News has been rife this last week that PBL would be launching an online Real Estate Portal to rival realestate.com.au and domain.com.au . I received an email from ‘Insider Dave’ late last week and to be honest I should have taken it a littl more seriously. I do know that PBL was interested in real estate and have a real estate magazine and that they were planning something, but not that they were nearly ready for launch. The new site rumoured to be myhome.com.au and will no doubt place some pressure on realestate.com.au, even more so than the poor attempt at a real estate portal presented by justlisted.com.au .
So why will PBL’s attempt be more of a threat to realestate.com.au than justlisted.com.au’s? If you read today’s article on news.com.au you would think it may well be impossible, but that is because the so called analyst (these people know about money markets not online markets) Ivor Ries has no idea about what it takes to be successful. So this is why PBL are different to Justlisted and Sensis.
1. Television (Channel Nine)
PBL can draw on the many popular property lifestyle shows to promote their new entity.
2. NineMSN
NineMSn is one of the most popular portals in Australia and much of realestate.com.au‘s early success was due to the fact that real estate searches on NineMSN were through realestate.com.au
3. Experience
PBL can draw on the success of all of their online sites that are market leaders including NineMSn and Seek.com.au. Seek is by far the most popular jobs site in Australia and they will no doubt promote it through this site.
4. PBL Know
PBL know the Internet, whilst Sensis just know they have products that people need. There is a big difference, Sensis have without doubt been the biggest corporate failures in the Internet space in Australia’s history, whilst time and time again PBL create success stories (not always but most of the time), so PBL know that by creating successful partnerships they can bring not only agents onboard but also consumers.
INSIDE DAVE
I have to give ‘Insider Dave’ credit for this one and I have included his email to me below in its original format. He was out on a few things and some others will tell in good time, so thank you Dave!!!!
“A new real estate site is likely to be launched in australia in the next few weeks called www.propertyseek.com.au
- The site will be a venture between seek.com.au and 4 of the franchise group head offices.
- The franchise group head offices will own equity in the new business
- Offices will pay $175 per month to advertise all their listings
- Offices will not own any equity – just the head office
- The franchise groups participating appear to be lj hooker, raine and horne (nsw), elders and c21
- Is this just anoter version of propertypage?
- Is this a threat to domain and realestate.com.au or just another money grab by the franchise groups?
Seek has 2.2 million visitors each month, i believe that domain has 1.6 million and realestate.com.au has 3.2 million … how many job hunters will look at real estate too?
Could domain and realestate.com.au go into jobs? Will it affect seek’s margins and therefore share price?
…………..Dave