MyHome.com.au

As everyone is no doubt aware, after some 18 months or so of trying to gain wide real estate industry support and consumer traffic, PBL and Microsoft decided to withdraw their support for MyHome.com.au and sell the site and assets. This is certainly a blow to the many within our industry that saw the online threat and were supporting the site. But it is hopefully only a speed hump!

A group of industry ‘players’ attempted to buy the site and assets however were unsuccessful. Despite rumours in the market, Harcourts have not bought it! As much as I would have liked to!

We are meeting this week with the new owners of MyHome in an attempt to ensure it’s survival and ensure we continue to work towards achieving the original goals we set. 

I can only encourage those within the industry who supported the site to stay supportive. This near miss should have at the very least highlighted how vulnerable we are as an industry and just how important an industry owned and influenced site is for the future. We will try to work this through with MyHome, but whether ultimately successful or not, we need an industry portal.  

Need to Unwind?

After 2 weeks of “Conferencing”, Irene and I took 4 days off on the way back to Brisbane from NZ to relax and recharge. We went to a new resort in Fiji, Liku Liku.

It is simply superb. Wonderful sandy beach, great snorkeling, outstanding restaurant and two bars, one out in the middle of the bay – a perfect place to enjoy a quiet chard and watch the sun set! The infinity pool is great, the service around it outstanding.

The bure’s are spectacular. Being new, they are all modern with great bathrooms including a private outdoor shower. Some are over the water, the only over water bure’s in Fiji, the others are all beach front. We stayed in a beachfront with it’s own plunge pool – superb!

The people, as they are throughout Fiji, are wonderful. The service is great, everyone has a constant smile. As you can no doubt tell we loved it. If you’re looking for somewhere to take a break and relax, this is it!

Go to www.likulikulagoon.com

Harcourts Conference

We’ve just finished our two annual conferences – our Australian Conference at Jupiters Casino on the Gold Coast and our New Zealand Conference at the Christchurch Convention centre. What an amazing 3 days at each!

Our people are simply outstanding! One Team, One Vision was our theme and clearly caught the imagination of everyone there. Team Harcourts is definitely the beginning of the ’story’ we will tell that will differentiate us in the market.

The response to the Harcourts Foundation has been nothing short of unbelievable! again, the quality of Team Harcourts is so apparent at times like this.

The speakers we had were all great – Peter Sheehan talked about “Flip” – what’s our 4th quadrant, what’s our story – Dave Osborn talked about the sub prime and what the US are doing to thrive – Darryl Davis also from the US talked about the habits of the top producer and had us laughing – Bryce Courtney is simply an inspiration – he had us all spell bound with his story.

An inspiring few days!