Estate agents’ new online contest… Cupboard bare for X and Y… Global poverty improves… Population’s good news…

Sold… to the real estate agent online

First, real estate agents had to adjust to an online advertising world. Now they could be forced to bid for business online.

Internet real estate site sellmycastle.com.au makes real estate agents compete to win business. The seller puts up details of the property and the postcode is automatically sent to real estate agents who can bid for the business.

The site get’s 10% of the agent’s commission when the property is sold: estate agents’ revenue. All this transparency will surely encourage competition on price and drive revenue down further in an industry that is already coping with a shortage stock

IBISWorld forecasts that real estate revenue will decline by 4% in 2006-07 and that revenue for real estate agents will remain very volatile. See IBISWorld’s latest report, Newspapers: The writing is on the wall.

Gen X and Y will have to take care of themselves

The money left by the elderly and baby boomers to their children could be dramatically reduced as equity in homes is funnelled off to pay for a better lifestyle.

A new Trowbridge Deloitte study on behalf of the Senior Australian Equity Release Association of Lenders shows the number of reverse mortgages – where the lender is repaid when the house is sold – grew by 77% in the year to December 2006 to $1.5 billion in value. About half of all reverse mortgages were taken out by people aged between 70 and 79.

With pundits predicting that the popularity of reverse mortgages will continue to grow fast, get set for the elderly to become a new demographic target for advertisers.

New global poverty figures

Living conditions for the world’s poorest have improved but the rich are getting richer faster. The number of people living in poverty has fallen to the lowest since 1987 as developing economies expand, according to the World Bank.

About 2.56 billion people lived on less than $US2 a day as of 2004. About 986 million still survived on less than $US1 a day.

Good news for entrepreneurs

Major new infrastructure will be needed to support a projected Australian population of 30 million in 2050, according to a report by The Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering.

But the population growth, if managed properly, won’t necessarily add to environmental stresses, the report found. But it does say that better management of the nation’s water, air and land will be needed to handle the expected effects of climate change.

Lots of opportunities for environmental consultancy businesses coming up!