One of the advantages Realestate.com.au has always boasted of is that they only accept property listings from real estate agents or developers. No private listings or FSBO sales.
It seems I keep running into more websites popping up giving private sellers the ability to list their property on Realestate.com.au. In each of the cases I have found it is a licensed real estate agent involved collecting no commission on the sale but charging a marketing fee only. That marketing fee covers the Realestate.com.au listing and a sign, probably worth all of $6.00
Happening Real Estate use to offer the “Get on RealEstate.com.au without paying Commission” plan but they have recently renamed it “Market your property on the best portal – realestate.com.au”. They state that “If you list your property with us, we will charge you a one time fee of $490 to list your property on realestate.com.au and other sites UNTIL SOLD. Included in this fee, we will provide you with an attractive sign, and we will also upgrade your property to “Featured Property” status for the first 30 days as well.”
This is in effect a private for sale. They provide a sign, and list the property on a couple of websites which is all the private sales sites do. The fee is paid up front and regardless of a sale so under PAMD (Queensland’s Act) it is not a selling commission but simply a Marketing Charge. An interesting point is that they run the risk of making a profit out of marketing and therefore running foul of the act.
Place2Live offer an Assistance2You plan state “place2live can offer you an extremely competitive listing option, where you will NOT BE CHARGED ANY AGENCY SALES COMMISSION FEE. The formal listing agreement – “Queensland Government PAMD Form 22a” – to be signed by you and place2live will show $0 in sales commission fee and a Marketing & Sales Services fee of only $499 excluding GST ($548.90 including GST).”
Looking at it from a different perspective for a second, even if this is technically inside the rules should private sale websites like Zeroagents be felt hard done by given they are locked out of Realestate.com.au when these sort of websites can offer the same level of service but because of the website owner has a real estate license they can provide their clients access to Realestate.com.au? Even though in these cases they are not actually using these licenses.
For my mind though, selling a marketing package whilst not charging commission or a selling fee of any sort is not acting in the role of a real estate agent and they should not be allowed to advertise their properties on the portal whilst it is an agent only site. Maybe the regulators need to investigate them for profiteering from a marketing fees charged to clients. If just 10 clients paid each month there is over $5000 in fees for a little over $500 investment for the month… No wonder there are more of theses sites around!!!
I dont want to get into a discussion over whether Realestate.com.au should or should not allow private sales. At the moment they dont… do you consider that these cases should be allowed to upload property to the portal.