Site Announcements
Improvements to Zoodle
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When you use Zoodle today you will notice that we have made several changes to enhance the Zoodle experience.
We have upgraded our maps and aerial imagery and now use Terralink’s Web Mapping Services. The chief benefits to you as a user are greater accuracy and a fresher more modern look and feel.
When you order a report on Zoodle, you will now also receive this as an email attachment. You will still be able to view the report online. But, to ensure Zoodle is providing the most up-to-date information all reports and legal documents will only be available online for 7 days from date of purchase.
Do make sure that your email address/Zoodle username is up-to-date and is your current email address. That way you can save your emailed reports wherever you like.
All these changes and improvements are reflected in the updated Terms and Conditions.
Terralink takes full ownership of Zoodle
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Location intelligence firm Terralink International Limited has taken 100% ownership of Zoodle Limited, providers of New Zealand’s most popular consumer property information website www.zoodle.co.nz.
Launched in 2009 as a joint venture between Terralink and Realestate.co.nz, Zoodle was the first website of its kind to offer consumers a one-stop-shop for detailed information about properties and the communities surrounding them.
Both Realestate.co.nz Limited and its CEO Alistair Helm have now sold their shareholdings to Terralink International Limited.
Terralink Managing Director Mike Donald says Kiwis’ love affair with property and their growing demand for online information have helped drive Zoodle’s success.
“Kiwis are keen to know about everything that affects property values, and they are increasingly keen to do their own research online to arm themselves with information. Zoodle provides these insights, simply and quickly,” says Mr Donald.
The Zoodle website now averages more than 150,000 visitors a month, and numbers are growing.
“With record low interest rates and growing numbers of homebuyers entering the market, it’s more important than ever for people to have the most accurate information available when making decisions involving property.”
With Zoodle now wholly owned by Terralink, Mr Donald says the company’s wealth of property data and expertise can be fully leveraged to make Zoodle an even sharper tool for consumers.
“Zoodle will continue to enjoy a successful and active partnership with Realestate.co.nz Limited. Terralink will also reinvest significantly in content and enhance the platform to ensure that Zoodle remains New Zealand’s number one consumer-oriented, web based, property information service.
“With the most up to date and accurate data on New Zealand’s 2 million plus properties, Terralink is well placed to make Zoodle every Kiwi’s first stop for property information,” Mr Donald says.
Price changes for Zoodle reports
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We are today (16th January 2012) introducing price increases to our Zoodle reports. These increases are the first for 2 years and reflect increases in the royalty we pay for the core data provided in the reports.
Whilst we would wish to keep cost increases to a minimum, we do need to pass on these costs, as well as reflecting the costs of the operation of the Zoodle website.
We have been delighted by the growing appeal and support of the service over the 3 years that the website has been operating. In that time we have served up over 65,000 reports to homeowners and investors providing valuable insight to assist in the homebuying process. Every week we see over 40,000 people use the website to verify information and be better informed as to the situation regarding the specific property they are interested in – a year ago that number was just 25,000 indicating how the appeal of the site keeps growing.
Zoodle is now the most visited website in NZ for property information witnessing more than twice as much audience than the nearest competitor.
These increases in prices have given us a chance to adopt a new approach to pricing. Whilst the conventional wisdom is to price reports with a price point just below a full dollar amount ($24.95, or $4.95, or $9.99) we have decided to streamline our prices and charge a simple round number – easy to see and easy to understand.
You tell us. Thanks
Alistair Helm
Managing Director – Zoodle
The new pries are as follows:
Comprehensive Report $75
Home Valuer Report $55
Local Sales Report $25
Ratable Valuation Report $4
Previous Sales Report $4
Recent Sales Report $16
Title Details Report $8
Certificate of Title (with diagram) $15
Tags: prices
Certificate of Title report for a individual property – new feature on Zoodle
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Zoodle is now able to offer you the opportunity to order a Certificate of Title for the vast majority of properties across New Zealand. At a cost of just $11.25 the certificate offers a very convenient means of verifying the legal details of a property.
The Certificate of Title details the legal owner of the property and shows everything registered against the property title. The Certificate of Title details whether there are any Mortgages, Leases, Easements, land usage restrictions, or other interests registered against the property title. It will also tell you whether the land is freehold or leasehold. The Certificate of Title includes a separate page with a simple diagram of the deposited plan of the property, normally showing the property’s area and dimensions.
This service is an addition to the regular online reports offered for properties. The process for delivering the report remains as a pdf document viewable online or by email, the process for production is somewhat different. Certificate of Titles are constantly updated and as such it is important that any order received on Zoodle is checked by Terralink International prior to distribution so as to ensure accurate representation.
It is for this reason that the ordering of a Certificate of Title can and does take a few hours. Whilst we are unable to guarantee a delivery time for this report we will commit to deliver the report no later than the morning of the next working day. We should point out that Terralink does offer an urgent delivery service which for $16.25 provides a 30 minute turnaround time during business hours.
To order a Certificate of Title just search your chosen property and then click on the link to proceed to the checkout. Here is a sample of a Certificate of Title.
My zoodle – Your reports, online and accessible
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My Zoodle
One great feature of zoodle is the my zoodle section where you can access any of the reports you have purchased and bookmark any of the properties on the site. My zoodle has several sections to keep your property searching organised:
Purchased Reports
When buying a property report from zoodle you can be assured that you will always have access to the report online even if you lose the original. We keep a copy of the report for you on your my zoodle page in both HTML and PDF format so you can access the reports at any time from any web browser (This also applies to the free reports). Unlike other property report providers we don’t just give you a window of 2 hours to view your report, after all you’ve paid for it and there is no reason why we shouldn’t keep it online for you in case you loose the original PDF.
Saved Properties
Saved properties is a great place to store any properties you are interested in. On any property page within zoodle you can click on the ‘add to my property’ link and save it into your account. Use this to bookmark properties you have been to view or that you might be interested in the future.
My Profile
If you would like to update your login details or your password then you can do this here. As a side note if you ever forget your password then enter your email address here and we will reset it for you.
My Orders
Here you can view all of your previous orders and view a copy of the invoice. If you ever need to print off a copy of the invoice or check any of the details you can look at then here.
All of the above are just small features but we think it is really important that you always have access to the data that you have purchased. If there are any other features you would like to see in my zoodle please let me know.
Tags: my zoodle, property reports
Allow myself to introduce myself…
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Glen Barnes
Hi, You’ve most likely noticed that all of the blog posts so far have been from Alistair who does a great job of dissecting the numbers and posting interesting insights into the market on both this blog and his industry focussed Unconditional blog. Today that changes as I step up to the plate and take on a more public profile for zoodle.co.nz and hence a more active role on the blog.
I’ve been working on the site from the beginning and I’m really excited about where we want to take the site in the future. If you’ve got any suggestions for the site, comments, questions, criticisms or just want to chat about property information I’m all ears. Feel free to comment on the blog, connect on LinkedIn,call me on +64 (9) 300 4153 or via email – glen@zoodle.co.nz.
Thanks,
Glen Barnes
Property for sale – added feature
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In a continuing effort (and as part of a staged development of Zoodle) to enhance the information on the website we have added a new feature to all suburb pages – property for sale as listed currently on realestate.co.nz.
We have no intention for Zoodle to become a listings website to in any way challenge of compete with realestate.co.nz – that would be dumb!
What we have done is provide just 5 properties that are for sale in the suburb at this time. The logic being when people are researching on Zoodle a local suburb being able to see the type of properties for sale will provide good context of information on the property market and maybe trigger an enquiry on a property.
In addition the choice of which property to feature has been made easy by listening to our customers who use the realestate.co.nz website as they tell us what they like and don’t like about property presentation. The key fact is that with realestate.co.nz we cannot influence directly issues like accurate price details, masses of photos, clear address … and many other things that visitors tell us about. On Zoodle we can hand pick just 5 that match these criteria.
The properties we feature have to have these components:
- Accurate address
- Detailed price
- More than 5 photos
We place the properties in sequential line up with the latest listing first. Each property is linked directly to its own report page which makes for easy referencing. It is also worth highlighting that on the realestate.co.nz website for any lisitng you can see details of how many people have viewed a listing and from where in the world over the past 4 weeks. Just click on the link on the details of how many time the listing has been viewed as shown below.
Suburb insight – we need your help!
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One of the principles of zoodle is that whilst there is masses of valuable property information on the web, finding it can be a challenge and that is where zoodle can be a godsend!
We have built zoodle on a vast amount of information – possibly as much as 60 million pages. But we want to make zoodle the best source of property information. To do that we want to keep updating and adding new information, and this is where you can help us.
We created suburb profile page for each suburb in the country – there are around 1,600 of them although according to the official mapping database there are over 3,100 dwelling centers known as suburbs! To really make these pages rich and valuable for visitors we have a detailed summary of the suburb, what transport links are like, shopping, eating out and other snippets of local knowledge.
To see what I mean check out the profile for the biggest suburb in the country – Papatoetoe. This profile was written by Angela Signal who works for Barfoot & Thompson. Angela like many other real estate agents around the country have contributed to around 200 suburb profiles so far – we still have another 1,400 to go.
If you would like to help us write a suburb profile we would be delighted to have your support. Just find the suburb where you live or the one you would like to profile and if there is no profile there click the link to go to a page to complete a profile. In return for this contribution we will credit you with being the author and attribute the content with a link to your website.
So here for example is Paeroa – who wants to be world famous in NZ by writing a profile for the famous home of L&P!
Whilst we are sure that you will provide a rich and balance summary – we do wish to give your submission the once-over by our editors, for this reason your contribution will not be published live but may take a short while to appear – so go on have a go, you no doubt live in a suburb you know heaps about and would be keen to share with others.
Welcome to zoodle blog
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Welcome and thanks for finding us!
This blog is a key part of the zoodle site and I hope you will find it a valuable virtual “water cooler” at which to rest a while and converse.
Property holds a fascination with people in this country and naturally there is a mass of diverse opinions on the property market. Whilst this diversity is healthy; good information is the most important thing; and that is the point about zoodle, and that is where this blog can complement the data rich content on this site.
On this blog you will likely find insight and analysis of the market from multiple sources, commentary on the media reporting of the property market as well as insight into the comparable position of overseas property markets.
This blog is written by me in my role as Managing Director of Zoodle – I do wear two hats also being the CEO of realestate.co.nz and author of the Unconditonal blog which will either make me completely schizophrenic or more hopefully a knowledgeable individual in the marketplace – you decide!
In principle the zoodle blog will be more about the market and the trends in the market, whereas Unconditional is more about the real estate industry and the online marketing of real estate. In short, if you want to know more about the market and what buyers and sellers are interested in, then the zoodle blog is for you. If you want to better understand the real estate industry and the process of buying and selling as well as online marketing of real estate then Unconditional is for you. But as you can see there is no absolute clear demarcation line – so my advice set up an RSS feed for both – because one thing is for certain – I won’t duplicate content
Alistair Helm
Managing Director – Zoodle Limited
Tags: realestate.co.nz
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