Realestate.com.au reached a milestone recently with the site hitting over 3 million unique visitors for the month of August. 350,000 listings and over 280 million page impressions makes for impressive statistics and it seems that second placed domain.com.au is being left further and further behind.
This writer does get stuck into realestate.com.au from time to time and so do many of their readers, but whilst we may do this, there is no doubt that realestate.com.au, their management and marketing staff are clever little cookies and have taken the site to such amazing heights over the past few years.
I must say as a person looking for a property in Eastern Sydney my one port of call is realestate.com.au .
So how will they keep growing? As far as viewers go I think 4 -5 million will be their peak for the next 10 years, but there are so many areas they can profit from. Continual growth outside of Australia is an obvious one. However I want to think locally.
My first thought is a 24 hour digital realestate.com.au television station, complimented by interactive elements such as receiving your listings each week to your liking right into your living room. Many companies spend millions of advertising dollars each year on television networks hoping to get to home buyers, sellers, renters etc…so why not a dedicated home TV station?
Adding movies and sound files to listings may drive extra revenues from agencies.
The site is becoming too big for many small businesses to get involved with advertising, but there are a few ways that they could over come this.
The fact is they host just so much property data that many Australians want to get to each week, and getting that data to people whether it be on mobile phones, television or the internet has got to be at the forefront of the management of realestate.com.au.
6 Comments
Tom
Peter, this was an informative article. Thanks. These are impressive local numbers from REA. David Kirk over at Fairfax has his work cut out if he is to achieve his recently stated aim of becoming no 1 in real estate and job online media.
In terms of local growth for REA, I think that Simon Baker and his team at REA will focus on providing various value added services that will assist both large and small client agencies, such as leads management.
However, in the UK, REA are in a similar position to Domain.com.au in Australia. A poor second in a bunch of about 5 property portals. The UK market leader, Rightmove.co.uk recently stated that
Peter
Tom, thank you for your kind words. Yes, I do try to be impartial on this blog, it is hard sometimes, but my aim is to inform agencies, this is why I try to not talk about my business and concentrate on articles that I think matter to real estate agencies. I read your comments with extreme interest and there is no doubt you do know the UK real estate portal industry well. Continue with your thoughts on this blog as they are very informative.
George
So 15% of the AU population goes to realestate.com.au each month ?
Simon Baker
Peter – i thought i might add some comments what Tom as said above with regards to the UK.
He is quite correct that rightmove is the leader in the UK market. They have been so for the last 3 to 4 years.
This does provide a challenge for us however we are making great progress and now have over 3,000 agents using us (versus 9,000 on rightmove).
If you look at traffic numbers to the sites, rightmove has around 3m UK based unique visitors each month, findaproperty and ourselves around 1.5m each while primelocation has around 1m.
It is interesting for us to go from market leader to attacker. We are applying many of the lessons we have learned here to the UK market and it allows us to understand more about how others may attack us here.
The opportunities for propertyfinder are:
Firstly, rightmove have apparently raised prices in the UK from 75 pounds per month to a stated 350 pounds per month for a standard subscription – this over a 2-3 year period. This is a significant annual price increase. By comparison, the price of our standard subscription in Australia has grown by an average of only 8% per annum over the last 5 years. We charge only 135 pounds in the UK and have no plans to move that price.
Secondly, rightmove are primarily owned by 4 companies that own ~12% of the estate agents in the UK. Given they are making around 40% – 50% margins on their advertising business, agents are creating significant value for their competitors.
Thirdly, i dont believe that the agents have received the greatest level of service from any of the portal sites in the UK, including propertyfinder.com. We are changing this. We have increased sales and support people from 15 to 50 over the last 6 months and plan to add more. I truly believe that customer service is critical to long term success in any market.
This is a 3 – 4 year game for us.
Peter
Simon, thank you for your input. The success of any real estate portal in any market comes down to a number of factors.
1. Agents Volume – Having a great site with no listings is useless and this comes down to years of experience. Too many sites today launch with much fanfare and no information. Success is not only about having a great site but also information that people want – and that is provided by agencies. One should never forget this, for without the agencies providing listings then consumers do not come back and advertising dollars do not flow.
2. Quality Listing Information – Justlisted.com.au is a perfect example of a lack of experience and understanding. We live in an information society where agents can no longer get away with one or two poor quality photos, a short description – in other words – just the basics!
3. Site is built for ease of use and speed for consumers – there is nothing worse than a slow site – or a site built with no thought for the users.
There are many more factors that make a great site, money, partnerships etc, but it all starts with agents.
Simon, thank you again for your contribution…………….
Tom
In reply to Simon