Work Life Balance

Current conveyancing practices lock us into the rigid 9-5 work ethic and clocking up overtime to meet deadlines. Current conveyancing practices also dictate that the work has to be done at the office where you have access to the file, the fax and the copier. Even if you wanted to work from home what can you do? You could take a file or two home with you and make a couple of phone calls. There just aren’t many options that a conveyancer can avail themselves if they want to have some flexibility.

Yet as reported by the FinReview, a quarter of the workforce is doing some work from home but it’s chiefly because people are trying to catch up on what they failed to finish at the office. All too often conveyancers are staying back after hours to complete auction documentation, collating and photocopying voluminous documentation for the upcoming auction

The ability to work in the office and from a home office would suit many people.

Technology is the answer. Online digital solutions will facilitate productivity by shifting the focus from offline paper to an online digital alternative. It will facilitate flexibility. Conveyancers will be able to work at the office and at home. The majority of conveyancers are women. I don’t think that is disputed. Trying to achieve the work/life balance is the holy grail. Part-time work, job sharing and flexible work place options are very important to raising kids and the demands placed on all of us outside work. Don’t get me wrong, working in the office amongst colleagues and with supervision and support is still the primary option.

Conveyancing – online, offline, digital – what goes?

For a start law firms just need to start waking up and making a concerted effort to keep up and start focusing on internal work practices. Digital and electronic conveyancing solutions are part of it. But the firm needs to focus on simple available solutions and start using them. Shun the fax. Shun the photocopier. Think, document scanning, PDF. email

Why? You are simply not providing the optimum work environment for your staff.

I want to drop my kids off at school a couple of days each week. Well I can if I can do some work from home before 8.30.

Sale with the Candle

In 1962, Michel* had bought his doll's house restaurant at what the French call vente a la chandelle, a colourful but nerve wracking style of property auction dating all the way back to fifteenth century. The auctioneer opens bids by ceremoniously lighting two candles - or rather tallow wicks - one slightly longer than the other. The bidding follows on briskly, because the wicks last no longer than fifteen or thirty seconds. The first candle goes out (the tallow's greasy smoke the indisputable sign of its extinction), and then the second, giving bidders one, last chance, because at this moment the auctioneer lights the third and final wick, and the suspense mounts as the bids fly. The last one to shout or to make a sign before the third candle winks out or the black smoke rises is declared the winner. The Pot eu Feu, situated on an impase next to some old factories in an undesirable corner of Asnieres, wasn't exactly a prime piece of real estate. Michel got it with a princely bid of 18,000 francs - about $3,600 at the time.

For the third and last time ........

*Michel Guerard is regarded as one of the founders of what was called in the years 1960 and 1970 the movement "the new kitchen" the forefront of nouvelle cuisine

Extract from The Perfectionist by Rudolph Chelminski published 2005.
What could possibly possess a three-star French chef, a master of his difficult trade in a country that reveres cuisine, to commit suicide in 2003, just after wrapping up the daily lunch service?

Google Maps Australia & NZ

Well if you haven't heard - you will - and the race has started. Google mapping will take real estate portals to a whole new level. It will be interesting to watch.

Google Maps Australia My understanding is Google Maps Australia is in its embryonic stage of release.

Here's a simple example by creating a link for a location map for hayton kosky lawyers 300 centre road bentleigh melbourne

EC (Victoria) Stage 1 kickoff

Stage 1 of the EC pilot is due to kick off on August 21 with ANZ, Westpac and Suncorp Metway on board.

Meanwhile User Acceptance Testing has begun or is about to begin. It has all been long awaited but this is the only way forward: implement, test, debug, revise and improve. Sounds like good news and good for morale all round.

As an outsider I agree, get the Victorian model right and national implementation is all that more easier.

Source EC News May 06

Banking - the back office

According to McKinsey, Banks constantly battle to streamline their back-office "factories," with good cause these facilities can be responsible for up to half of their operating costs, excluding interest. Yet whether the factories process mortgages, securities, or other products, banks tend to use the same approach across the board: process reengineering and general cost cutting are the usual favorites, but outsourcing is gaining ground. Most banks also treat the IT operations that support back-office processes as a single, separate function requiring a separate cost-cutting program.

From one study (2002), on the relative efficiency of the back-office operations of different banks, showed that unit-processing costs for the same product can vary a good deal. In mortgage processing, for example, a cluster of banks had unit costs in the range of US$100 to US$200 for each mortgage, while others had unit costs as low as US$50. Such variations, closely linked to scale, were largely explained by how well the banks had designed their factories. Banks with low processing costs had intrinsically inexpensive operations because they had developed focused products, flexible IT platforms, and lean, highly automated processes. These banks could also support a massive increase in volume without raising fixed costs, thus sharply reducing unit-processing costs.

The second study then looked at 5 "smart-sourcing" models:

• Internal upgrades (least successful)


• Outsourcing (conclusion - a favorite way of streamlining standardized, small-scale noncore operations is to outsource them


• External co-sourcing: In a new variation on outsourcing external co-sourcing several banks pool their operations. This is an attractive approach if no large-scale provider exists, but so far, given the problems of integrating different legacy IT platforms, a rare one.


• Internal co-sourcing (shared service centers)- only a handful of players are attempting this strategy, but as banks adopt more advanced middleware we expect that it will become easier to execute. An increasingly popular variant is to move factories to cheaper locations offshore.


• Insourcing: Best-practice factories take on outside business to reach more efficient volumes.

Source for McKinsey info

Australia, take a lead. All others will follow. Insourcing, Outsourcing, Internal co-sourcing. No. What it takes is a new model, simple to use and highly efficient. It has to be digital, its got to be online and it must be collaborative. Secure. How secure do you want it? We can create the industry standards for mortgage processing. One thing it is XML based. Stocks, bonds, futures and currency are traded digitally. Too hard to apply to mortgage processing. Bullshit. Will the customer understand it? Yep, you bet. Do they understand the process now? No. Currently there is no transparancy. Can you track it now? No. If its digital, the Mortgage Broker, the Borrower and their Lawyer will all be able to track it, interact and ensure a high degree of accuracy. Is it paperless? Yep. Truly paperless. Well very close. Digital mortgage processing. Interesting.

Cost of Digital Mortgage Processing? - Definitely at the low end of US$50 And probably even a lot less.

Vendor Disclosure - UK style

It is inevitable. All Commonwealth countries with torrens title land registration systems will all have vendor disclosure, without exception. Even Tassie the last bastion for caveat emptor is currently instroducing a vendor disclosure regime. Victoria which has had vendor disclosure since 1983 will one day, I believe, review the current legislation and push for more regulated vendor disclosure, probably akin to Tasmania, ACT or even the UK.

UK, which I admit I am not overtly familar with, is introducing vendor disclosure + electronic conveyancing. Its called the Home Information Pack.

From 1 June 2007 all home owners in England and Wales will need to arrange for a Home Information Pack to be prepared before putting their homes up for sale. Ruth Kelly, appointed as the new Secretary of State for the Department of Communities and Local Government said:

"Home Information Packs will bring together all the information people need to buy and sell a home, to help them make informed decisions about what is probably the most expensive purchase of their lives. The Packs will especially help first time buyers as they receive the packs for free."

The result of the UK model is it pushes more of the cost onto the seller to give the information upfront rather than on the buyer or the prospective buyer. Kinda makes sense. Plus if you combine vendor disclosure with online publishing as advocated by the 247legal model, it makes even greater sense.

Here's the link for the Department for Communities and Local Government website.

Downloading Music - What's that got to do with conveyancing?

There is a raging debate over laws governing music downloads. Some condemn the Y generation of criminal piracy, while others say they represents the new generation of online consumers.

Yet there is an entire generation that is illegally downloading music and many of whom were taken to court by the Recording Industry Association of America and the local French / Australian equivalent.

In France there is an 18 year old student activist Aziz Ridouan that is lobbying politicians and spreading the message that the music industry is pushing pricing models that are not to benefit of the public nor the artists but to the corporation. Aziz lives in a government-subsidized building in the central Loire region of France with his mother, who works as a cleaning woman. He introduced his nonprofit association that provides legal assistance to those accused of illegally downloading music in 2004 by declaring his downloading habit in the middle of a news conference called by a music industry trade group to announce a crackdown on 50 Internet pirates.

"Until we started speaking out in public, downloaders were only shown on television like terrorists, with their face hidden and voice scrambled," Mr. Ridouan said.

At the news conference, where he held the Hewlett-Packard laptop computer he always seems to carry above his head, Mr. Ridouan added: "I am proud to tell anyone that I download and have plenty of music, movies and TV series on my computer."

I certainly cannot be desribed as Y generation more like late baby boomer. Downloading music illegally is just so easy as is swapping digital music files with friends. That's what is so attractive with the online model.

What's this got to do conveyancing? If we dont change the model we are at risk of alienating law graduates from our industry. Law students today study 5 years with lap top in hand and then when they join the average law firm - think "fuck, you have got to be joking, this is just a friggin paper factory".

And what solutions does Mr Ridouan put forward -

Mr. Ridouan said he was eager and willing to compensate artists, but not at the rate that record companies demanded. As for the amount he can pay, Mr. Ridouan said that for a high school student living with his single mother, he cannot afford much.

"The Internet is a magnificent new way to distribute culture, and why should I be stopped because of my limited means?" Mr. Ridouan said. "The Internet serves my generation the same role as the library did for previous generations."

The solution advocated by Mr. Ridouan is to create a fund, financed by fees from Internet users and Internet service providers, to pay artists based on the popularity of their works, similar to the system used by radio stations.

Backup Backup & Backup Again

Dale Peters of Mr Fixit or Richard King of Computers Cyberspace are the last stops when the hard drive on your file server goes kaput. They have the tools and the knowhow somewhat like an archaeologist of extracting those all important now lost files that somehow didn't ever get backed up. At a cost somewhat like $100 per hour with no guarantees. How do you ever measure downtime let alone the cost of reconstruction? Richard has plenty of stories of whoa of shortsighted business men & women who don't think it will ever happen to them. I personally cannot afford to leave it to chance.

A NYT article put it quite succinctly -
HURRICANE KATRINA uprooted trees, knocked down power lines, flooded homes and obliterated possibly more than a terabyte or two of data. "In all the disaster evacuation check lists, there's nothing about making a copy of what's on your computer," said Janet England, a marketing executive in New Orleans who lost everything in the storm, including all the information stored on her personal computer's hard drive.

Backing up data — making a separate copy — is not only wise in case of a disaster. It's also insurance against mechanical failure, theft, computer viruses and accidental deletions. More backup options have become available in the last two years, priced according to storage capacity, ease of use and privacy protection.

Here is my own personal backup strategy
1. An automated daily overnight backup of essential data to a Network LAN Hard Drive.
2. A weekly / fortnightly of essential data to a DVD (kept offsite)
3. A monthly image of the entire file server hard drive to a removable hard drive (again kept offsite)

Cost:

1. Purchase & installation of LAN Hard Drive - $300. Software - Karen's Replicator - Cost Nil (freeware)


2. DVD burner - $100 DVD - 50 cents


3. Second Hard Drive, Removable Hard Drive Bay, Nortons Ghost $300

Add it up, that's spending less than $1000 upfront. For a medium size business I dont imagine you would have to spend that much more.

When did you last backup?

Rating Estate Agents by Reputation

Victoria has more than 5000 licensed estate agents vying for your listing.

According to the REIV survey of vendors, the most critical factor in choosing an agent was the reputation of the Agent, as opposed to considerations on commissions and fees.

1. Recommendation from others - 23%


2. Already knew the agent - 17%


3. After interviewing several different agents - 11%


4. Shopping around for quotes - 8%

The CEO of the REIV shared these other statistics. Only 3% of vendors chose an agent because they had the lowest commission. Listing as a result of cold calling was a pretty low rank of 1% responses. The survey also found that more than 6 out of 10 vendors rated the experience as a very positive experience and around 8 out of 10 were satisfied. The converse is that around 20% weren't satisifed.

Reputation as you would expect ranks highest when you combine the first two factors.

I imagine the few Vendor Advocates who act for vendors, their primary selection criteria for the appointment of the marketing or selling agent is based on reputation & experience as well as hard statistics.

There is now in the US a website that turns on this very point. homethinking.com

You can select an agent based on their reputation as ranked by the shared experiences and feedback of prior vendors. Part of the websites tagline is "We promise to help you find the most exceptional realtor"

An example of a selling agent with 8 reviews (all positive)

This has been one of the factors behind the phenonomal success of eBay - your feedback rating, where any number of negative feedback can lower your rating.

The same feedback ratings could be applied to property and litigation lawyers.

Houses to Let - Get Online

It's now official - If you want to rent a house or townhouse? - get online.

The Houses to Rent section in The Age was practically void of listings.

• Sandringham - Zero


• Brighton - One private listing only.

Offline Print Classifieds for Rental Accomodation - R.I.P. May 13, 2006

Showered with bids

This anecdote reminds me of an actual similar incident I had – more on that later.

Tony Pride

“We auctioned a flat in one of the areas very popular better avenues.

The owner was fairly tough and open young man who partied hard.

On the morning of the auction we arrived and knocked on the door. There was no answer. We were inside as the crowd started gathering and heard the shower going. So we called out: “You in there Jack?” “Yeah come on in!” he replied.

He was in the shower with his girlfriend. They were lathering each other up and drinking cans of beer!

“Jack the auction’s happening, the crowds starting to come in!” I cried. “No worries, Tony, show ‘em through, we’re staying here!” They did just that!

Many people went through the property. Jack and his friend weren’t fazed – they just kept lathering up and drinking more beers.

The bidding opened well. We referred the highest bid to Jack. “Yeah Tony, go for it, just sell it!’ We did, signed up the buyers, went back to the bathroom and Jack, still in the shower lathering up and drinking beers, leaned out and signed the contracts.

He congratulated me on my performance ad I likewise was very tempted to congratulate him on his enduring performance!

Settlement was quick which suited Jack as he had a court appearance scheduled the following week whereupon soon after, spent a considerable time in a country environment.

Published by Maximiser “Under the Hammer” by Geoff Buck and Sarah McFarlane. I picked up a copy from the Law Institute Victoria Bookshop Bourke Street Melbourne $24.95.

My storey is not that disimilar. One hot summer’s day I had a client Harry who had an interest in buying a serviced apartment re-sale in the Melbourne CBD. The 3 bedroom 2 storey apartment was centrally located and by all measures a rock solid investment returning about 6% nett. Harry simply wanted to inspect the property before making the commitment. Like Jack, Harry is just a little eccentric.

The inspection was simple enough. Make an appointment with the serviced apartment operator to make sure the apartment was not occupied. There was nothing especially special about this apartment. Three bedrooms spread over two storeys. I show Harry the apartment and pointed out its amenities. On inspection of the bathroom, Harry has a request. Could he have a shower? A little unusual. But hang on, you have to consider any request as a sale may depend on it. Thinking about it. Why not, its going to be Harry’s apartment anyway! Five minutes later, Harry emerges, showered and refreshed. And Bingo, Harry now owns one very fine 3 bedroom 2 storey apartment in the centre of Melbourne’s CBD

Maps - the battle between domain vs realestate

Map based searching is really starting to take off in the US and one area that is really benefiting is real estate. A really great example is zillow.com
zillow is a zoomable, scrollable map covering a database of millions of houses. Buyers can check prices and track suburb averages.

According to a recent Age report here are comments from the respective industry leaders realestate.com.au and domain.com.au

All major players in Australia's online real estate industry plan to add Zillow-like geographical functions to their sites this year. "We are looking at more detailed maps, the ability to zoom in - property boundaries plotted on top," says Simon Baker, chief executive of realestate.com.au. He says "maps drive greater usability and allow you to present more information in a useful way". With mash-ups, the old real-estate phrase "close to amenities" is instant graphical proof. Sites could plot schools on the same map, and show school catchment areas, local shopping centres, public transport, restaurants and police stations. There is also the ability to overlay census data such as demographics, average ages, house prices and crime rates.

Fairfax's domain.com.au also sees maps coming into play in online real estate. "Maps are essential tools in the process of connecting property buyers and sellers," says Sam Plowman, general manager of online real estate at Fairfax Digital. "They are becoming more prolific, both domestically and overseas, due to the increased functionality on offer. They are also becoming easier to use and read. Maps will play a part at both the start and end of a search."

Sam Emerson, chief executive of realestateview.com.au, says maps can be a "fantastic" tool for consumers. "(Mapping is) a necessary space to be in for any property portal in the future," he says.

There are several signs that Australian users are looking for maps online. Visits to the "travel-maps" category by Australian internet users grew by 44 per cent over the past year, according to the search intelligence company, Hitwise. Almost half of those hits were on Sensis' whereis.com. Sensis claims a 70 per cent growth in the use of whereis.com over the past year, to approximately 1.5 million visitors per month. But Hitwise claims that much of the growth was driven by Google Maps and Google Earth.

Here's a current directory / sitemap to WEB 2.0 Products and Services relating to real estate & rental in the US. This section is really starting to hot up as you can see by taking a tour of the following sites

Homethinking
Hotpads
Real Estate ABC
RENotebook
Streeteasy
Trulia
Zillow

50-year mortgage hits the US market

US Lenders have begun offering a half-century home loan as incentive in face of record-high home prices, rising interest rates. As home prices and interest rates keep rising, lenders have figured out a way to keep the dream alive for millions of people who want to own their own home. It's called the 50-year mortgage.

According to a report Wednesday in USA Today, a handful of small lenders have begun offering 50-year adjustable-rate loans to buyers who need to keep payments low in the current economic environment. Most US banks already offer 40-year mortgages, which account for about 5 percent of all home loans, the report said.

"One of the biggest things in California is the high costs of homes. With rates going up, there's demand from customers (for) longer loans," Alex Diaz Jr., with Statewide Bancorp in Rancho Cucamonga, Calif., was quoted in the report as saying.

Statewide, which introduced its 50-year loan in March, has already received about 220 applications, Diaz said, according to the report. The 50-year mortgage also signals that the cooling real estate market is heating up competition among lenders, the newspaper said.

I just did a calculation on a $300,000 mortgage, 50 year term, 7%
monthly repayments = $1805
interest component = $1750
Annual Principal Reduction = $660

Compare repayments to a 25 year term
monthly repayments = $2120

The 50 year mortgage is practically speaking an interest only loan.

Advertising of home loans. Personally I like how the US mortgage providers advertise home loans. They neither focus on nor do they mention the interest rate.

"$145,000 mortgage for under $485/month! Think you pay too much on your mortgage?"

They sell mortgage loans just like car loans. Shift the focus to the monthly payment not the rate. That actually makes sense.

UK electronic conveyancing pilots to begin in October 2007

The Land Registry said last week the first electronic conveyancing pilots would begin in October 2007.

Because electronic conveyancing is such a huge change from the current method, the process will take two or three years to be compulsory for all house buys.

Electronic conveyancing will allow the whole process to be conducted online. It will open access to conveyancing information from start to finish via the web.

It will also provide a way for all payments in a chain to be paid simultaneously, with automatic registration of ownership on completion. It is being designed to help reduce the delay and stress of house buying.

Typically this takes about three months - twice as long as in most other European countries. According to the Land Registry, the longer conveyancing takes, the more likely the deal is to collapse through gazumping, gazundering or frustration of parties linked in the house-buying chain.

The registry believes that by moving the system online, it will become faster, more transparent and less likely to see deals fall through.

When it comes into force fully in 2009-10, it will revolutionise home buying. Electronic conveyancing, or e-conveyancing, will speed the process towards exchange, remove the gap between completion and registration, make clear any hold-ups in the chain, cater for simultaneous electronic funds transfer and be paperless.

Anyone who has bought a house will know how frustrating and stressful it can be. Searches can take weeks and exchange can be nerve-racking.

With e-conveyancing all the parties, including estate agents, solicitors, and lenders, will be connected electronically.

The draft contract will be transmitted electronically from the seller's conveyancer to the buyer's conveyancer. Validation checks will authenticate it to keep every stage of the process secure and protect all parties from fraud.

Conveyancers will record on the system the stage reached in each contract. This clears up the frustration of wondering who is delaying the process. Contracts will be signed electronically, exchanged electronically and sent at the same time. No longer will you have to wait for the other party before proceeding to the next stage.

When both parties are ready to complete, registration and completion will take place simultaneously. All fees and payments will be settled through an electronic funds transfer.

Almost all conveyancing searches can now be done over the internet, although sometimes the result still has to come back in paper form.

The benefits of technology will certainly help in other aspects of house buying. It is far less certain if it will solve other problems in conveyancing.

The other unknown is the cost. We are still not aware of the charge for this overhaul of the system, or its cost to users.

Richard Freeman-Wallace is head of property at law firm Watson Burton in Newcastle UK

Comment: Personally I think it is a grand idea to promote electronic conveyancing as a start to finish operation. But, and it is a Big But, I believe the various parts of the system need to be modular. One part handles disclosure. Another part handles exchange of contracts. The next handles the relationship between the financial institution and the client & the client's legal representative. And finally the last part of the process is settlement, stamping and registration. It is far too ambitious to attempt a single start to finish process as described by Richard Freeman-Wallace. Each modular section can be interlinked with the next part of the process. The modular system would be far more robust. There are no inter-dependencies per se. The system can be far more flexible in design. And that's what XML excels at. Create XML standards for data and document exchange and all the separate systems can be easliy interlinked. Keep it simple.

Craigslist dominates US rental listings

The NYT ran an interesting article on preferences of US renters and shared accomodation. The operative word is "no": for starters, no pets and no smoking.

Users in the San Francisco Bay Area appear to be among the least interested in rooming with a pet. This area had the highest percentage of "no pets" listings during a key-word search last Thursday (slightly more than 16 percent of 32,295 housing listings). In Boston, about 14 percent of 45,880 listings said "no pets."
Dallas, Wyoming and Birmingham, Ala., seemed quite pet-friendly by comparison: only about 1 percent of the housing listings in each location said "no pets." But Wichita, Kan., emerged as one of the most accepting places, with less than 1 percent of the listings snubbing pets.

In some parts of the country Craigslist housing postings are an essential part of the real estate biosphere. New York is by far the leader in this regard (it had some 180,245 housing listings last Thursday).

There are some incredible statistics. They are all seeking and selling housing on Craigslist.org, the electronic listing service with sites in all 50 states and more than 200 worldwide. And because users pay nothing (for now) and are able to go on at length about who they are and what they want, their postings provide a sociological
window into housing trends and desires across the country, from the neon cityscape of the Las Vegas Strip to the wheat fields of Wichita, Kan.

New York Times

Mortgage Processing - How Broken Is It?

I will venture to say on behalf of all Lawyers and Conveyancers that Mortgage Processing and Settlements by our major Financial Institutions is abysmal. Is that the right descriptor? Perhaps crap is another. And this is at a time when mortgage loans are dominated by the Big 4 and they have at a guess 80% of the market. Sure they process a hell of a lot of loans. But so does the ASX and their back end systems process a hell of a lot of share trades. The SFE trades a hell of a lot of futures contracts.

The difference, securities trading is paperless. These institutions ASX & SFE made the neccessary changes years ago and are in a constant state of technical improvement. Plus securities are traded globally 24/7/365

I cant say I see any changes being made by the banks that has made any difference to service levels for lawyers conveyancers and dear I say it the poor old client.

Lets just illustrate this by example.

• We have to supply the bank with a copy of the Contract and Transfer of Land. We have many instances of this being faxed to the Mortgage Processing Unit (MPU) twice and even three times as they disappear into the black hole.


• Security documentation is issued to the Customer in triplicate and all too often there are mistakes, major minor it doesn't matter. The security documenation has to be re-issued.


• Booking Settlements - a simple thing to do - but why do we have to be kept in queues for 10, 15, 20 minutes. Why? - its not a cost to the bank - its an external cost borne by the Conveyancer. I may have to look at passing this cost onto the client.


• Cheques - oh dear - banks require a minimum of 3 or 4 days notice to book in settlement but cant give a payout figure til the friggin day of settlement!


• Settlements fall over - why? - signatures on the Contract, Transfer and Mortgage don't line up. Middle names are on the Mortgage but not the Transfer. Who pays? - well generally the client and almost never the bank


• Communication - Fax or Phone - that is the choice. And then we only get to speak to a tele-worker who has no personal responsibility for the file. No email. No web services. What an abysmal choice we have.


• Open for Business. We are still back in the Post Office days. Open the doors at 9 and closed on the dot of 5. Try web services. Anytime Anywhere 24/7/365 - no weekends, no public holidays, no sick leave, no superannuation ...
  

These things I describe above occur relentlessly. Every day (well every week day between 9-5 excluding public holidays) and almost every file.

The solution - a digital standard that applies across the Industry. NECS has part of the answers, the Banks have to deliver on the rest. It's not that hard.

Oh yeah, Lastly. The first bank that has the courage to implement change - without doubt - their market share would increase - significantly. Any takers?

The Relentess Switch to Digital Media

For some time now I have been watching the relentless drift or switch away from print media to digital media. Three areas which have proved to be the litmus test. Employment, Cars & Property.

The Age reported Seek.com.au expected earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation of $46 million to $47 million for 2005-06. This is up from previous guidance of $43 million and ahead of a $40 million prospectus forecast. Also reported Joint chief executive Andrew Bassat said that this year the internet had overtaken newspapers as the primary portal for job searching, further driving Seek's earnings growth. "We think there's certainly no doubt the migration will continue to move apace," he said.

Seek dominates the online job advertising market with a 46 per cent share of ads, followed by News Corp's CareerOne and Fairfax's MyCareer.

I have already commented that Property Rentals has all but disappeared from the Age's classified section. The Section is left to a few private advertisers and the odd Agency still pops an ad or two in (more often it is the independent agencies). The reasons are obvious. Price is one factor. The other is how much more you can say and describe the accomodation, photos, email contact etc. Also it is 24/7 anywhere.

The other category - Property Sales has also been sorely dented. The Section is certainly good for checking Open For Inspection times. By the way, why do agents persist with the mid-week OFI? It's a weekend thingy to do.

Here, at 247legal.com.au we are working on moving Vendor Statements off-line to an on-line model, industry wide that is. More on that shortly.