We have a number of Portuguese language real estate video sites which are beginning to gain traction – imoveis is an important word in Portuguese. The traction that we are begnning to get in the Portuguese language real estate markets in Europe, Brazil, and Africa is tangible.
Archive for the ‘portugues’ Category
Carnival of Real Estate – Diamond 60th Edition
September 24, 2007We are honored to host the 60th diamond edition of the Carnival of Real Estate.
The theme of the Carnival this week reflects the changing demographics of real estate buyers in the US and the investors of international real estate. If the NFL and other major television advertisers are interjecting Spanish language advertising into US national television then it would make sense that the Carnival of Real Estate can as well. Looking from an international perspective, the exchange rate for the Euro just closed at over $1.40 for one dollar for the first time making US real estate even more of a bargain for international investors with Euros.
We received close to 40 Carnival of Real Estate entries this week which made choosing a winner difficult. The overall quality of the entries was excellent and the English language entries had a wide range of topics. Despite the number of entries, I agree with those that believe a winner should be chosen so here are our winners for each language:
English Language Winner: Ben Cotten’s How to Sell a House in Over 6 Months over on the Live.awake blog. This post had all of the elements that I look for. It was interesting, entertaining, informative, and used a novel approach to demonstrate the point. Excellent work and arguably worthy of winning the diamond edition of the Carnival of Real Estate.
A very close second (and worthy of a hat tip) was Kris Berg’s Buyer Due Diligence – Code Red. Another excellent blog post by a very accomplished blogger.
Spanish Language Winner: Alicia Yabeta’s Como Aprovechar las Bondades de Cada País Para Hacer Crecer tu Mercado de Bienes Raíces (article in español) where she discusses the growing Latin American real estate markets and how to attract US and other foreign investors.
Portuguese Language Winner: Lila Mendez’s As Imobiliárias Espanholas Constróem Seu Futuro na América Latina (article in Portuguese) where she talks about how large Spanish real estate agencies are developing future business opportunities in Latin America.
So that is our brief view into the changing face of real estate investment for the Carnival. Savvy U.S. agents and investors may recognize international buyers and alternative demographic populations in the U.S. as “diamonds in the rough”.
Next week’s Carnival of Real Estate host is the Mortgage Insider blog. Submit your blog article to the next edition of the carnival of real estate using the carnival submission form.
See also:
More Real Estate Videos Posted
January 21, 2007I just posted another 20 or so real estate videos for properties in Santa Cruz, Bolivia on http://vidlisting.com. About 8 of the the real estate videos are in English and the rest are a mix of Spanish and Portuguese.
Also, our video and sound engineers worked yesterday and are in the studio working today to get the real estate video interviews from Costa Rica posted within the next day or so. As always, the vast majority of our interviews and property videos are available in online format (starts immediately with no waiting) and also in downloadable iPod ready MP4 format.
Also, forgot to note in yesterdays post that while we have one video team in Nicaragua and Panama, we will also have a second video team returning to Brazil to do more interviews and produce more property video in the Sao Paulo area…there is a good chance that they will also head off to Rio as well.
Sivercon Construction – Sao Paulo Brazil – Video in English
December 29, 2006We just posted an interesting real estate video highlighting Sivercon’s commercial properties in Sao Paulo, Brazil. Sao Paulo, Brazil is now one of the world’s largest cities. Sivercon is one of the construction companies that we interviewed (in Portuguese) during our trip to Sao Paulo. The video provides an interesting view into a part of the world that many may not know about. If nothing else, you’ll see that Sao Paulo is a sophisticated and modern city that rivals many first rate cities in the US or Europe.
Sivercon kindly provided us a six minute corporate video produced by them and gave us permission to provide an English narrative. We’ve posted the video in English on http://vidlisting.com in the two usual formats, online Flash video and iPod ready Mp4 downloadable video. Transcripts should be posted tonight along with a bunch of other video transcripts that need to be posted. Of course, for those that might not know, we are also able to provide video narratives, file conversions and transcript support to/from Spanish, Portuguese, and English for all types of video.
Enjoy
Video Team Is In Brazil This Week
December 5, 2006We have a video crew doing interviews in Sao Paulo, Brazil this week in preparation for the launch of another site in our forsalebylocals network – this one being a portuguese language new construction and commercial real estate site – http://www.construa.com which should be up and functional within a day or two.
Tomorrow, the team has already completed a number of interviews in Portuguese (the predominant language in Brazil) and also will be attending a Sao Paulo conference for builders. Hopefully, we can get some interviews in English from the conference.
We also have an open mixer for real estate and construction professionals scheduled for the evening of Thursday, 7 December at the Hotel Gran Corona in downtown Sao Paulo. If you are in real estate or construction and are in the area, please consider attending.
Progress Report: Communities, New Sites, New Functionality, And Areas For Improvement
November 26, 2006We’ve conceptually divided our existing sites into three categories: Listings Websites, Real Estate Video Sites, and Contextual Real Estate Sites. All of the sites are currently running on the same software component that we are building ourselves.
Listings Websites: Our three principal websites are http://forsalebylocals.com in English, http://casacomprar.com in Spanish, and (for the moment) http://repousos.com in Portuguese. These sites will have unfiltered property listings and articles of general real estate interest crossposted from all of the current sites that we support. All content will be in the given language. The portuguese language site will be replaced by imovei.com later this week…it’s much more brazilian and portuguese and lets us act on some of the feedback that we’ve received from our Brazilian community. We’ll also activate registration, the ability to post properties for sale, and geocoder that works outside of the 5 countries that Google Maps supports (finally done!) within the next week on these sites.
Also, if you are interested in writing articles about international real estate for inclusion on these sites, please let us know.
Real Estate Video Sites: This group of sites includes http://vidlistings.com in English, http://bienesraicesvideo in Spanish, and http://imoveisvideo.com in Portuguese. These sites will be focused solely on real estate videos, video and voice interviews with various real estate professionals through our regions of interest as well as supporting information about making and/or uploading real estate videos. I’ve talked a bit already about our progress in other posts. We’ll crosspost all videos that we produce in conjunction with our TV show (coming in February) and also include videos uploaded through our other network websites to these video specific websites. Users of these three sites will be able to upload their own videos in any language for free. All text content will be in the given language and all videos will either have translated narratives or subtitles in the given language.
We’ve recently added some functionality to the three video sites and also ported some of this code to the other sites’ video pages. Here is the functionality that we’ve added in the past few days to the video sites:
– the ability to filter by area, city, country, or property type just by clicking on the associated hyperlink
– sorting by price, area, city, country
– five most viewed videos and most popular videos for the previous 24 hours in the given language (pretty cool to watch the changes in real time especially when you switch languages)
– automatic generation of tags for multi-lingual categories such as location, country, and type of property (individual tagging will be added shortly)
– improved language tags within the underlying HTML code (still a way to go in this area)
We also know that we need more English language content (especially for the interviews). We have quite a few interviews lined up in English for our upcoming trip to Panama, Costa Rica, and Nicaragua. We also have dozens of property videos in English to upload this week and dozens more for which we’ve prepared transcripts and need to finish recording.
There is quite a bit more news in the area of real estate video that we are not ready to release yet.
Contextual Real Estate Sites: These are groups of highly relevant contextual websites that will present given information in a contextual specific manner. Though we’ve been the using the term “microsite” for more than a year and a half, the best and most eloquent description of the term that I’ve found is here with the best summary quote from that website being that “[t]he idea behind web microsites is to focus the content, function and implementation of a website at a single proposition, market, marketing campaign or promotion.”
The true power of our custom web engine is in the ability to not only develop and add microsites quickly but also to develop these microsites concurrently in multiple languages. Our web engine allows us to use the smallest possible staff to manage the details of contextual focus across dozens or hundreds of websites as well as across what should soon be 8-12 languages. We currently have an additional 4 sites ready for launch within a few days and another 13 sites that will be ready within a week or so. We expect launches of this third category of microsites to start on Monday or Tuesday with the launch of http://construa.com (not live yet) which will be a site in the Portuguese language focused on builders, commercial, and new construction.
Second Month Real Estate Video Update
November 23, 2006Congratulations to Robert Scoble for his impressive stats for the first two months of video blogging that he has done. We’ve completed the first full month of translating real estate video narratives plus a few weeks of getting started. I started thinking about our first two month numbers as well. In total, we’ve posted 87 video narrative translations online in three languages (Spanish, English, and Portuguese) and posted 15 widescreen flash video interviews with South American real estate builders and agents (3 in portuguese, 1 in English, and 11 in Spanish). These numbers don’t include any of the off-line “private label” video translations and HDV work that we’ve done over the past weeks.
The next two months should see a significant rise in our online real estate video numbers as well. Our real estate specific video sites (http://vidlisting.com in English, http://bienesraicesvideo.com in Spanish, and http://imoveisvideo.com in Portuguese) are seeing increases in daily traffic. As of this post, we have 120 real estate video translations that are in our possession for translation after the Thanksgiving break and have approx. 30 more real estate interviews scheduled in Brazil, Panama, Costa Rica, Nicaragua, and other areas of South America in December and January.
Any thoughts on our widescreen flash interviews? (http://www.bienesraicesvideo.com/interviews.asp)
We are certainly looking forward to the Thanksgiving break. Enjoy yours too.
Video Translation Examples
September 25, 2006Update: since posting this article, we have started to post video listings on our website. Check out http://forsalebylocals.com for more actual listings.
Aside from text translation of property listings, the ForSaleByLocals(tm) web engine will also drive the translation workflow of the audio portion of digital video. The examples below are some of dozens of audio translations that CasaComprar.com (our spanish language soon-to-be-launched flagship website and weblog) has done under license in support of real estate agencies with existing video. We are working to make production and posting of real estate video as simple as possible. The original audio portion of the below examples was in Spanish and the videos were broadcast live on a local daily real estate show. For the example, we translated and narrated the Spanish audio into English and Portuguese – we did not edit the video in any way or provide any graphics/animation support.
Please note that these properties are extremely modest – we chose these video to showcase the translated narrative and not necessarily the properties thenselves. For the record, we’ve translated video for properties that run the full range of prices and locations. We believe that there are many valid reasons to translate property videos. This video translation service is included as part of listings hosted on our site. Video listings will be viewable online in the user’s preferred language and downloaded for use with video iPods. It is also available at an extremely reasonable cost as a separate service for agencies or agents that don’t allow or want co-branded listings.
Examples of Real Estate Videos With Translated Narratives
| House Example | Portuguese Video Narration | English Video Narration |
| Condominium Example | Portuguese Video Narration | English Video Narration |
| Modest House Example | Portuguese Video Narration | English Video Narration |
As you can see, our startup is finally starting to come together after some fits and starts. If there is sufficient interest, we’ll also make the video translation service available for other projects as well such as videos of software demos and other corporate/commercial or vlog projects.
We just purchased an 1800 sq ft dedicated studio for our HD video, audio translation, in house animation/interstatials, and planned videocasting projects that will be completely outfitted with HD camcorders, dual processor computers that have multiple GBs of memory, dedicated rendering computers, and plenty of hard drive space. We’ve also been fortunate to have hired some really good people. In short, we have the space, people, and equipment to support just about any level of digital video (up to HDV) or audio project or requirement.
Just let us know…
Media That We Created For FEXPOCRUZ 2006
September 22, 2006Below are some media that we created in house in preparation for FEXPOCRUZ. Hopefully, it will give a good idea of the capabilities that we are developing for supporting real estate video and live translation of video. We have a small but fully capable High Definition (HDV) studio for video digital production, interviews, animation, and audio work such as translations. We’ve also purchased an 1800 sq. ft facility that will be dedicated to larger production products.
Outside Cover of FEXPOCRUZ Brochure (Inner Fold – Portuguese)
Inside Cover of FEXPOCRUZ Brochure (Spanish and English)
Mixed Animation (Spanish and Portuguese)
We’ll be adding to the above list throughout the day (as time permits) and also planning on posting some video from the event later in the weekend. Enjoy and let me know what you think!
Video and Real Estate Listings
July 20, 2006This article also available in: Español and Portugues
Real estate video on the web has been the subject of many articles and blog posts over the years. If Robert Scoble (one of the web’s A-List bloggers and now VP at podtech.net) is to be believed, everyone will be running around with a HD camcorder and producing web video in the coming years.
There has also been lots of talk about incorporating video into real estate listings. This video (also known as podcasts or podcasting due to its popularity on video iPods or vlogs) Some real estate sites have begun to incorporate this approach with real estate videos – you can select individual properties and download the video that you want.
While great technology and really cool to boot, there seem to be some issues around adoption of real estate video in the marketplace that might limit the possibilities. Off the top of my head, I can think of the following:
Preparation: producing real estate video does require time, some basic additional equipment beyond the PC, and perhaps some additional software to prepare for a podcast; these basically represent more things that are not related to a real estate agent’s core competency, that an agent must prepare…the alternative is to outsource this preparation (to another amateur or professional).
Techniques: Real estate video requires some specialized techniques. To compare real estate video with regular online video really cant be done. Outside of professionally made podcasts, many amateur podcasts that are not about real estate are of simple subject matter. The fixed camera position variety (“talking heads” or tripod mounted cameras) is the most common for most general podcasts. The central focus of these general podcasts tends to be the content of the discussion rather the imagery itself. Most of the others are the products of aspiring film makers, have intentionally artistic imagery, or the quality of the video isn’t key to the concept of the podcast.
On the other hand, real estate video requires some form of movement or transition that does not make the viewer sick to watch. I’m not saying that the director needs to be from Hollywood or have expensive equipment…just that they’ll need to learn some basic panning, lens focal length, and transition techniques so that they can provide an informative experience during the real estate video about the entire house to the viewer.
Quality Issues: I remember the early days of music videos and websites (there were only 2 hours of total videos when I got MTV in high school – no commercials either). On the music side, it was perfectly fine for a band to have a crappy quality video or a huge company to have a crappy website. At some point, however, an arms race of sorts started around quality, storyline and special effects. bands started complaining that the popularity of their music was no longer being driven ny the music but the videos. The same sort of thing could happen in real estate video . Right now, poorly produced videos are fine because it is all new and cool. At some point, people might simply tire of the amateur video with the metaphoric production quality of a myspace.com site and migrate to large industry real estate players that are able to produce polished and compelling real estate video.
International Issues: Everyone does not speak English. Like many sites, ForSaleByLocals(tm) is working on incorporating what is hopefully a unique implementation of real estate video. We are working on relationships with agencies and starting to gain access to lots of professionally produced real estate video. However, since we are internationally focused, we have a different problem than many real estate sites – most of the audio for the videos made available to us simply isnt in English. We are working on an alternative here but still this is an issue. As pointed out by several people (including one of my favorite venture capital bloggers Rick Segal), the web isn’t “there yet” for podcasting internationally. At ForSaleByLocals.com, we are working to help change this. 9/26 UPDATE: We’ve posted some examples of translated property videos (https://forsalebylocals.wordpress.com/2006/09/25/video-translation-examples/) 1/06/07 Update: we have an an entire site with hundreds of translated real estate videos as well as interviews with prominent agents and bulders (see http://vidlisting.com )
I’m not saying that these issues won’t be overcome…just that real estate video online is a bit different than a video in a interview format. What are your thoughts around integrating video into real estate listings?
| See Part 2 | Digg This Post |
(Also check out our more hands-on oriented Non-Professional’s Guide To Making Online Real Estate Video)
For Sale By Locals: The Blog of RealEstateVideo.net 