In a move well flagged by REIWA and aussiehome.com back in WA, the merger of aussiehome.com and REIWA.com duly completed on July 2nd 2010 at REIWA House, Subiaco.

aussiehome.com continues to do what it does, the aussiehome.com staff remain at the Nedlands office (probably until Christmas), so as promised ALL your services continue as before. Same phone number, fax, office and staff. Same hosting, feeds, data entry, customer support and all services as now.

The aussiehome.com 'Client Zone' which powers your web site and aussiehome.com continues; for all intents and purposes, you will not notice any change whatsoever.

In the merger, ALL aussiehome.com staff are retained with Charlie Gunningham the new Manager of REIWA.com (see his article in this month's REIWA News).

What this means is that we can put ALL our combined resources now into making REIWA.com a stronger and even more effective internet site for the industry. It means all the good things on aussiehome.com can find their way onto REIWA.com in time. It means we can develop our range of services in a combined manner throughout the real estate industry of WA.

We're all excited by this move, and our chance to "play on a bigger stage" and see what we can do together.

REIWA.com already has 280,000 unique browsers (UBs) accessing the site every month. It's the #2 site for real estate in WA, and a Top 10 site in the country.

The current REIWA.com site will be replaced in a couple of months with a new site built in the robust Microsoft language (dotnet. aspx) - the same language aussiehome.com codes in.

Once the new site is up (which will replicate the current site and system) we can make continual changes. No wholesale massive changes, but subtle improvements here and there to ensure the search experience is as good as can be, the features are state of the art, and traffic is enhanced using new SEO (search engine optimisation) techniques.

Adding aussiehome.com's traffic to REIWA.com will only strengthen REIWA.com's position, and with the current stalling of realestate.com.au's traffic (their monthly traffic is down 13% since the new site went up in mid April), there is a chance to close the gap on realestate.com.au, and go from there. Significant marketing and social media activities are planned for REIWA.com this coming year.

In March 1999, shortly after graduating with his MBA from UWA, Charlie Gunningham attended a Night with Barry Humphries at the Regal Theatre with his wife Lisa and a few friends. During the show, Charlie and Lisa were dragged up on stage to eat a meal with Dame Edna, which had just ordered from the Subi Hotel. A night neither would forget - it was also the same night fellow graduate Nick Streuli rang Charlie with his idea for a 'local property web site'.

1999 was the Year of the Dotcoms. While most came crashing down to earth a year later in the Easter 2000 'Tech Wreck', aussiehome.com survived due to its loyal following of fans and predominantly western suburbs real estate agents. As the continual shift from print to online took hold in the 2000s, so aussiehome.com developed web site design and hosting services, web to print publications and online databases, enewsletters and CRMs. They we got into seminars and training, social media and mobile/iphone applications.

There have been many bumps and dinks along the way, some close calls and some great moments. Only 7 months old, the company won the Asia-Pacific IT Award for WA for Best Innovation in E-Commerce (beating much larger companies such as AdultShop.com and others). 2 years later they won the Best E-Business in WA and also the People's Choice Award for the most popular web site. In 2005, the company won its first national Award, as a BRW 'Fast Start-Up' Business, and in both 2007 and 2008 a 'Smart Company Top 40' Award (the only company in WA to do so). Charlie won a '40under40' Award and IT Manager Amit Sethi won a 'Early Career' Award for Computer Science graduates.

We love to innovate - we were the first company anywhere to put houses on interactive maps on the internet; the first company in Perth to offer virtual tours to the real estate industry; the first (and still only) site to have a professionally produced real estate TV show (many aussiehome.com clients have featured in it) and still the only site to have 'heat maps' and the ability to 'plot your home open route on a map'.

We all share a lot of pride in our accomplishments. But most of all, we've had fun, and I want to thank all our staff (past and present) and of course our shareholders (who gave us a go back in 1999and in the patienct wait since) and especially you our clients who could have easily gone with someone else, but plumped for us and stuck with us. 

THANK YOU! and come join us on REIWA.com (if you're not there already) and let's see what we can do together.

Read the aussiehome.com BLOG and do leave your own comments

On 17th June, 99 Perth CEOs slept out overnight at the WACA to raise awareness and money for the homeless.

It was a humbling experience.

I can assure you the cold, hard cement floor underneath the Lillee-March stand is not very comfortable, and I didn't get much sleep!

But it was a wonderful event, thanks to all of you that helped me raise $2770 for the Vinnies. In WA alone, over $450,000 was raised ($2.7mn nationally) - in one night.

Read my full account here