“My” what a great debate is on here.

I don’t place much importance on models that are based on NON-Australian property markets.

Would I be right to say the US market is totally different to ours?

Would I also be right to say that realestate.com.au occupies a one site market and that any other sites in the same space are just duplications and for that reason they lack exclusive content and therefore cannot compete for essentially what is the same visitor?

Nothing too spectacular about that

Is the market for real estate portals so driven to the distraction by one player that it has really totally lost sight of the fundamentals?

I haven’t seen any offers to fund and host the “MY” site. Where’s all the venture capitalist? (Serriously)

I think that i’ve come to a number of other conclusions about taking on the market for online property services that I havn’t seen replicated in the above. Some rather rubbery figures i’ve come with show a huge untapped market.

Where’s my angel?

Which is just another rehash of the realestateview model in Vic, and the fledgling realestateworld in NSW.

I know a number of agents who resent the fact that Domain do it & they refuse to subscribe or have cancelled their subscription over it.

God help all agents if REA ever decided to be that stupid.

As explained, the reason for the post was to identify the site as being directly in on point with a number of the previous comments. It was done in a transparent way.

To address your comments though, we are receiving supportive feedback generally from the market, but as I mentioned, its early days.

Our primary revenue source is banner ads. We cover the whole market without discrimination. We offer the service free to agents. We don’t extend the service free to private sellers.

Private sales are a small percentage of our content (less than 0.3%). Generally the feedback we receive from agents is that they are not threatened by the private sales aspect of the model, it being recognised as a minor part of the market and an opportunity for leads.

Domain of course offers private sales and charge a fee for that service.

Michael,
Firstly, it would be better to just make a valid point about this post rather than blatantly trying to plug your own business (which by the way goes against the term of use for this blog).

I do agree that if an agent is providing the data to a portal that the agent should not have to pay for that privilege, especially if the portal is making revenue off that data from (third party advertisers).

You have made it very clear in your comment that you offer a FREE service to agents to upload their listings, in my view; this means very little to agents these days unless they are receiving regular leads and a qulaity service and much more in return. The market is flooded and there has been more than one real estate portal that has failed in this realm, ones with big marketing budgets. To be honest, in my view, agents are tired of it. Clearly, the next portal to succeed will be one that is doing something radically different and one offer a total solution that is balanced and fair to all.

The second point I would like to make is that your portal offers a service for private sellers whereby you charge a 0.5% commission on any sale, my question to you is – how is this in the best interests of agents seeing their commission (which they work damn hard for) is a lot higher than 0.5%. In my view, the moment you start charging a commission on any sale (irrespective of who sold it) is the moment you have entered into the sales realm of real estate and that put you in direct competition to the very agents you are offering the free service too.

Realestate.com.au have the market dominance to carry them forth for some time yet, even when/if Google base decide to come to Australia. We cannot forget the consumers in all of this, habits are hard to break and whilst properties appearing in SERP will create some good traffic, in Google’s quest to drive relevant results, you aren’t going to see pure and focused property listings always appear.

Consumers seem to like features such as short lists and home alerts, along with other time saving features. Google are the kings of simplicity, no bells and whistles. I think that’s where a niche portal provides the difference to the satisfaction of some consumers.

Therefore I see Google making this sector more competitive. I still see RE a force, albeit potentially less dominant, in a number of years time, but a force still nonetheless. And I see a number of niche portals, following the recipe you have outline above Glenn, that provide the consumers and agents with the choices that have meaning to them.

Michael, question for you, does your portal compete with RE or RP Data or both? I see your slant towards a Zillow like operation, but it is not clear to me. Is your revenue model 3rd party advertising or DIY listings?

Glenn’s comments about a free content driven model such as zillow.com are valid in my view. It is a model designed with both agents and consumers in mind. Zillow does not charge agents a penny because agents provide them with very valuable content. Zillow also displays sold property information to consumers and agents for free which allows consumers to conduct research on property values online. They cover the whole market, including private sales. Consumers want that content so Zillow traffic has grown aggressively. The model works.

Traffic means revenue.

I am one of the founders of onthehouse.com.au. We launched in March. Our model is comparable with Zillow but designed for the Australian market.

It costs agents nothing to list on onthehouse.com.au. We provide sold property information for free on the site. That information is licensed from State and Territory governments and provided to consumers and agents for free. Unlike our competitors we do not look to agents or consumers to pay for that content. Content drives traffic. Traffic means revenue. We do not charge agents to provide us with content.

Agents can and are paying to advertise next to sold property data. It is regional in nature (ie street report, suburb report) so agents can advertise directly to consumers in their regional markets who are undertaking research into home values in “agent’s markets”.

Onthehouse.com.au pulls together the property listings market and sold property information markets online in Australia so you will not need to go to 2 websites to find this information.

I have made this self-promoting post because an Australian company already exists providing many of the features Glenn you and Peter have raised in your recent posts. Whilst we are young and building content, Hitwise April results tells us we are doing something right in the second month since our launch in Brisbane (in March) and Sydney (in April), coming in number 14 on pageview traffic behind homehound at number 10, realcommercial at number 11, LJ Hooker at number 12 and RayWhite at number 13.

We role out other states soon. We appreciate however that we have a lot of work to do.

REA have already got as much market share as they can possibly get using their model, and as much audience as they can possibly get in Australia. They leverage that into ad revenue anyway… on top of what they get from Agents -

For arguments sake lets say there’s 10,000 of them in Australia. REA is charging each one MINIMUM $400(ish) a month. That’s just REA’s bread`n`butter.

God knows how many of them are on Platinum Plans, Real Commercial upgrades, Featured Agents, Featured Listings, Yadda Yadda Yadda… That’s all creame on top…

Then there’s ad revenue from Home Lenders, etc, paying for sponsorship, not to mention the 2-3 $35CPM media slots they have on every page… Thats the glazed cherrie with a sparkler sticking out of it and a couple of cocktail umbrellas thrown in for good measure.

And all that pudding sounds like a bouty until you consider the agents paying REA are making minimum $20k for every sale REA feeds them, and getting so many leads they can’t even be bothered responding to all of them (apparently). why wouldn’t you charge them to advertise? Even google would auction top listings…

I don’t understand why you’d give away the bread and butter, and all the creame aswell, when all you’re left with is a salpeter covered peice of dried up stone-fruit.