NEWS RELEASE
www.harcourts.co.nz Still No. 1 According to Public
Harcourts' ongoing lead in the highly competitive 'e-real estate' arena has seen it retain its number one spot as the
most visited real estate company website in the country.
Over 900,000 visitors through the October to December 2003 quarter saw www.harcourts.co.nz also move up to the number
two spot in the ‘Business and Finance - Property Section’ after www.realenz.co.nz according to statistics just released
by Internet monitoring service, Hitwise.
Harcourts Chief Technology Officer, Jason Wills, said Harcourts kept a strong focus on meeting consumer demands and they
were continuously providing new and innovative services on the site.
This included the recently launched text messaging service which Mr Wills believed had helped drive up the visitor
numbers to www.harcourts.co.nz
In a New Zealand first for real estate, just over a year ago Harcourts launched the Personal Notifier function of
www.harcourts.co.nz to automatically email registrants with properties meeting their criteria. The new improved Personal
Notifier was now able to send listing and open home details as a simple text message to any text capable Telecom mobile
phone.
Mr Wills added, “This is an absolute first in New Zealand and exclusive to Harcourts. No-one else offers anything like
this technological edge.” He added that client feedback showed buyers often frustrated at the rate property sold before
they had a chance to view it. This new tool ensured they received instant notification of property within their criteria
as soon as it was listed. He added that for sellers, it meant their properties could be emailed and text messaged
directly to potential buyers.
Developed exclusively in conjunction with Telecom, the new service was available for a fee of 99cents for each new
listing text message and 50cents for each open home text message.
ends