying things are 'normal' does not make headline writers reach for their laptops, nor will it light up the blogosphere; but in fact we've not seen a 'normal market' for a while...

"If I was to categorise the market at the moment, " says Rob Druitt, (aussiehome.com client and Principal of Druitt & Shead 1st National based in Scarborough), " it would be that it's a normal market. There is interest out there from buyers but you have to work at it, prices are right and properties are selling. There's the 'right' amount of properties on the market for sale. The newspapers are only interested in 'booms' and 'slumps', but at the moment, I like it - it's normal ! "

Jonathan Keys from Brockway Keys Real Estate (another aussiehome.com client, based in Fremantle) agrees, " I'd say the market is normal; and for many agents who have only been around for 5 years or less, they've not seen it like this. I like it, you work hard, and the rewards are there for your effort. "

So, do we love the normality of things at the moment? Is this how it should be - calm, measured, properties selling, but not for crazy prices? People having time to look, consider, make an offer and get what they want. Enough choice and variety - good for everyone? Let's praise the market for being normal! Now, that would make a refreshing change... and is newsworthy.

(Photo Credit: Normal Theater, Normal, Illinois, USA, by Katie White Snow, Flickr.com) 

In the latest Economist Intelligence Unit report, Australian cities have fared pretty well, with 4 coming in the Top 11. The 'livable city' survey ranks according to health care, stability, culture and environment, education and infrastructure. Harare was the worst city, Vancouver the best. An index score compares the cities, with the maximum 100 being "ideal".

1. Vancouver (98.0)
2. Vienna (97.9)
3. Melbourne (97.5)
4. Toronto (97.2) 
5. Perth / Calgary (96.6)

Sydney came in 9th, and Adelaide 11th.

So is Melbourne better than Perth? (Dare we mention swine flu?) Perth better than Sydney? What do you reckon? aussiehome.com (being based in Perth) has a distinct passion for Perth, and can't understand why 4 cities are above it to be honest!

The latest sales data (released by REIWA) for the March quarter shows that most Perth suburbs (68% of them in fact) experienced a fall in median property prices in the past year, but not all. Peppermint Grove, already the richest neighbourhood in WA, saw its median price rise by an astounding 31% to the stratospheric heights of $5.1mn. This means the middle price deal in the year to March 2009 was $5.1mn. But, then again, there were only 9 sales during the period (highest sale $8mn).

Overall, 184 suburbs saw their median price fall in the year to Mar 09, 53 were unchanged, and 36 rose. The Perth median price fell 2.3% to $430,000, its 5th consecutiove drop since the top of the boom in December 2007 ($465,000).

Dalkeith, with its famous $22mn sale in Dec 2008, came in 2nd in most expensive suburbs list ($2.66mn), with Cottesloe 3rd ($1.8mn), City Beach ($1.65mn) and Applecross ($1.55mn) rounding off the Top 5. All 4 experienced falls in their median prices (of between 2% and 13%).

As prices fall, so some economists say, so demand rises, and in the last quarter we have seen increased activity - with nearly all suburbs experiencing more sales in the year to March 09, than in the year to the two previous quarters (although well off the activity witnessed in 2007/08). There were 23,530 sales in the year to Mar 09, a 13% rise. Average sales per suburb in the year to Mar 09 was 86, up from 76 last quarter and 81 the quarter before.

Evidence (although very general) seems to point to a levelling out of the prices and a pick-up in property market activity. Are (dare we say it) now... finally... reaching the bottom of this market cycle? Click here for CHARTS of 276 suburbs.