Fairfax today purchased commercialrealestate.com.au for an undisclosed amount.This now leaves only 2 players in the Commercial Real Estate space in Australia with Realestate.com.au purchasing Propertylook for a cool 9 million recently.
I just got hold of a press release from an avid reader of business2 (thank you Phillipa) and it details the sale (no mention of price as yet).
Apart from the usual fare the newsletter states that “arguably no other media organization (I hate American spelling) in Australia has as much experience and credibility when it comes to real estate advertising than Fairfax”. Hmmm, arguably being the operative word, although Fairfax has had the traditional newspaper advertising market sewn up for as long as living memory – the Internet however is a different story. Anyway this release also states that the relationship will bring even more enquiries for listing agents. This is true, Fairfax will no doubt take advantage of the name and more than likely integrate their own look and feel to the website. I doubt very much they will discontinue the site and integrate it into Domain as it is the number one domain name for this space.
As for agents costings, well, less competition means higher prices and it will be interesting to monitor the pricing agents are charged for this service, my guess is they will leave it as is for the time being, and look to increase agency participation first by promoting it in their newspapers across Australia.
The owner of commercialrealestate.com.au was again unavailable for comment. (again).