Are You Investing Enough? (updated)

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realestate.com.au still dominates the competition
Slide 9 from realestate.com.au's Dec 2011 report

As a businessperson, you want to know what your competitors are doing. You especially want to know how much they are spending on marketing.

realestate.com.au has just given Australian real estate agents valuable insight into just that. In their half-year report to investors the company writes that:

 

  • The average residential agent spends $1,327 per month on realestate.com.au. (Update: This number has been corrected from $664.95) The amount that agents spend varies from month to month. It peaked at its highest point in November 2011: $1,624.

 

  • Just over half of agent spending goes to subscriptions (52%). Subscription options are Standard, Platinum and Diamond. (Update: This used to incorrectly read: “Just over half goes to their subscription.”)

 

  • The other 48% of agent dollars go to depth products, or upgrades. (Update: This used to incorrectly read: “The other $319.18 or 48% goes to depth products, or upgrades.”)

 

  • Depth products consist of Listing and Branding products. Listing depth products are: Feature Property, Highlight Property, Premiere Property, Pay Per Listing and the famous eBrochure. Branding depth products are: Exclusive Agent, Showcase, Feature Agent and Suburb Sponsorship.

 

  • Developers may also be spending more, but it’s not clear. That’s because realestate.com.au lumps together the money they get from developers with the money coming in from non-real estate advertisers. Together, these two groups spent 33% more on the site ($32.7m) than two years ago.

 

Don’t forget that these numbers are averages, which can be deceptive. Many agents spend less, and the most web savvy agents spend much more.

Smart portal advertising is a key to any real estate business today. Of course, it doesn’t work alone. The best agencies also invest in their own websites, as well. But, that’s the subject for another post.

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61 Comments

  • Dave Platter
    Posted February 27, 2012 at 9:17 am 0Likes

    Fantastic post, Dave. 🙂

    • Mike Salway
      Posted February 27, 2012 at 9:27 am 0Likes

      If you do say so yourself 😉

      • Dave Platter
        Posted February 27, 2012 at 9:30 am 0Likes

        Mike, I just couldn’t resist. We all need a little humour on Monday mornings. How are you? Good I hope.

  • Jack
    Posted February 27, 2012 at 12:07 pm 0Likes

    Its not a matter how much you spend, its how effectively you spend it! Having lived for a year without REA my bottom line looks better for it. This may not be for everyone but REA continually creates a new spin to upsell with many simply lost in the noise.

    • Dave Platter
      Posted February 27, 2012 at 12:12 pm 0Likes

      Very interesting, Jack. I must say that I’m intrigued. Will you tell us more? What sort of suburb are you in? Have you spent the money saved from REA on any other marketing efforts, or added it to your bottom line? What’s the rest of your online marketing look like? I would love to learn from you success.

    • luke woollard
      Posted February 27, 2012 at 7:45 pm 0Likes

      Hi jack, where are you based? What’s your agency?

  • Glenn Batten
    Posted February 27, 2012 at 7:02 pm 0Likes

    Dave,

    I cannot understand something about the numbers. The standard subscription is more than the average real estate agent spends on subscriptions. How does that work??

    The only way I can see those numbers work is by including all agents in Australia in the calculation which would include all agencies that do not have a realestate.com.au subscription. If that is the case there is a lot more agencies that don’t have a subscription than what I thought. Can you shed some light??

  • Luke
    Posted February 27, 2012 at 8:12 pm 0Likes

    Hang on, i just read the rea half year fin. Report and it says the average revenue per agent each month is around $1300!!!!

    The figures in the post above appear to contradict this. Please explain

  • Dave Platter
    Posted February 27, 2012 at 8:29 pm 0Likes

    Luke and Glenn, you are right. I was moving too fast this morning and posted incorrect numbers. I’ve updated the post now, so that it is correct. Thank you very much for catching that. Flowers and chocolate are on their way to you.

    Glenn, regarding the calculation of what REA calls ARPA, or average revenue per agent, it should make more sense now that I’ve actually provided the right number. REA says ARPA is “calculated as revenue per month over 2 month average of number of paying agents”.

    Thanks again, guys.

    • Glenn Batten
      Posted February 27, 2012 at 8:52 pm 0Likes

      Those new numbers make more sense 🙂

      Thanks Dave!

      Interesting that the Nov 2011 figure was so much higher than the average figure (not sure if this was fin year, cal year or quarter). I wonder why November was so high?? Any clues?

      • Dave Platter
        Posted February 27, 2012 at 9:08 pm 0Likes

        REA says that, for them, November is “a typical seasonal high point for agent spend.” Also, that traffic to realestate.com.au in November achieved a “record of 8.6 million UBs.”

        They don’t give any more details. Probably its the old story of everyone wanting to buy and sell property before the Christmas break.

  • Elston Marcelo
    Posted March 1, 2012 at 5:56 pm 0Likes

    Appreciate making the sincere attempt to explain this. I feel very sturdy about this and wish to learn more. If its OK, when you reach more thorough knowledge, could you mind including more posts similar to this one with more information? It will be extremely helpful and helpful for me and my colleagues.

  • Dave Platter
    Posted March 1, 2012 at 8:39 pm 0Likes

    Thanks for the comment, Elston.

  • Glenn Batten
    Posted March 1, 2012 at 11:03 pm 0Likes

    Sorry to out a little downer on your latest fan but that text is typical of robot blog spammers.. See http://bit.ly/x0JGo2 and http://bit.ly/AnVQQj

  • Glenn Batten
    Posted March 1, 2012 at 11:05 pm 0Likes

    It’s the automatic synonym replacement that gives them away…. !! Akismet catches most of them… but every now and again one sneaks through!

  • Sal Espro
    Posted March 2, 2012 at 10:31 am 0Likes

    And now for the chestnut: How many agents believe they will gain more enquiry by buying a red border or higher spots etc when we’re told buyers look at all properties in their preferred location
    vs
    getting more branding for their agency (?)

    (The weight of experience can be tiresome 🙂

    • Dave Platter
      Posted March 2, 2012 at 11:06 am 0Likes

      Sal, great point. What’s your mix of spending on branding vs. listing upgrades?

  • PropertyNow Real Estate Agency
    Posted March 3, 2012 at 10:26 am 0Likes

    Sal, anyone who ever believed that a red border makes a difference has way more dollars than sense, And generally those dollars will be vendor paid dollars. So I am glad you raised that question. Buyers view all property all the time ( as a generalisation) The search habits inside portals do not mirror search habits in search engines.

    I believe the overwhelming majority of money spent on portals,that is discretionary spending, to be wasteful. I also think that agents do it for the same reason they spend unduly on newspaper domination – to function as a listing tool rather than an enquiry generator.

    Andrew Blachut
    PropertyNow Real Estate Agency

    • Dave Platter
      Posted March 5, 2012 at 9:23 am 0Likes

      Andrew, that’s interesting but I’m not sure it’s correct. I would love to test it. I know from personal experience that when home hunting I’d like to look at every property, but that I sometimes don’t get to them all.

      Also, a property that is highlighted might get my attention despite factors that might have otherwise disqualified it for me — such as not having enough parking or bedrooms, or not being in quite the right suburb.

      Once I look at it more closely, I might discover it is something I’m interested in after all.

      I don’t we should ever underestimate the value of bringing something to the attention of potential buyers with every reasonable tool we have. Nor should we ever overestimate the diligence with which buyers of any product or service do their shopping.

      realestate.com.au reports that highlighted listings get more clicks throughs. If people look at every property of interest to them, then it’s hard to explain these extra clicks.

  • Sal Espro
    Posted March 5, 2012 at 10:34 am 0Likes

    What does “realestate.com.au reports that highlighted listings get more clicks throughs” mean please?
    More click-throughs than what?
    (Ps Are the number of clicks on a highlighted listing de-duplicated with those on the corresponding ‘ standard’ listing or are they added to the standard listing’s even if the same people are clicking on both?)

    Pps Dave, were you sacked from RE.com.au? Do you do any work for them at the moment?

    • Dave Platter
      Posted March 5, 2012 at 4:43 pm 0Likes

      Sal, here’s what realestate.com.au itself says:

      “Did you know that upgraded ads can get up to 11 times more views than standard ads?”

      According to them, an upgraded listing gets 11.7x more views, 11.2x more engagement, 8.5x more enquiries and 4.1x more saving and sharing.

      Those are hard numbers. Even though it’s not yet proven this means quicker sales or higher prices, it would be silly to throw away an inexpensive tool that gives you that extra visibility. It is also that much more visibility and branding for the agent who is listing the property, of course.

  • Dave Platter
    Posted March 5, 2012 at 10:48 am 0Likes

    I wasn’t and I don’t. I resigned several years ago. I have many friends there and the greatest respect for the company and for online in general, but that’s as far as our relationship goes. I also own a small amount of stock. I should have bought much more!

    Regarding the clicks, let me scratch around for the data and come back to you with it…

  • Sal Espro
    Posted March 5, 2012 at 6:13 pm 0Likes

    Thx Face but how van you compare a highlit ad of say Property X with its standard version when it is connected to the highlit version; they are one and the same. ie Wouldn’t you need to disconnect the link and then compare the two listings independently? Rubbish if you’re comparing different listings!! You haven’t convinced me yet.

  • Sal Espro
    Posted March 5, 2012 at 6:14 pm 0Likes

    Thx “Dave” not “Face”, of course! 🙂

  • Dave Platter
    Posted March 6, 2012 at 1:12 pm 0Likes

    Sal, if your point is that 11-times more views is not conclusive proofs that upgraded advertising helps sell a property faster and at a higher price and helps brand an agent, I agree. It is not conclusive proof.

    However, given everything we know, it does seem very likely.

    It would seem silly to throw away something that seems so likely to be useful just out of dislike for realestate.com.au. That’s like cutting off your nose to spite your face.

    As Ray Kroc of McDonalds said, “Early to bed, early to rise, advertise, advertise, advertise.”

    Sincerely,
    The Face

  • PaulD
    Posted March 6, 2012 at 4:40 pm 0Likes

    I thought that was Ted Turner – Early to bed – Early to rise – Work like Hell – and Advertise.
    Anyway they were both successful men – probably a bit of poetic licence there somewhere.

  • PaulD
    Posted March 6, 2012 at 6:08 pm 0Likes

    Just another thought regarding are we spending enough Dave. So I looked at the email response from REA in the Month of Feb since 2004. I couldn’t find 2003. Anyway it is quite revealing as to the drop in email enquiry. I understand that there are many more ways for people to get to us, but the drop in email enquiry is more than just startling.
    So it was Feb each year since 2004, and the numbers are : ’04 – 39, ’05 – 81, ’06 – 62, ’07 – 118, ’08 – 69, ’09 – 69, ’10 – 30, ’11 – 56, ’12 – 3. Therefore 2012 compared to the next “worst” year is one tenth of that year, and only 2.5% of the best year in that span. In my experience, email hasn’t died to that extent, and whilst REA was certainly the best enquiry generator, it no longer is. Whilst there is no outright enquiry leader, Domain had 17 emails which was about normal. So whilst we may have had a somewhat reduced level of enquiry overall, REA has all but disappeared. I guess in their defence, the phone reveals, which is a new metric, and not necessarily an accurate guide to an enquiry, because it doesn’t necessarily provide a lead, and could be the same person several times, was probably enough to close the gap in terms of raw numbers. It does however raise some questions as to where the use of email is going.

  • Dave Platter
    Posted March 6, 2012 at 6:57 pm 0Likes

    Paul, fantastic to see those numbers since 2004. Thank you very much for sharing.

    Are you saying that email has dropped but that new metric showing phone reveals is making up for it? Would you mind sharing the numbers for the phone reveal?

    • Glenn Batten
      Posted March 7, 2012 at 7:04 pm 0Likes

      Phone reveals dont make up for it.. As agents we have always got phone calls. In fact, you could argue that the “quality” enforcements has reduced the number of phone calls because we cant put phone numbers, names or links into the body copy of the ads anymore..

      It;s just now that as email enquiries dropped off that realestate.com.au has partly hidden the phone number, and count when someone wants to see it and they try and add it together with the email enquiries so the drop is not as recognisable.

      If you want to base the value of an realestate.com.au subscription it should be to compare total enquries across the different years but since phone calls were not captured years ago you cant directly compare the apple to the orange.

  • Sal Espro
    Posted March 6, 2012 at 9:03 pm 0Likes

    Dave, you don’t seem to have understood my point.
    How is the comparison made to state that highlit ads are 11 times as effective as standard ones?
    The only way I can see to measure it would be to take the same property and advertise it twice; once with a link from the highlit ad that appears nowhere else on the site (and certainly not in the standard listings) and another standard listing. Then you simply compare the number of interactions of each as independent listings. I doubt this has been done. Otherwise, the figures are a nonsense as they are probably comparing apples and oranges i.e. listings of different properties, and I know in our area 2 houses in the same street can bring varying enquiry rates!

    • Matt
      Posted March 6, 2012 at 10:22 pm 0Likes

      I’ve asked the same question of my account manager, Sal, and the answer was that the measure is against an almost ‘identical’ comparable – suburb, upload date, bed, bath, garage, land, sqm etc etc – not the same listing (due to the reasons you mention above making it impossible).
      Hope that helps?

  • Sal Espro
    Posted March 6, 2012 at 11:07 pm 0Likes

    Yes, thankyou, Matt. That confirms my (and obviously your, and I guess many other agents’) queries on it.
    The figures are currently statistically rubbish!
    I think it would be worth REA’s while to run the test properly on a statistically significant sample. It would cost them so little to under-pin their claims with blue-ribbon validation.

    (Dear Dave, I have no vested interests here and comment on issues as I see them).

  • Dave Platter
    Posted March 7, 2012 at 7:34 am 0Likes

    Thanks, Matt. Well done.

    Sal, I hear what you’re saying, and I agree the stats aren’t perfect. Unfortunately, I can’t speak for REA, so I can’t quantify it more. A test would be great, and I repeat my earlier statement that I would love to test this.

    I can just speak from a marketing perspective. As a marketer, I would say, it’s fine to ask for more clarity on exactly how much extra exposure one can obtain. At the same time, let’s not fail to take advantage of that exposure because we don’t know how exactly to quantify it.

    A general on the field of battle is handed a new, powerful weapon. Does he say, “Troops don’t shoot that gun, because we don’t know if it will kill all the enemy or just some of them.” Or, does he say, “Troops let’s shoot that gun and kill as many of those b@st@rds as we can”?

    • Glenn Batten
      Posted March 7, 2012 at 7:20 pm 0Likes

      My personal experience is the claim to earn UP TO 11 times the enquiry a load of complete rubbish.. The words “up to” provide the get out of jail free. My personal belief is that an investment in professional photography would provide you a much better result than a feature property.

      What would be interesting is a study to determine what provides the better exposure for a property….

      $203 on a realestate.com.au feature property.
      $203 on professional photography.
      $203 on multiple second tier feature properties .
      $203 on google ads.
      $203 on facebook ads (although I think this is against the Facebook TOC these days)
      or on other marketing options…..

      • Dave Platter
        Posted March 7, 2012 at 9:41 pm 0Likes

        Agreed, Glenn. That would be a great study.

  • Sal Espro
    Posted March 7, 2012 at 8:37 am 0Likes

    Dave, I’ll use any gun to save myself if I know it works! And if I have a choice, I’ll use the one that’s most cost-efficient, not one that’s peddled on spurious claims. Looking forward to your next article on advertising on every portal possible because the all get enquiry! (or ‘kill’ people – strange analogy 🙂
    Copa,
    Sal 🙂

  • vic Del Vecchio
    Posted March 7, 2012 at 1:11 pm 0Likes

    Does anyone get to the core of an issue more so than Salespro? He has a valid point.

    Our statistics show that our features are viewed around 11 times more than our standard listings. Our stats also show roughly the same ratio for email and phone. However what we also see is that the emails sent are fairly spurious requests like- “Price please”- “is this still on market”.

    I guess one way to test the results would be for agents who have have had features recently to give their results to this forum.

    So far, over the past two years of reading comments on various agent forums, I have never seen a comment from an agent to say that they get any value from features, let alone 11 times more value/results

  • Dave Platter
    Posted March 7, 2012 at 1:18 pm 0Likes

    Great comment, vic. It would be great if more agents shared their results.

    Can we open it up for the other portals, too? It would be interesting to see if the upgrades on one are matched by their results on another.

    • vic Del Vecchio
      Posted March 7, 2012 at 2:47 pm 0Likes

      I agree Dave, too often we get carried away with analysis of statistical data without drilling down to the reality of what is happening.

      As portal owners and PR people we have access to macro stuff but the devil is in the detail; and only the agents can fill in the gaps. So love to see some REAL work place info come through on this.

      And another thing, anyone can spin anything in their favour ” lies, lies and damned statistics ” comes to mind.

      • Dave Platter
        Posted March 7, 2012 at 9:40 pm 0Likes

        Thanks, vic.

  • Tatiana Mijalica
    Posted March 8, 2012 at 1:02 pm 0Likes

    Here is a exact property example for 30 days.

    On all portals the property was a featured property, on REA it was a Premier Property:

    X Street Elwood

    Agents own website
    Views: 157
    Emails: 19

    REV
    Views: 142
    Emails: 12

    DOM
    Views: 189
    Emails: 26

    REA
    Views: 1230
    Emails: 20

    Interesting to see the ROI on a per property basis.

    • PaulD
      Posted March 8, 2012 at 3:11 pm 0Likes

      Tatiana, interesting to see those reply rates between 8 and 13%. That is very good compared to anything we have ever had. Also the reply rate on REA is 1.6% – that’s more what I’m used to with REA. It started out in the 2% range and is now in the .02% range. Why would the reply rate be SO poor on REA? All the other reply rates are really good. So is it better to get 10 times as many people looking at your property and only one tenth the enquiry is the question. Seems like an easy equation to me – same number of people – doesn’t matter how they get there.

  • Tatiana Mijalica
    Posted March 8, 2012 at 4:33 pm 0Likes

    Hi Paul,

    I put it down to the fact that REA has a lot of window shoppers these days, as you would expect. Most people would go there to do their property research – agents, consumers, journalists, economists, uni students researching for assignments – the list goes on.

    The views are pointless to report on as they also includes the vendor, all their friends and family, the neighbours, the listing agent and admin staff checking the property is displaying correctly etc.

    General rule of thumb is that a higher number of email enquiries, not views, will translate to higher open for inspection numbers. Views are anonymous.

    With the email enquiry, in essence the agent is able to interact with the potential buyers at least twice – via email then at the open for inspection.
    Time on market is longer than it used to be so the ability to contact the potential buyers and report these back to the vendor is critical.

    Domain also records the phone calls to the agent via a 1300 number. For this particular property there were 11 successful 1300 calls to the agent.

    When you break it down this way, REA is in fact the poorest in performance and ROI of all the portals at cost of subscription + $2100 for a Premier property. I can’t see that Highlight property will be much better.

    • vic Del Vecchio
      Posted March 8, 2012 at 7:49 pm 0Likes

      Tatiana,

      Great stats and great explanation. Have always thought that REAs high profile will end up biting them on the behind. Just needs agents to look very carefully at what they are getting for their subs.

      • vic Del Vecchio
        Posted March 9, 2012 at 8:33 am 0Likes

        Tatiana,

        Just a question on how REA explains its high number of “views”. Are they using the same metrics as the other portals. In other words do they count the number of times each image is viewed and the others only take it from one image. Could this explain why REA views are X times that of Domains ?

        Or is it just the PREMIER spot that gave it the edge on the others ?

        • Tatiana Mijalica
          Posted March 11, 2012 at 7:12 pm 0Likes

          Vic, no sure on the metrics but they are disproportionately high as compared to the enquiry.

          REA like to states that they provide all the information on the listing so the consumer has no need to email however, this is not correct.

          Each listings is exactly the same across all portals: the number of photos, order of the photos, a floor plan, open for inspection times, the caption, description.
          These things do not vary from portal to portal as all the information arrives via XML from the Agents website.

          I put it down to REA having more window shoppers and researchers than the other portals.

          If there were more genuine buyers, there would be at least the same amount of enquiry numbers – if not more. with the high number of views.

  • Tatiana Mijalica
    Posted March 11, 2012 at 7:54 pm 0Likes

    Here is another way of looking at it:

    REA DOM REV
    Views Emails Views Emails Views Emails
    December 12000 78 9000 83 5000 51
    January 11000 21 8000 70 4000 44
    February 28000 51 16000 207 9000 79

    Agent stats and comparison between portals for DEC, JAN and FEB.

    I have rounded up the views, but emails are exact. Agent uses same products across all three portals.

    DOM has 4 x the email enquiry + tracks its phone calls (there was 64 of these over the 3 months).

    REV also provides more agent contact than REA.

    Views don’t sell a property. Agent contact does.

    • Roger Newcombe
      Posted March 13, 2012 at 3:25 pm 0Likes

      Audience of 1230 of REA Vs 157 of your own website

      How do you know that the lead wasn’t provided from other portals to your website?

      Why would a consumer be drawn to your site rather than a portal?

      The portal is like a department store in comparison to say … a milk bar? – fruit shop?

      The feature properties have increased traffic to your website perhaps?

      As a consumer I would never go to each agents individual website. What a waste of time!!

      I would much rather see all availability – then when I am ready to do business with you I may look at your website to see how reputable and established you are – then make contact.

      Also do you advertise prices of your properties? Any property without a price advertised will be lacking enquiry as far as Im concerned.

      • Glenn Batten
        Posted March 14, 2012 at 10:29 am 0Likes

        >>>Audience of 1230 of REA Vs 157 of your own website

        That was a premier property against a standard listing on their own website. Hardly a great comparison to use. That was a $2000+ spend against possibly a $1 or $2 (quessing at monthly cost divide by number of listings).

        >>>How do you know that the lead wasn’t provided from other portals to your website?

        Google Analytics shows you where you visitors come from and where they visit on your site. Determining exactly what traffic comes from the portals is not that hard at all. In fact showing the source of every visitor to a certain page is dead simple.

        >>>Why would a consumer be drawn to your site rather than a portal?

        I agree that in quite a lot of cases there is nothing compelling but the public still visit agent websites… BUT many agents do offer more on their own websites. This could be higher resolution images, additional documents to download, links to related websites…. suburb profiles and of course there are no ads to scroll through.

        >>>The portal is like a department store in comparison to say … a milk bar? – fruit shop?

        Thats actually a great analogy. The big supermarkets and department stores have a lot of stuff across thousands of product ranges… but in my experience the best fruit is often found at the fruit shop who specialises in fruit and nothing else.

        >>>>The feature properties have increased traffic to your website perhaps?

        Again, as far as my stats show thats just not true. The referral traffic from any of the portals is tiny, minute … virtually non existant because they go out of their way not to send traffic to agents but to keep the visitor on their site. In our case it represents 0.3% of traffic from realestate.com.au. Naturally that is goal of most webmasters.

        >>>>As a consumer I would never go to each agents individual website. What a waste of time!!

        Thankfully as far as agents are concerned you are in the minority. Agents websites collectively generate far more visitors than realestate.com.au.. Before you jump up and down claiming the industry market share REA holds consider the numbers. Stats are only compared against other portals and major real estate groups. Realestate.com.au gets 7 million unique visitors per month. 10,000 agents would only need 700 visitors per month to generate more visitors. That means that the average agent only needs to generate 23 unique visitors per day. Our site generates 400 to 500 per day and even the template trash put out by some of the franchises would generate more than 23 per day. .

        >>>>I would much rather see all availability – then when I am ready to do business with you I may look at your website to see how reputable and established you are – then make contact.

        Again, thankfully everyone does not do exactly the same.

        >>>>Also do you advertise prices of your properties? Any property without a price advertised will be lacking enquiry as far as Im concerned.

        I guess all those people who turn up to Auctions around the country must have come from the sign then ?? Everyone who runs an auction should not advertise on realestate.com.au or domain??

        *******************************

        realestate.com.au is a great website, is clearly the market leader but it is not everything to all people despite what those inside big red have to say…. supermarket analogy’s included… It is not the only source of enquiries and according to most agents I talk to it’s value proposition is reducing year on year as the push for more and more of the agents “share of wallet” increases.

        • Roger Newcombe
          Posted March 15, 2012 at 12:29 pm 0Likes

          As a Gen Y I’m not in the minority – We are now the majority!

          Your way of thinking seams biased in favour of the agent benefits VS Vendor to be completely frank !

          so ill leave it at that ..

          • Glenn Batten
            Posted March 16, 2012 at 6:45 pm 0Likes

            >>>>>As a Gen Y I’m not in the minority – We are now the majority!

            The Peter Pan Generation has never been good at maths but your claim of Gen Y being the majority is just not true, Find me a reputable source thats states that Gen Y is the majority of the population… or even a majority of the adults in the population.. Dont go looking at the ABS though.. their numbers will not help you..

            You may think Gen Y is the majority because most of the people you know and socialise with … but you are wrong.

            In case you are curious the most accurate numbers are from the 2006 census .

            http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/[email protected]/bb8db737e2af84b8ca2571780015701e/72097b9a70c71596ca2573d20010fd0a/Body/0.98EE!OpenElement&FieldElemFormat=gif

            In that graph Gen Y was the 10 to 26 year olds.

            >>>>>Your way of thinking seams biased in favour of the agent benefits VS Vendor to be completely frank !

            The funny thing is, the majority of what I posted is just the facts and was not really open for bias. It is factual to say that 0.3% of our traffic comes from realestate.com.au. It is factual to say that real estate agents still get traffic to their website…. etc etc

            But lets not have the facts get in the way of your myopia.

            But for the record… yes.. I am an agent and therefore my perspective is from an agent perspective as this blog openly targets and as this article was written to however I have no idea.

            Your comments though appear to be biased for the portals. I must admit I always find it comical when portal staff try to argue on here from the consumers perspective when they push their pro-portal line without acknowledging their own bias… You don’t work at the portals do you ? Which one?? 🙂

  • Sal Espro
    Posted March 14, 2012 at 11:52 am 0Likes

    Gee, great comments Tatiana, Glenn et al & thankyou very much for the stats Tatiana.

    A coupla things that hit me:
    – REA is charging like a wounded bull with no ROI justification.
    – For an industry that has been so focussed on phone calls for so long, 64 calls (DOM) in 3 mths is only ~ 5 calls/week (x3 for 3 websites?)
    – AGENTS WEBSITES GARNER MORE VISITS THAN THE LARGEST PORTAL!!! (Time for a new model folks! Portals are tired old media!)

    (Ps Dave, still don’t know what REA’s claims of 11x the views are compared to! Tatiana’s #’s still don’t compare a standard listing to a ‘Feature/Highlight’ because there is currently no way to un-link a Feature property from the standard listing it is linked to).

  • Sal Espro
    Posted March 20, 2012 at 4:16 pm 0Likes

    Hi Rog,

    Seems pretty compelling though, don’t you think, that no matter you and I might do if we were buyers, a sh**load of visitors *DO* visit real estate agency websites – and if we could work something out, we might be able to (someday) by-pass the strangle-hold portals have on our short n curlies!
    (Something to consider: Agencies sit side-by-side each other in the physical street as well as on portals).

  • Glenn Batten
    Posted March 26, 2012 at 5:02 pm 0Likes

    Roger,

    You stated as fact that Gen Y was the majority. That was wrong…. The 2006 census data is the latest official population stats and it shows that Gen Y is not the majority. I reckon you might be able to add 7 years on to all the numbers in that official graph or was that too difficult for you ??

    Instead of telling me that the numbers have no relevance.. why dont you share just one repuable site that claims that Gen Y makes up the majority of the population..

    You do realise that the largest sector does not mean they are the majority dont you?? It’s pretty basic but they still teach that sort of maths at school I hope??? 🙂

  • Glenn Batten
    Posted March 26, 2012 at 5:03 pm 0Likes

    Roger,

    You say you are in the industry… just so its clear, which office do you work at ?

  • Roger Newcombe
    Posted March 29, 2012 at 4:53 pm 0Likes

    Glenn,

    Just because I’m a cowboy doesn’t mean I’m an agent – I’ll leave the late night chasing of tyre kickers up to you and your army of assassins. I much prefer to watch from the sidelines and not be absorbed in the struggling south east QLD market. & face it that Gen Y is here and most agents really don’t know how to deal with it – I understand that traditional media worked for 30 plus years but seriously … if I want to invest in your market and I’m from Sydney can you tell me how I can get my hands on your local? Give me all the information i want in digital form and when i round up everything i want to know and I’m more informed that you. Then i’ll call you.

    Bought a camera or a TV recently? the consumer is more informed than ever!!

    • Glenn Batten
      Posted March 29, 2012 at 5:36 pm 0Likes

      Make no mistake… I know you are not an agent..

      >>>>> I’ll leave the late night chasing of tyre kickers up to you and your army of assassins.

      That’s rich coming from you trying to comment anonymously from the shadows on the topics you have given the connection you have with them. 🙂

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