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Name of Site: RENT
URL: http://www.rent.com.au/
Plug-Ins: No
Navigability: Easy
Graphics: Medium, Good Quality
Internal Links: 9
Review: A lot of work has gone into making this site very usable and navigable,
with clear links and intuitive searching facilities. The name itself is
a sure-fire winner, but they desperately need listings. This is a major
marketing challenge - how to get every rental and share rental advert
in Australia to list on your site as well as every tradesperson, so that
the site becomes a valuable asset to its users? I did a number of searches
for tradesmen and rentals and got no results. The foundations are definitely
in place for a very good site, with helpful links, email alerts and map-based
searching, but it's all in vain without a healthy database of properties.
- SS
Rating: **
Name of Site: E-Loan, Ltd.
URL: http://www.eloan.com.au/
Plug-Ins: No
Navigability: Easy
Graphics: Medium, Good Quality
Internal Links: 10
Review: Operating on behalf of 11 different financial institutions, including
some of the major banks, and over 220 individual products, E-Loan is established
as a one-stop shop for those wishing to borrow money to buy property,
or wishing to refinance a current loan. Using simple on-line calculators,
searching the products according to your needs, and ultimately getting
approval on-line and following up with a real human consultant to help
you sign on the dotted line, you are able to comparison shop and find
the ideal terms to suit your needs, before jumping in the deep end. Paying
it off is going to be very hard, so getting it should be at least this
easy. - SS
Rating: ***
Name of Site: Moving Home
URL: http://www.movinghome.com.au/
Plug-Ins: No
Navigability: Easy
Graphics: Medium, Good Quality
Internal Links: 40
Review: Picking up your life and transporting it to a new location is
made easy by this well-thought-out Site. The idea is that by offering
you loads of assistance making that smooth transition to your new abode,
you will take up the many and varied offers of assistance by the third
party service providers who have partnered with the Site. They make it
look very straight forward with their simple menu and links to all the
resources you need. There's a big list of homemaking and decorating ideas
besides all the logistical stuff. Membership is free and once you join,
you get your very own personalised moving planner that counts down to
your move date and schedules all your tasks to make it happen without
too many headaches. - SS
Rating: ****
(reviewers choice)
Name of Site: Real Estate Australia
URL: http://www.realestate.com.au/
Plug-Ins: Yes
Navigability: Easy
Graphics: Heavy, Good Quality
Internal Links: 100+
Review: If it's got anything to do with domicile relocation, it's here.
Besides the massive number of actual listings, everything else this site
has to offer has evolved over the last five or six years to make it an
industry leader. From finance to insurance, renovating, investing and
even shopping for a new kettle, the whole process of accommodation creation
has been streamlined into one huge Web-surfing session. Save your lists,
learn about the ins and outs of moving in and out, check out the hot-listed
properties, calculate your mortgage repayments - all from the convenience
of a neat set of tabs and side links so you'll never get lost. Being part
of the News Ltd stable, you even get relevant news feeds and the latest
interest rates beaming onto the site. - SS
Rating: *****
Name of Site: domain.com.au
URL: http://www.domain.com.au/
Plug-Ins: Yes
Navigability: Easy
Graphics: Heavy, Good Quality
Internal Links: 20
Review: The Fairfax network is well placed to dish up a very helpful house-hunting
site. Besides being able to duplicate all the listings from The Herald
and The Age, they have other established technologies, like on-line maps,
detailed searching, as well as informed writers and strong partners. There
are some good videos to watch giving handy hints, and free membership
allows hot-listing places you like and receiving email alerts of new listings
that match your needs. Their "suburb snapshot" is a great idea,
and there are many articles, downloadable check-lists and calculators
to help you divine your dream home. When the time comes, hook straight
into City Search for a complete guide to the services you may need, from
Valuers to Chimney Sweeps. - SS
Rating: *****
Name of Site: Australian Removalists Directory
URL: http://www.ozishowcase.com.au/removals/
Plug-Ins: No
Navigability: Easy
Graphics: Low
Internal Links: 7
Review: The intention is to help you find the right removalist for your
big move, by listing them all on one site, and providing a universal quote
form to get the right price from the removalist of choice. Unfortunately
there just aren't enough participants to make this a reliable exercise.
It seems that the site is generating revenue by offering removalists a
chance to promote themselves at a price, but selling that chance to every
removalist in the country is a tall order. The ones that are listed (about
10) give you the chance to see photos of the trucks and a bit of an on-line
brochure, so they could get work out of it, but from a user's point of
view, this would not be the place to start looking. - SS
Rating: *
Name of Site: Home Makers Guide
URL: http://www.goaustralia.com/100guide/
Plug-Ins: No
Navigability: Easy
Graphics: Low, Medium Quality
Internal Links: 9
Review: For the do-it-yourselfer who can't afford an architect, why not
just log on and download the plans for your house for $4.50? Throw in
the "Home Makers Guide" for $29.95 and you've got yourself a
castle. The guide is said to be full of tips about all aspects of home
building, from energy saving to safety, and if you join the "Building
Club", even more handy hints will come your way. It all looks a bit
down-market, but that's where you might like to hang out, so it could
be just your thing. - SS
Rating: **
Name of Site: Our House
URL: http://lifestyle.ninemsn.com.au/ourhouse/
Plug-Ins: No
Navigability: Easy
Graphics: Heavy, Good Quality
Internal Links: 30+
Review: Created as an extension to the TV show, the Web Site offers mostly
tips and tricks and printable fact sheets about items previously screened.
Trans-media coverage allows great opportunities to market to your audience,
especially when you can promote the magazine and the web site on television
for free. The only downside is that the core business is television, so
they can't make the web site too engaging, lest they lose you to the net
for good. It's fact sheets and more fact sheets here, I'm afraid, but
you can always drift off to the NineMSN chat zones or go on a shopping
spree, so all is not lost. The fact sheets are rather plentiful and loaded
with great ideas. Time to give that spare bedroom a make-over. - SS
Rating: ****
Name of Site: Homes Online
URL: http://www.homesonline.com.au/
Plug-Ins: No
Navigability: Medium
Graphics: Medium, Medium Quality
Internal Links: 15
Review: Created as a kind of sister site to realestate.com.au, this one
takes more of the written articles published in News Ltd's papers and
offers them as advice for home buyers and renters. It seems this site
is probably the one they spend a lot less time on, because it pales in
comparison to the other one. Fortunately they are linked so all is not
lost. Perhaps this is just a way of maintaining a domain name until they
think of something amazing to do with it. Perhaps we should just bookmark
it and wait. Maybe next time we move house it will be brimming with all
the stuff we need. - SS
Rating: ***
Name of Site: iMove
URL: http://www.imove.com.au/
Plug-Ins: No
Navigability: Easy
Graphics: Medium, Good Quality
Internal Links: 10
Review: Putting the power of information technology to good use, this
is a place where you can notify your change of address by paying one small
fee and harnessing this facility to do all the leg work for you. A walkthrough
of how to go about it is provided, before you commit your credit card
details, and some good free tips and checklists for renters and buyers
are offered to sweeten the deal. It's never a fun business, informing
all those companies and government departments of your new abode, but
it just got a lot less painful. They reckon 3 million of us move every
year - that's a lot of potential imove customers. They even guarantee
to make the address changes you specify in three days or your money back.
There could be some reluctance to using the service, though... who needs
bills in their nice new letterbox, three days after moving in, eh? - SS
Rating: ****
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