On the 5th of August we at realestateVIEW.com.au announced the acquisition of Myhome.com.au, taking us one step closer to becoming a truly national portal.
The creation and success of an industry based portal is an issue that has been hotly debated on Business2 in the past, as has realestateVIEW.com.au’s ability to be a significant force in the market. I believe that our latest acquisition proves how serious we are about delivering a valuable product to the industry and our members. This news coupled with the recent content sharing agreement with REIWA.com.au (which allows Western Australian properties to be displayed on the RealestateVIEW.com.au site) will provide a huge increase in coverage nationally.
So why have we acquired MyHome.com.au?
This new arrangement provides several opportunities for our business, however in particular MyHome.com.au provides us with 2 key advantages;
1) Strength In New States – After recently launching in NSW, the new arrangement will add significant strength to content in these states as well as providing a large boost in Queensland where the site is yet to officially launch.
2) Complementing our Existing Services – For realestateVIEW.com.au this sale will complement our existing offering for estate agents around Australia. With a captive audience in NSW and QLD through MyHome.com.au we are able to extend our reach and exposure for the many new agents coming on board to the realestateVIEW.com.au site.
It is exciting times ahead for Australia’s industry owned portal and we hope the industry is as excited about this as we are.
22 Comments
Peter Mericka
And will Domain and REA just sit back and watch Realestateview take market share? Or will they draw Realestateview into a costly and ultimately unwinnable marketing battle?
Wayno
Why would they do that? they don’t hold the cards here. We as agents hold the cards it’s our data. If REV do this right they have an opportunity to snatch a lot of market share.
Chris
wayno, that argument has existed for years and the sooner you realize it’s flawed the better.
Consumers hold all the cards. Whether its where they want their properties advertised or what webistes they choose to look at.
The world has changed.
Get used to it. You don’t hold the cards. Your customers (consumers) do.
It’s their “data”, not yours.
Sriwan
Industry portal plays have come and gone.
One wonders why the institutes feel they need to be media players.
Most research says the biggest issue facing principals is staff and training…surely this should be a big area of focus for member benefit?
As 70pc or more of advertising is vendor paid ,will the poor vendor,who is already loaded up with additional cost proposals want to part with cash to be on a third portal?
MY other question would be how much did rev pay for my home?..
What is the legal entity in this play?
How is it funded?
Does Shane get cash or shares?
Is there going to be some real industry transparency here?
Is it really for the benefit of the industry ie:agencies?
Can the increased funding overhead support lower prices for this wonderful new alternative?
One can’t help wondering ,what the real benefit to the industry will be,other than an ego trip.
John
I don’t really understand why REIV can think they will make MyHome a success when some very large established media empires recently decided to exit MyHome – presumably because it was decided that the “Sell it yourself and save” business model simply wasn’t viable in isolation.
The real estate transaction is a complicated one that theoretically anyone could achieve but in reality – and proven repeatedly in our market – is one where the value of a good sales agent is clearly demonstrated over and over again. If the agent does not achieve the sale at the vendors desired price the agent does not get paid. It’s a very simple model.
The vendor has the choice of market campaign selection which the vendor can budget for.
The very clear message being sent by the REIV to it’s longstanding member agents with this acquisition is a very commercially dangerous one. They have the choice from multiple providers who offer equivalent if not superior services backed by significantly deeper marketing budgets.
Good luck REIV but I could think of better ways to build an empire.
Ricky
The three reasons that the REIV are barking up the wrong tree are encapsulated in three of the four initial posts here.
1. REA & Domain will target their marketing to bruise the hell out of REV / MyHome. Who can forget the “My Home Sucks” ads from 3 years ago.
2. The consumer (the general public) hold the key to which sites get the traffic and the listings not the customer (agents). REA & Domain pay big bucks to have specialist Consumer and Customer Marketing teams constantly tweaking this aspect.
3. The only thing to benefit from this expansion is Enzo’s ego as he uses agents money to spruik a dud site instead of training and informing his members.
John Newman
I’m not going to get into the debate of the pro’s and con’s of the sale of Myhome to REIV, but a correction needs to be made regarding “John’s” comments above.
John, I think you have “myhome.com.au” confused with “myhomeisforsale.com.au”, they are two totally different companies and portals and have no association with each other whatsoever.
As you have pointed out, Myhomeisforsale.com.au, is a for sale by owner / sell it yourself site.
Myhome.com.au has always been a portal for agents and the real estate industry only, to advertise residential sales and rental properties on, not private vendor advertising.
I was with Myhome.com.au at the beginning under the PBL ownership and have been with Shane the last two years since his buy back of the Surroundpix.com.au business and of course myhome.com.au.
As Shane has mentioned in other posts on the B2 site, specific comments will be left to Enzo and Petra regarding myhome.com.au
We will continue to be focused on the Surroundpix Professional Real Estate Media business that Shane maintains ownership of.
John Newman
Surroundpix.com.au
Petra Sprekos
Dear All
Let
Sriwan
It’s the rhetoric that it’s all about the institutes offering a better or cheaper alternative for their members that rankles me.
What is the shareholding structure,is this entity owned by institutes for members?
Or is it a pure play commercial venture with external shareholders?
If you promote the fact it’s good for members why?
Frankly I agree with other posts here,institutes need to step up to training and compliance not become media and data companies.
ESP in a two horse race.
I can’t see this venture picking up over a million extra uniques to claim number 2 spot with out significant investment.
One has to ask why don’t institutes work with the incumbents?
Save millions and not risk millions more in a fight they can’t win.
Sal Espro
!
Wayno
Hi Guys
Just thought I would let you know something very interesting, I joined REV last week (the reasons will become a lot clearer later on) and this week my data was being uploaded to them. Well I know I have done something right because Google Analytics has showed an increase in visitors to my site (in one day it went belistic) and REA is still way down on their referrals. REV not fully set up yet should be a day or two and then I will find out if that is where it is coming from, it is going to be very interesting to see where most of my referrals will come from, at the moment in just 3 days rental enquiries have been more from REV than REA. As a side note Business2 is just about level pegging with REA.
Glenn Batten
Ricky
1/ I did
2/ IMHO thats rubbish.. but I will explain … If real estate agents all uploaded their properties to REV and then cut the feed to REA then buyers would drop REA in a heartbeat. If you are an agent then you know that buyers are not loyal and they will use whatever agent has that home listed. The same goes for views on the internet. Buyers will follow whoever has the listings. REA has 95% of the market. Consumers viewing habits, especially on the web can change overnight and is driven by the content. If you have it and the others don’t then you win.
3/ I dont know enough about Enzo to really comment but in regard to the Institutes there are certainly two camps out there with two different opinions of what the institutes should do. One is strongly opposed to institutes running portals. In the other corner is the agents who believe the institutes should do a better job of breaking the grip of REA whose last round of price increases ranged from 30 to 60%. I count myself in the latter and yourself in the former. It does not matter which way they choose to go as there will always be a large percentage who don’t agree with them. That cant be easy for any of them!
Wayno
Hi Glenn
I totally agree on your point 2, remember when people were saying the internet will never work? (I remember a time many years ago when I thought emails were a waste of time) well guess who has egg on their face now. The fact is this! REA serve a purpose and the only reason they are there is because we choose to upload our data to them. As soon as we refuse to upload our data to them well guess what? and as soon as a trend appears (taking into account fees and ROI) it will happen and those who disagree will jump on board straight away and probably say “I saids this is what would happen”
Tatiana Mijalica
Wow, this debate has gone on for months!
All over AUS, there have been examples of agent working together and keeping the media companies out of the loop.
REIWA, the ACT pocket (I don
Sal Espro
Surely we can all accept the blah blah blah of the obvious value of concerted group power by agents.
Can we can now move-on to gain some ‘solid transparency’ (*L*) of REView’s ownership structure? We will then surely be able to decide whether agents are going to be treated as yet another good one-night-stand to be ripped-off or not by the next group with whom they have taken their money to bed. If it *is* ridgy didge then REView and the REIV shouldn’t have any problem in laying it all out as the right structure (including REI’s voting on pricing increases) would mean they become the new ‘Rivers of real estate gold’ – presided over by Caesar Raimondo (Sorry Enzo, couldn’t resist. It’s just a joke! 🙂
Marko
Tatiana said: “I still remember the days of an advertising schedule being a few hundred dollars, now well in the thousands.”
“I think there is an obligation to consumers to try to bring this advertising cost down.”
I remember a time when commissions were a few thousand dollars. Now they are in their tens of thousands. Consumers are getting hurt much more by this than extra advertising.
Sriwan
And the silence on ownership,structure,and and any form of real benefit to members of institutes other than rhetoric and platitudes is deafening.
Words like taking on software data and becoming number two to Rea are easy.
This fight won’t be cheap and billboards and tv as we saw with pbls my home debacle won’t be enough to add several hundred thousand ubs.
Greg Vincent
With AussieHome.com.au’s recent merger with REIWA and now REV’s move to buy MyHome. It’s going to be interesting to see what happens to HomeHound???
I can sense an acquisition could be on the cards. It will be interesting to see if any of the big 3 will look to acquire it?
Tatiana Mijalica
I agree Greg. Looking at Alexa, REV traffic is killing Homehound at the moment. They used to be side by side.
Robert Simeon
Don’t get me wrong as I am all for new players representing the real estate industry however when I look at the #1 incumbent REA Group their results for our business have consistently gone from average, to bad, to woeful to now embarrassing. We are lucky if we get five enquiries per month these days so Domain is now beating them by approximately 25:1 it was once 3:1.
They recently told me that they were performing badly in Sydney’s Inner West, Eastern Suburbs, Lower North Shore and Upper North Shore. It now looks that (based on our experiences and other agents that I speak with) that Homehound probably beats them in these demographic areas.
How the mighty have fallen and definitely not worth the subscription costs any more!
Ricky
Home Who?? Sorry in Vic and Qld that is a big question.
Good to see they are picking up business in NSW though Robert and I genuinely mean that. Maybe that is their strategy. Target areas where REA is not strong like the areas you mentioned in REA’s toughest State.
Good luck to them. Competition is good for all.
Ricky
Further to my comments from yesterday there seems to be a pattern emerging of these second tier portals either teaming up or targeting specific States and areas in an effort to be a local or regional player.
AllHomes who dominate the ACT/Quenbeyan area have just launched a fairly aggressive push into Tasmania in an effort to grow their presence in a region with a similar size i.e. population of between 500,00 – 600,000. Only time will tell whether that is a success but given that REA only have only rep for all of Tassie and Domain service it from Melbourne I’d have thought that is fertile ground for them.
Couple this with what REV/MyHome/REIWA want to do in Vic/WA and if what Robert is saying is true in the various harbour fringes of Sydney with Home Hound then there is change or attempted change in the wind.
What is that old Chinese proverb “A journey begins with some initial steps”. I think some of the smaller portals are finally making some initial steps that if managed and marketed correctly could see both agents and consumers jump on board in the medium to long term.