This week RealestateCommercial.com.au a small player in the Australian commercial real estate space announced that it had secured funding from Chinese based Zhuhai Huachen. The Company shortly will be undertaking a capital raising program on the Australian Small Scale Offerings Board where they plan to raise a total of $1.2 million with investors owning around 30% of the Company valuing the company at $4m. 

Li Dan Financial Manager of Zhuhai Huachen Constructions stated “We are very happy to commence an association with Real Estate Commercial in Australia and here in China through their website www.zhongguorec.com, this is our first overseas venture and we see the business development between Australia and China growing in the future. We were impressed by the development to date of the website here in China and see the synergy between the real estate markets in China and Australia in the next few years as a fast growing market, particularly with more and more Chinese looking to invest in property overseas, with Australia high on that list. We will be looking to invest further in the Australian Company during their capital raising program through ASSOB (Australian Small Scale Offerings)”

Russell Robertson, Managing Director and Founder of Real Estate Commercial in Brisbane said “We welcome the investment from the Chinese company and their local knowledge will be vital to our future plans for China. We have more products in the pipeline for both countries and look forward to advancing our beta website running in China (www.zhongguorec.com) and working closely with our new partners.”

Rent.com.au is consolidating its position as Australia’s #1 rental property website, indicating in a December press release they have achieved 300% growth in the number of agency listings on their website since February 2011. They also indicate their portal has over 40,000 residential and holiday rentals now being listed by agencies across the country.

In the press release Mark Woschnak (CEO Rent.com.au) goes on to say some of their growth can be attributed to principals paying more attention to their rent rolls in these trying times, but other key factors include:

1. The unique traffic audience rent.com.au gets whereby over 40% have not been to REA and over 50% have not been to Domain. This provides an effective and genuine additional and growing target market to what most agencies get via REA alone.
2. The rent.com.au listing package offers excellent value for all agents, providing genuine rental enquiry and strong branding.
3. The specific range of services on rent.com.au that is purposely designed for property managers, including the unique property management lead generation services.
4. The high organic and natural online benefits of the domain name and branding that exists amongst the younger 18-39 year old renter community. Most importantly the brand that rent.com.au has developed as a rental solution stands proudly and clearly apart from all home purchaser focused sites.
5. The extensive national coverage of listings which continues to grow.

In mid December, Rent.com.au underwent a long overdue makeover. The site has a very fresh and almost fun feel, appearing as though they borrowed ideas from US based portals and social networking sites. Mark Woschnak on the recent upgrade:

Our recent site upgrade in early December, provides a much smarter and faster search engine, more flexible and detailed search options, improved tools for renters to keep track of their properties of interest, enhanced social media communication options and the largest photo display of any major portal, all of which provide an excellent user experience.

Rent.com.au has been around for a long time and its great to see them start receiving some reward for their hard work and persistence. We look forward to their continued success!

The Weekly Review is a free weekly lifestyle magazine that competes against Fairfax’s existing magazine The Melbourne Weekly. It’s an important purchase for Fairfax as it means they will now retain the lucrative advertising contracts the The Melbourne Weekly lost last year when The Weekly Review was launched.

This is the second time Fairfax has had to buy a Melbourne based magazine in order to secure real estate print contracts, having previously paid $67 million to purchase The Melbourne Weekly from “Text Media” in 2003. What’s very interesting, is that on both occasions ex Fairfax employees were behind the creation of the magazines.

Commenting on the transaction, Fairfax Media’s CEO of Marketplaces Nic Cola said

“We are delighted to be partnering with Antony Catalano and MMP to provide a more integrated and improved suite of products to real estate agents and their clients across the combined network. The real estate industry has been a great supporter of Fairfax Media for many decades, and we are committed to ensuring that our product offering evolves in accordance with the needs of both our advertisers and our readers.”

Antony Catalano, Managing Director of MMP said

“We are pleased with the success that MMP has achieved since we identified the opportunity to work with leading real estate agents on the launch of The Weekly Review in April 2010. I look forward to a close relationship with Fairfax Media as we set out to embed the MMP ethos across the combined business.

The merger is a smarter move than buying the magazine outright, as it means the existing owners still have an interest in the magazine and an incentive to make sure these real estate advertising contracts continue.

I firmly believe that niche real estate portals can be successful and fill a gap which the major players Domain.com.au and Realestate.com.au don’t cater for. There is no better example than Farmbuy.com which targets a niche very relevant in Australia…rural properties.

Farmbuy.com launched in October 2009, it has grown from approx 4,000 unique browsers in the early days to now consistently achieve around 30,000-31,000 unique browsers per month (their stats). Currently they have approx 450 offices uploading – they include major franchises like First National, Ray White, Elders, PRD Nationwide and also a number of smaller independent rural agents.

I asked founder Philip Sondhu what he sees Farmbuy’s strategic advantage being:

• Farmbuy.com’s key focus is complimenting and enhancing our agents rural property marketing (something which appears that nobody else is doing well)
• Our site also incorporates a number “rural specific” tools, the main ones being the ability to search by weather district & land size, but more importantly once the buyer has found a property the user can run a number of farm income / production calculations to help work out the production and income capability of the property.
• By focusing on a niche we provide agents a qualified audience to market their rural properties to buyers solely interested in rural property. They’ve also found that by adding farmbuy.com to their suite of marketing tools it also helps them to win over vendors who like the fact that there is a dedicated / specialised online service in Australia.
• Lastly, this qualified audience has helped us gain 3rd party banner advertising from the likes of Commonwealth Bank, Rabobank, Suncorp Bank and John Deere who can leverage our site to reach the Agribusiness market. Farmbuy.com would now be one of the bigger online Agribusiness websites in Australia.

Philip also indicated that through the demand from the site audience another niche has emerged.

It is also of note that we now allow lifestyle properties to be listed on the site which was largely due to the demand coming out of metro areas.

A further example highlighting that web browsers are looking to begin their searches at content which is already relevant to their needs. What are your thoughts?

A few noticeable changes I can see include:

1. There is a newly styled main navigation bar
2. Search Results – Look of the search results has been improved.
3. Search Results – Upgraded listings don’t stand out as much anymore
4. Search Results – “New” listings have a red slash over the image.
5. Property Page – The layout of the media player has changed so images now scroll down rather than across.
6. Property Page – Open times are now in a container which stands out
7. Property Page – There is a large ad on the right of the main content area which is very hard not to notice.
8. Property Page – More preference to the agency, providing links to their For Sale, Rental and Sold listings.

There are probably other things I’ve missed but I’m sure you’ll point them out.

Late last month Realestateview undertook a small makeover to the residential section of their portal. What they’ve done is enhanced the usability of the site, provided extra content, improved the styling and overall, offer site browsers a better experience.

The key homepage improvements include:

1. Search – is now the main priority on the homepage allowing users to search for listings or agents. REV have also launched a search via map feature which can be selected from the homepage search.
2. Local Data – this is now a key part of the homepage and showcases a few graphs with medium prices. I’m surprised this does not link through to their property data section.
3. Expert View – useful information for vendors, property seekers and investors, links through to this section where site users can engage in forums.
4. My Searchers, My Shortlist and My Last Viewed – here REV have attempt to personalise the portal by providing information specific to site users.

Other changes within the site include removing the right sidebar for search results and on the property page they have added recent sales and suburb profile information which is sensible given the sold data they have access to. They’ve also moved away from the sidebar navigation and placed a secondary navigation across the top below the header. This provides a much cleaner and less cluttered experience for the user.

I think Realestateview has done a reasonable job with this upgrade and they’ll find users become a lot more engaged with the portal.

What are your thoughts?

Following on from the upgrade your listing feature launched by Thehomepage a few months ago, Realestate.com.au have added a similar feature to their listings. If you view any property on Realestate.com.au and click on the Show Page Visits link above the property images you will notice a lightbox popup, highlighting the Listing Performance for the property along with the Upgrade options available.

Users (most likely property vendors) are provided with bar graphs showing the increased views, engagement, sharing and enquiries generated from upgrading your listing. They can then view examples of  the various upgrade options with a call to action opening a lightbox popup to contact your agent.

Its this call to action which I find very alarming. REA know they can’t leave the agent out of this process so they maintain its the agents responsibility to upgrade the property. But unlike the Thehomepage, REA are capturing vendor details when the vendor fills in the form to contact the agent and by default the form has this checkbox ticked:

Send me my weekly campaign report on the performance of my property

This is very sneaky, as Realestate.com.au are capturing property vendor details against an agent’s authority and in most cases without the agent knowing.  It is anyone’s guess what Realestate.com.au will use these vendor details for or what product(s) they will push on them next.

Many agents are not aware of this upgrade section on REA and I’ve heard reports from agents being blasted by vendors after they’ve seen it, accusing the agent of not providing them with the best marketing solution. If REA had made agents aware of this section, then agents could have the opportunity to direct vendors here at the beginning of a marketing campaign.

Note: this agent has been randomly selected for illustrative purposes and was not contacted about this article.

For the first time in Australia, onthehouse.com.au has just released their automated valuation estimate solution on almost every property within Australia called ‘Guesstimates’.

‘Guesstimates’ are calculated using the Residex valuation technology, and are provided to consumers for free, along with other detailed and analytic information about properties in Australia.

CEO and Managing Director, Michael Fredericks states;

‘The provision of this powerful tool is another step in assisting Australians make informed decisions about property.’

But ‘Guesstimates’ are not just for the public, Michael further states;

‘The referral of inevitable queries by the public surrounding this content to local experts, our real estate agency clients, supports our mission to establish a more efficient and engaged marketplace for the consumption of traditional and innovative digital real estate products and services’

Located within the property values section on the website, onthehouse.com.au also encourages members to interact with ‘Guesstimates’ and adjust the values by providing additional information about their property.

Product Manager, Melissa D’Alonzo suggests that the onthehouse.com.au model of supplying the ‘Guesstimates’ solution and other free real estate content to the public is consistent with the leading online consumer portal in the United States, Zillow.com, which recently listed on the NASDAQ.

Zillow has recently overtaken previous market leading real estate portals, Realtor.com (online classifieds only), as the most visited real estate site within the US market.

The ‘Guesstimates’ are generated using the Residex valuation technology which is utilised and relied on by some of Australia’s leading banks.

Having said this, Melissa is keen to point out that the estimated valuations have been called ‘Guesstimates’ for a reason.

‘The point of “Guesstimates” is to provide useful content and tools to the consumer. The valuation technology behind the “Guesstimates” is traditionally used for bank valuation purposes, which is different to how a home is valued for sale. To meaningfully price a property for sale, more in-depth information and local knowledge is required – this is where real estate agents and professionals, as local experts, have skill sets that are invaluable.’

And ‘Guesstimates’ is just the first step. Melissa went on to say that the goal at onthehouse.com.au is to continue to provide real estate agents, property professionals and the general public with as much information about individual properties across the nation as possible.

‘We also want to keep growing this information resource (onthehouse.com.au) as the biggest and most vast source of information for Australian property’

And growing it is, with onthehouse.com.au recently reporting aggressive growth in web traffic over the past 12 months. They indicated there were almost 600,000 users on the online consumer platform (excluding agent sites) and over 1.2 million users on the Online Consumer Division.

It’s fantastic to see innovation and enhancements by Onthehouse as these widgets will provide a greater user experience for property seekers. But could this create headache for agents if vendors are unhappy with their Guesstimate?

The ACT Portal market is a little different to others across Australia in that neither Domain nor Realestate.com.au hold the number 1 portal spot. This claim is owned by Allhomes.com.au an independent ACT based company. What Allhomes have managed to do is cement the Allhomes brand into the minds of real estate agents and property seekers across the ACT. So much so, that some residents of Canberra do not recognise the Realestate.com.au or Domain brands.

Overcoming Australia’s largest real estate portals is quite an achievement and can be explained by two main factors:

Intensive Advertising – Since inception, Allhomes have heavily advertised through TV embedding their brand in the minds of ACT residents. The advertising campaign was based around a jingle and comedian Vince Chialo and was the same concept for a long period of time. Allhomes also advertise on billboards, buses and other mediums in the ACT.

Niche Market – Although Allhomes cater for properties in the ACT and surrounding NSW, their primary market is the ACT. The ACT is only a small geographic area which basically consists of Canberra, meaning it is relatively easy to reach the entire audience. Unlike for a national or state based portal, Allhomes entire audience reads the same paper, watches the same tv channels, catches the same buses and goes to the same locations. This has resulted in Allhomes achieving excellent exposure through cost effective advertising.

Allhomes’s position is that far ahead of REA and Domain that it’s been reported that both were looking into purchasing Allhomes last year, with one party close to a deal falling over in the eleventh hour.

The success of Allhomes is an Australia portal fairytale in how to launch and succeed with a nice real estate portal. However, like other leading portals, Allhomes continued to squeeze their clients increasing fees steadily over the years (they charge per listing rather than per office). They also have some strict terms in their contracts which agents must abide to including display the Allhomes logo on print advertising, sign boards, window displays and display all listings on Allhomes at a per listing price of  around $495.

These terms and gradual increase in prices led to the formation of a cooperative of ACT agents who launched their own real estate portal GetRealty.com.au in 2010.

The goal of GetRealty is not to make a profit but rather provide ACT agents with an alternative to Allhomes. They’re not about taking the number 1 spot away from Allhomes, rather to reduce Allhomes monopolistic position and force them to act more competitive.

GetRealty hasn’t achieved this yet but is certainly on the way as they have a large number of ACT franchise groups and independents joining the cooperative and supporting the portal. Membership to the cooperative is open to any licensed real estate offices located in the ACT and being a cooperative means all offices are provided with equal rights in the portal.

Around the same time GetRealty was launched, another ACT based portal Homes247.com.au entered the market as well. They too are providing ACT agents with further free alternatives to Allhomes.

SEEK Commercial is a business portal showcasing businesses and franchises for sale across Australia and is owned and operated by SEEK the largest job portal in Australia.

A few stats I found from back in July:

• SEEK Commercial holds #1 position for Google search term “business for sale”
• Potential buyers spend an average of 10 minutes on SEEK Commercial – more time for you to engage with them
• More than 6,300 genuine enquires about a business for sale were received in July 2011
• 744% YoY growth in Google impressions (July 2011)
• Over 100,000 business buyers visit SEEK Commercial monthly

Source: Nielsen

From their site you can read:

SEEK Commercial captures 50% of overall online market visits, when evaluating franchise and business for sale websites. This is two and a half more visits than our nearest competitor. This means more people choose SEEK Commercial to buy & sell their business.

- On average there are 110,000 visits to the site every month
- Our business buyers choose to spend more than 7 minutes2 on the site
- Every day, on average 1000 of enquiries are submitted to business advertisers

When I first heard about SEEK Commercial last year, I was sceptical as to whether a non real estate based online company could enter this space and successfully compete against Domainbusiness (Fairfax) and Realbusinesses (REA). But these guys have had an impact on the sector. In the eyes of business brokers, SEEK Commercial are as important as the other 2 portals and should be included in a successful marketing campaign.

They’ve been pushing advertising relatively hard along with paid SEM so this could explain some of their success. But if you think about the SEEK job portal then this could provide a major source of traffic for SEEK Commercial for users looking for business and franchises.

You’ll also notice that the search and way listings are displayed is a lot different than the other two portals. I feel the business portals operated by REA and Domain are styled on real estate portals, whereas the feeling and style of SEEK Commercial is more closely aligned to Seek.com.au and a job portal. This is very interesting, as from a site browser your experience is very different.

What’s also interesting about SEEK Commercial is they charge business brokers a pay per listing/bundle model rather than a flat monthly fee for all you can list. Pay per listing/bundle is how Seek.com.au charge for job ads. The integration of this into their business portal has proved to be a success.

I admire SEEK Commercial for taking a different approach and look forward to following their success.