Over the years we have seen the launch of a number of real estate portals who specialise in luxury real estate (only properties over $1 million). With the recent launch of another luxury real estate portal begs the question. Is this niche market showing growth given the financial chaos witnessed over the past 6 months?
One of the original luxury real estate website in Australia was Luxury Real Estate this was then followed by Adore (now rebranded as Domain Prestige). Then early in 2008 Luxury Homes Australia launched and although they were ambitiously charging agents they are still around today. This might have something to do with a notice on their website “Prices slashed up to 80% off for a limited time only”.
The most recent entrant to this niche market is Million Plus which to me, has a very Domain Prestige feel to it in relation to the layout and functionality (they do have a funky search tool which i have not seen used on any other websites in Australia).
What i like most about this portal is that it is FREE and they have a no nonsense approach to agents listing properties:
Millionplus revolution
- Only properties worth $1 million+ may be listed
- Property listings are free, and can be left on the site until sold
- Properties appear in rank from the most recent listing to least recent
- Virtual open-for-inspection video with audio options
- No suggestive selling of properties outside the search criteria
- No upload or subscription fees
- No pop-up windows
There are no hidden fees and listings are displayed according to the most recent rather than those which have been upgraded to a featured listings (sweet, no featured listings).
So is the prestige property portal market now over saturated? Perhaps. Or due to the financial downturn have more of these luxury properties come onto the market and have owners instructed agents to replace expensive print marketing campaigns with online marketing? If it is the latter than there is definitely room for this new entrant especially given there is no cost to the agent or vendor!
12 Comments
Glenn Rogers
1 million is your average house these days you would need to start it at say $5M – need to do research to see if there are enough properties out there to make it worthwhile and on the other hand it’s debatable if it would be worthwhile at all, why not have them all on the one site ?, I might see a house thats $4 1/2 M that would be Domain and not on the other site.
The only way this could work is if it appealed to the owners of those properties and they were prepared to pay through the nose to be on a portal like that.
I dont think so.
Steve Anderson
I think this will work , based on the simple premiss that people that have premium properties do not wanted to be downgraded by being shoved into the mix with all the other properties , after all is this not the very same reason why people choose agents that specialise in the top end of the market. I know from spending 5 months working for a Newspaper Group that runs one of the largest property portals , that key agents are considering building there own portal to cater for such a market in the UK.
Robert Simeon
A simple correction in that properties appear on property portals under relevant price demographics. I wish then well however the reality is that it won’t succeed given that the “horses have already bolted”. The only reason why Millionplus is free is that is the only business model that it can be competitive in where the reality is that the vast majority of agents choose to ignore these new start-ups.
Personally, I am much more interested in the upcoming Google launch and that is free too – so long as you don’t need Adwords. The agencies that have organically grown their respective websites should figure very prominently if their current model is anything to go by.
Vicki Williams
I am very interested to see that you have all taken the time to comment on Millionplus. Firstly this is definitely a niche market, whilst you might beleive that the average house is $1 million these days – think again it might just be the market that you are operating in. We have in fact done the research and properties over $1 million account for only 10% of the market – wow what a revelation!!
This site is already working through a number of avenues – one of them being vendors requesting that their agents load their properties for sale onto Millionplus – this has in fact created huge inertia with agents – we are even surprised at the number of vendors requesting this particularly at the top end of the market.
Yes Millionplus is FREE and both agents and developers love it. If you are a boutique agency without the budget to subscribe to the larger websites or a developer who has stock on the market for extended periods of time and don’t want to spend a fortune or become overexposed in the media then this is the ideal avenue to promote property for sale.
Millionplus – where the other half find their property…
Paddy
Vicki … were you one of the infomercial presenters on the old Good Morning Australia with Bert?
Is there a special offer if I ring with my credit card today?
Vicki Williams
No although I would have liked a job in front of the camera and no need for the credit card – this site is FREE. Below is our press release which gives you an insight into my background.
Melbourne property developer and entrepreneur, Morry Schwartz, looks set to change the way upper end property is marketed. His newest venture is an on-line directory of properties for sale in Australia valued at more than one million dollars.
And, in a departure from convention, listings on the newly-launched MillionPlus.com.au, are completely free for the vendor and their agent.
In Morry Schwartz
PaulD
you mean the other 10% ?
Interesting to see what will fund this website. Pan Urban must have some angle in that regard ?
Interesting to note ( and this is not a criticism, because I note you are a recent startup) of the 104 properties you have on the website in NSW. – 33 are sold or under offer, 46 are in Sydney, 17 are in coastal areas (half of which are from Byron) and 8 are in country areas away from the coast. Even though it is early days, I would think that those percentages will carry through. Seems to me there is another website every week that pops up. Given that all those properties would be advertised either on Domain or REA, where you can search easily for properties over $1 Mill. I just wonder how many people are going to go trawling through half a dozen websites to look at properties that they may already have stumbled across before they get there. Anyway, all the best.
Glenn Batten
The topic of a prestige portal has come up before and just like any portal that wants to provide a niche solution it needs to provide a reason for visitors to seek them out, and then keep them coming back.
Each niche would be different, but for a prestige niche like this I believe that they have to be providing floor plans, site plans, high resolution images and high quality video. A minimum standard applied to every listing for them to be uploaded would mean that the site would offer far more to the consumer even though they represented only a fraction of the available Million Plus property for sale.
I find the standard image size of 800 x 600 pixel images from the major portals is crazy for the bottom end of the market so providing images only 510 x 340 pixels for Million dollar plus properties is idiotic.
In its current form the site provides no compelling reason to visit the site, nor bookmark it for a return visit. The provide no way for a visitor to send the page/site to a friend.
They have failed to capture the whole viral nature that something like prestige property will attract. Many visitors will want to share images of prestigious property around, especially higher resolution ones. How many times have you been emailed or forwarded photos of fast and expensive cars, super yachts (gotta love Paul Allen’s collection) and the like.
Allowing users to add the property to their facebook page for instance with comments like “OMG… I want to live here!!! Check this place out !” will help spread word of the site. All images should be overlayed in the corner with the site logo and web address. Social Networking should be integrated into the page.
The funding argument is easy to see.. Thats the big ad up the top…! The one I am seeing at the moment is a Google Ad for Porches for $230,000. They would be getting paid a couple of dollars at least for each click.. and probably more.. much more.
Their PR said
The Insider
Thanks for your comments all.
Vicki, as you have given Million Plus a decent plug here I hope you wouldn’t mind answering a few questions for the readers:
1. Will MillionPlus remain a FREE portal to list properties further down the track?
2. Will MillionPlus always remain without featured listings?
3. If an agent updates a property listing does the listing move up to the front of search results?
4. How many real estate software companies are currently sending you property data feeds?
The reason I ask these questions is that I think your model is great and if all the infrastructure is in place, then like Myhome and Homehound there shouldn’t be a reason that agents do not send their properties to your website.
Glenn Rogers
I just searched 200 properties in Kew over $1m on Domain, why would I bother going anywhere else ?, hate to be negative but I don’t think this has much of a chance of succeeding.
When you target a niche you have to be sure it has some practical use, this just doesn’t.
Ask yourself , would you use it and if you were honest the answer would be “no” unless those properties weren’t on the major portals and that’s not going to happen.
Charlie
Nice funky search (clean and original concept… well I’d not seen anything like this anyway, so hats off for that novel approach). I suppose new portals now have to be free to break through, but then their business model has to be ads (can’t be subscription or etailing) then you pay the piper the tune (the advertiser). Can that be sustainable? CPMs are falling.
To get agents on (are private sellers allowed too?) you’d need to get data feeds from pretty much everybody; agents won’t want the extra work (there’ve been so many free sites before and boy, they don’t have time!). 70-80% of enquiry comes already from the net; so no real need for another portal to load to. There’s competition around to keep people honest, and sites like this one (well done Peter and contributors) and enough ‘good people that care’ to keep an eye on the big media-backed ones.
Looks like being a fringe site, no harm in it, and some of the nice ideas may be copied (so an impact will be made of sorts). Some agents may feel put off by the real estate backed entity behind it? and the media releases’ tone of ‘we’re trying to help the poor old struggling upper sector’ (help us? – thanks he/she says sarcastically).
Vicki Williams
Millionplus is FREE to list properties for sale worth more than $1 million dollars and will remain that way.
Whilst many of the properties listed on Millionplus will also be found on other real estate sites – there will be many more that will only be found on Millionplus.
Across the country we have encounted many Real Estate Agents and Developers who sell a limited number of properties each year – most of them in the top end and are not interested nor prepared to pay the monthly subscriptions required to list on other real estate sites.
Millionplus has been recieving data feeds from a number of real estate software companies as well as listings that are loaded by an increasing number of individual agencies who load to all sites without the assistance of a data feed and seem more than happy to do so – particularly with the added benefit of being able to search by features that are not available as search criteria on other sites such as – helipads and water tanks.
Millionplus provides an avenue to have properties remain on the site until they are sold at no cost – in the current market with an increased number of days on the market this provides a cost effective alternative for vendors.
We beleive there is definitely room for a niche website in the same way that The Age and Herald Sun cover much of the property advertising in Melbourne although the Melbourne Weekly is a very viable publication in which to advertise your property for sale to niche market segments.
Whilst top postion listings can not be purchased – feature property advertising is available and targeted by suburb. Recently we had a feature property banner ad in Toorak where the ad clicked directly through to the individual website for that property. The agent had an extraordinary number of enquiries which resulted in a record price and the vendor remains a staunch supporter of Millionplus.
When a property is edited on the site this does not improve its position ranking. The only way to improve the position would be to completely re-load the property.
We would also like to thank you all for the feedback – we are constantly improving our site and have also recently loaded some video footage to improve the user experience – all that is needed is to click video and sit back and watch and listen.
http://www.millionplus.com.au/property/12-trent-jones-drive-cape-schanck
Is it possible that the boutique agencies and developers around the Country now have a website that caters to their needs? We have had feedback suggesting that there is a market that has been crying out for such a site.