Over the past several weeks Ben Hurley from the Australian Financial Review has been conducting an investigation into the revolt by real estate agencies around the country against Realestate.com.au.
Today on the front page of the Australian Financial Review Ben’s article “Real Estate Agents Revolt” appears.
The article discusses hotly debated topics on this blog and its interesting seeing the discussion raised in more mainstream media. The article covers some great ground and I expect there is more to this story up his sleeve for followup articles.
Some interesting quotes from the article are :
The major agencies, such as LJ Hooker, Ray White, Raine & Horne and Century 21, are considering using their combined mightto setup rival information suppliers and advertising portals.
“It’s called Project Rebellion,” said David Airey, president of the Real Estate Institute of Australia
Real estate groups including RE/MAX, Professionals and First National are cutting back on the information they provide to REA.
and Ben was able to get some quotes from Greg Ellis, REA Group CEO
“REA will never take a dollar from the commission of selling and listing property, that is the exclusive domain of the real estate agents,”Mr Ellis said.
He said sold-price information was “absolutely a non critical part of the information we provide”.“People are significantly more interested in what their property is worth, which does not come from the sold information alone,” Mr Ellis said. He would not reveal the information used to calculate property values.
Grab a copy of today’s AFR or download the article by clicking here.