How to avoid a damning digital footprint
The Internet is a game changer for the real estate industry. Fortunately, many developments have been positive for both home buyers and home sellers. Marketing costs have reduced while the quality of promotion per property has improved. Email has made communication with a critical mass of qualified buyers easier, quicker and cheaper than ever before. That’s the upside.
Here’s the downside: the Internet never stops connecting the dots and it never forgets.
What that means is your property has an un-erasable digital footprint. A digital footprint is a databank of information collated over time on any property that has been advertised, sold or withdrawn from the market in the past. This includes information on every property on the market right now.
There are positives and negatives here for both buyers and sellers. And you need to know them.
Every property listed in Australia is promoted on at least one of two major real estate websites realestate.com.au and domain.com.au. Both of these sites are either owned or controlled by large media companies. These same media companies also have ownership or affiliations with the two main real estate data companies in Australia — RP Data and Australian Property Monitors. Both
provide detailed information about the real estate market which is quoted and re-quoted in the media. While the accuracy of that information is quite good, the right to collect it and use it is somewhat controversial.
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