You would be forgiven for thinking real estate is all online these days  it dominates the landscape that much and online the search engines are the first port of call for property related traffic.  Just after leaving Simon Baker confirmed that even realestate.com.au received massive traffic, somewhere over 30% from Google which is just one search engine.

Portals and particularly the top two paid portals absolutely saturate the search engine results by investing heavilly in SEO teams. They take the listings data of real estate agents and combine it with questionable tactics to create millions and millions of pages across multiple domains. This tactic effectively blocks real estate agent websites from search engine results thus starving us from direct enquiry.

These tactics by the portals is highly questionable and is evidence of the power they have developed in our industry. We are charged to display our listings on the portals and in return we are restricted to what we can display. We are not allowed to link back to our own website on each listing. We cant put contact details or phone numbers in the body text of the ad. Breach the rules and they will remove the property, do it too many times and they threaten to kick you off.  Any links they do give you and the portals insert ‘no-follow tags’ on the links back to the agent websites which tells the search engines to ignore our websites and that they have no value.

They justify that enquiry by charging higher and higher monthly fees but the problem in this relationships are more than the monthly subscription charges. also a death of thousand cuts it goes further than that with the portals undertaking lead generation schemes whereby they intercept sellers on the site and sell those leads back to agents at inflated rates. The traffic that agents have helped create is being used to promote private listings on Domain and now even realestate.com.au.

I believe that Realestate.com.au would generate more traffic than all the large national real estate groups combined. Agents have effectively given control of their listing enquiries to the portals and now seller leads to two large media companies who have taken every opportunity and they will not give up that control easily.

Real estate groups are also suffering as agents around the country have rather cut their ties with head office rather than their realestate.com.au and/or domain.com.au subscriptions. Joining a large real estate franchise or marketing group once respresented a great differentiator from other agencies in your area. If you listen to the portal sales team the only way to differentiate your agency now is to pay more and more for feature properties, feature all, brochure all and all the other add on products. Real Estate groups are seen to be providing an ever diminishing value to their franchisees and members.

As real estate agents we have given them our listing data and our money willingly for years but the level of antipathy from agents seems to rise year on year at pace equal to the price rise.

With the 2012 realestate.com.au price rise just about to be released rumours are rife that its going to be the biggest one yet. So more and more real estate agents are going to be asking themselves the magical question more than ever – Can I survive without a realestate.com.au subscription?

Cutting the umbilical cord to the subscription based portals is always going to be difficult especially since we have essentially been starved of enquiry on our own websites by the SEO teams at the portals. Cutting that link would be extremely difficult and disasterous without an extremely effective e-marketing strategy in place covering SEO, PPC, Social Media and Email Marketing.

Australian real estate agents are not alone in asking if they can survive without syndicating their content to a national portal. In the USA agents have been cutting that cord from syndicating to their national portals. Edina Realty and Shorewest Realty in Wisconsin were among the first but the one group that has recently got the USA market buzzing is ARG. Abbott Realty Group (ARG) recently announced that they will no longer syndicate listings to third-party aggregators like Trulia, Zillow and Realtor.com.

Watch this video from ARG as they justify their decision to cut the umbilical cord. I think they do a great job in explaining their decision.

Agents, after watching the video ask yourself – Can I survive without a realestate.com.au/Domain subscription? and if the answer is no, what do you have to do to be able to answer yes?

Actually the real question you should be asking yourself is can you afford not to be working towards this goal?

The essential elements of  Domain’s email to PropertyNow, is that Domain intend a price increase (after approximately 6 years at the current rate) of something in the order of 53,000% ( based on the current clients using PropertyNow)  If the calculation of the percentage increase were based solely on new clients to PropertyNow from February onward, then the increase is still in the order of 3,000%.

PropertyNow has naturally put its point of view to Domain and to the credit of it’s management, negotiations may take place. I will comment further, but for now here is the letter sent to my business (PropertyNow) on December 15th 2012.

Start of email communication:-

Changes to you Domain advertising rates

We are writing to let you know about some changes to your Advertising Sales Agreement with Domain.com.au.

Ordinarily, we require all private advertisers on Domain.com.au to take out advertisements on a single buy basis. However, we recognise that you are a high-volume private advertiser and we have therefore created a special product to allow you to use Domain.com.au on a subscription basis.

Effective from 1 February 2012, your account will be migrated on to a Domain Flexi Subscription, which means that your rates will change to the applicable monthly State-based subscription rate set out in the table below plus a flat rate of $220.00 incl. GST per Sale listing and $165 incl. GST per Rental Listing.

Each listing will be in Priority Placement format for the first 2 weeks on Domain.com.au.

End text content of Domain email:

PropertyNow’s Viewpoint

From the point of view of PropertyNow, such an increase is the equivalent of filling ones petrol tank today for $60 and then going to the petrol station tomorrow and being charged $1800. The net result will be that PropertyNow will be forced to no longer offer Domain to its clients. This obviously impacts upon hundreds of individual property sellers (eventually many thousands) very directly.

PropertyNow intends to discuss this with the General Manager of Domain, while reserving the right to once again appeal to the ACCC to investigate a potentially anti-competitive practice. Propertynow will also explain to Domain management that it is at error in defining the nature of the PropertyNow business.

It is interesting to myself and no doubt would be to the ACCC, that PropertyNow will be charged massively more than other agents, despite charging its own clients a smaller fee than those agents. I would have thought this to be the absolute definition of an anti competitive practice.

I am interested to hear the thoughts of  Business2 readers in relation to Domains intentions, which were initally mooted back in January 2011.

Andrew Blachut

Director and Licensee PropertyNow

www.propertynow.com.au

The directory is powered by another Fairfax owned company, OMG a digital advertising company. OMG have over 30,000 Australia domain names and active websites, with 60 + of them being key industry categories. A  few examples include:

• Realestateagent.com.au
• Painters.com.au
• Lawyers.com.au

With specific industry based domain names all running a directory powered from a central database, makes OMG quite successful at connecting customers with their client’s businesses.

Businesses can pay as little as $19.95 pm for a basic subscription on 1 site through to $97 pm for a premium subscription on 20 industry sites. Each business receives their own page which displays the usual business details including description, images, operational hours, testimonials and reviews.

From Domain’s perspective the Directory adds another aspect to their portal and an additional feature for property seekers. It’s also a good experience using the directory, as the layout is quite functional and the predictive search is very intuitive.

Fairfax often state they can deliver better results for their clients and this integration of their two brands is example of how they can drive enquiries to their businesses.

I’m hoping Domain can incorporate this directory into their real estate agent search which will provide users with a much more useful and enjoyable experience when searching and comparing agents.

Domain last week released it’s first entry into the realm of iPad apps and it appears to be an awesome app at that!

The app is of course available free and bears no resemblance to the boring, slightly useful but very slow iPhone apps released previously by Domain and REA. This app makes searching for property for sale, rent, sold and share listings intuitive, fast and interesting.

The user interface is map based and you’re immediately greeted with a map of your current surroundings (presuming you allow the use of location services on your iPad) along with the properties around you for sale marked on the map and listed down the right hand side of the screen. Each listing is shown on the map with a location marker and properties not showing an address simply come up in the property summary area. Showing property locations on a map can sometimes be very confusing when you have say 10 units for sale in the one complex. Many systems will simply have 10 place markers and most will become hidden and therefore useless. Fairfax has addressed this by showing on the one place marker how many properties are available at that location and by pressing on the location marker you are given a list of the addresses and prices with a link to each property.

You can change to search for rentals, sold listings or share accommodation at the top of the screen and can refine listings via price range, features, property type, land size or inspection details at the bottom left of the screen. By pressing twice on the property summary a detail page opens up covering the map with all property details much the same as the property detail page on the web and you can save multiple properties as favourites to reference again later. From the property detail page you make an email enquiry and view photo’s and floor plans.

This app will help to make agents uploading listings without addresses a thing of the past. With tools for sorting by inspections and the ability to genuinely follow listings around the streets you like, agents will now; more than ever before need to ensure full listing details are uploaded to guarantee the highest possible exposure to buyers/renters. Possibly for the first time, a buyer/renter could plan their day house hunting directly from mobile technology.

I love the layout of the user interface and if I was having an app designed to showcase our listings today I’d be replicating a lot of what is in this app (there’s a hint for Peter & Ryan). The app seems to be genuinely optimized for displaying results on the iPad; it’s fast, clear and eye catching.

What are you going  to come out with REA? It better be good because Domain has a great head start here!

You can download the app on iTunes or visit it here.

RPData have been working on a valuation system similar to US portal Zillow in the USA where they provide a valuation to consumers.  Naturally this has upset real estate agents and valuers alike around the country. There are a couple of differences though but the primary one is that Zillow clearly identifies that the prices they provide are just estimates by calling them “Zestimates”.  Statistical guesses if you will.

It seems that RPData has removed the references to the word valuation since their launch but they still imply it with the claim ”Want to know what a home is really worth?”

This AVM (Automated Valuation Model) application is a feature on the RPData facebook fan page and allows anybody to track 3 properties for 6 months.

Really Worth??  …are they sure??.. because they contradict themselves when you start  using it with this additional information later in the process.

 This estimate is computer generated and is not a professional appraisal. It uses complex modeling which includes property attributes, recent sales information and other data elements to reach an estimate of the property value and possible value range. The model also provides an estimate of how confident the value tracker is likely to be based on the availability of key data elements such as the attributes of the home and depth of recent sales data.

This estimate depends on information relating to the subject property and other properties which may be incomplete or wrong, negatively impacting the accuracy of this estimate. This estimate is based on one or more statistical models and assumptions, which may not capture all relevant factors or features of the subject property. This estimate also does not take into account the potential impact of external factors (such as a change in the economy, future planned infrastructure or environmental contamination on the subject property), which may affect the value of the subject property. Accordingly, this estimate should not be relied upon by you or any other person, including when making any decision in connection with this or any other property.

We at RP Data value your feedback and our Data Integrity Team are on hand to correct any property data. Please send us an email with the property address and its full attributes to Customercare@rpdata.com and we will assist you.

You just have to look at the recent Optus decision to see just how outrageous claims in marketing hype cannot be protected by the fine print. RPData’s competitors, Pricefinder and APM quickly distanced themselves from such tactics.

The AFR article also covers most of the old ground from the previous two articles for those that missed them plus raises a few issues that we have covered on Business2 already such as the success the ACCC has had with realestate.com.au after complaints by the  agent assisted websites.

More interesting though is the reference to the Redfin model that Ben raises in the article.

Just like I did in the last article on the ACCC investigation  Ben draws similarity with how realestate.com.au and Redfin (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redfin) both have contact with the seller to sell advertising on their portal.  But Ben takes it a little further and more in line with a persistent rumour doing the rounds though the industry at the moment that states that realestate.com.au is looking more directly at the Redfin model, specifically the whole idea of commission sharing. This is of course countered by the numerous statements by Greg Ellis recently that REA will never claim some of the sales commission, an obvious response to the rumours.

When I called Redfin a Portal in the ACCC article, ex REA CEO Simon Baker responded in te comments with :

Your comparison to Redfin is misleading. Redfin is a real estate brokerage (agency) that primarily uses the internet to source leads.

They are not a portal.

They have a discount model and are attempting to change how agents in the US approach selling and marketing real estate.

Redfin do not fit into any box easily in the USA let alone here in Australia.  Whilst I agree with Simon that Redfin technically are not a portal there is far more to it than that as they are a hybrid solution and their offerings differ on location.

They run a website featuring listings from other agents similar to a potal but they also show property and charge commission…  BUT only in just 16 metro areas only… Outside of those areas, and that does leave a lot of the US, they have partner agencies that they generate leads for on their website. The partner agent only pays 15% to Redfin for that lead if they make a sale.

In areas outside of those 16 metro areas I would argue that they are more like a portal than not.   See for yourself at http://www.redfin.com/neighborhood/10157/CA/San-Diego/Loma-Portal  (the word portal in the URL was not lost on me either!)

Personally I cant see how that could easily fit into the Australian market at all. I believe that the strategists at REA would have considered every possibility including this, because I know I would have if it was my company,  I don’t think it has any legs.

A typical real estate transaction in the USA has a sellers agent and a buyers agent for 3% each, totalling a commission of 6%.  Redfin represents the buyer who effectively gets some of the commission back in savings similar to how Refund Home Loans works here in Australia.

Let’s face it, I believe that the moment they took their first listing authority it would take only a few days for 10,000 agents to remove every listing on the portal.

The article also raises something that an anonymous poster, Deepthroat alluded to in previous articles and that was the meeting of Victorian agents at REIV headquarters about the revolt against REA…

REIV cheif Enzo seemed very quick to add that he has not been a part of the meetings and the REIV only provided the meeting rooms as they often do.  Why was he not involved…  because Enzo is the CEO of RealEstateView.com.au if he was involved in discussions you can bet that REA would be calling in the regulators.

As I have said many times in the past since I started to contribute here in 2007 , real estate agents need to control our data and not let companies like Realestate.com.au, RPData and Onthehouse use it from their own benefits as clearly their monetisation models are at our expense.

With the debates starting to focus on RPData I am more convinced than ever that an REI portal website is not THE solution.  I dont think it will do any harm, and I am sure that it can only place more and more pressure on the top two portals but the key to Project Rebellion is control of the data itself, not just sold data, but all data.   If Realestate.com.au, Domain and the data companies did not have unfettered access and the right to sell and trade it amongst themselves then these problems would simply not exist.

It seems that the campaign in Victoria to withhold sales data might have had an unintended victim as agents are not advising of Auction results according to an article in the Sunday Age.  This issue itself  is not new though as if you compare the various Auction Clearence rates quoted by some companies they never seem to agree. Until the regulators legislate that public auction results be made public this will be an ongoing issue.

We should start to get an indication of what the real estate groups and REI’s ase  planning as a response soon.

In a followup article to the Front Page Project Rebellion article, Ben Hurley from the Australian Financial Review has published a new story on an ongoing investigation by the ACCC into the activities of RealEstate.com.au and to a lesser extent Domain.com.au.

Questions directed at some of Australia’s leading real estate groups have seemed to focus on excessive price rises (see 1,2, 3 and 4) of realestate.com.au and the effectiveness of competition in the real estate online classified space.

Simon Baker, the ex CEO and substantial shareholder in REA has made some interesting comments on this blog recently regarding realestate.com.au prices :

If the franchise groups were serious about competing with realestate.com.au or at least providing a competitive offering, wouldnt they first start internally and attempt to organise group buying of REA subscriptions for their franchisees?

Imagine if all Ray White or LJ Hooker offices got together and negotiated as one for their REA subscriptions (and additional products). I think they would get a better price.

and

the most likely innovation will be suburb based pricing where there is significant differentiation between suburbs in the price paid.

and the most suprising comment from Simon was his take on add on products

The more interesting question is why do people have to buy the premium products? Do they really add value?

Does anybody else find that a little strange?

With all state Real Estate Institutes and the REIA meeting in Perth during the week strategies were again discussed to create a national industry run portal.  David Airey commented on this blog prior to the meeting :

“Sadly the REIA ailed to gain national support from most state institutes to launch or run a national industry owned portal. That’s a sad indictment of the politics that used to exist and allowed the commercial sites to grow around our industry at our expense.”

and

“I’m on the record on many occasions criticising REI’s for this intransigence and for not listening to members.”

But the current momentum in the industry may have changed some minds as all indications are that this roadblock may finally be pulled down and our REI’s finally taking a role that many members thought they would never see and that is the operation of a national industry controlled portal.  But taking on the might of REA would not be easy and one of the strategies being discussed is using the REI’s to feed to the commercial portals with delay of say 3 or 7 days. This would allow REI portals at a state and national level to promote something like “Find it first on  xyz.com.au”.

As this plays out behind closed doors the campaign to withhold sold data from  realestate.com.au is gaining some serious momentum and reports from small and large national real estate groups and portal pushers continue to roll in.

One side effect of withholding sold data from the likes of REA is that data companies like RPData who has paid substantially for this information feed from REA. RPData and other similar companies provide essential data services back to agents but also provide market analysis and review consumed by the nations media. With a strong national portal in place it’s expected that RPData will move to establish arrangements direct with the institutes bypassing REA entirely.

Another thing Ben Hurley has reported on today is the presents and gifts that Realestate.com.au is showering on their biggest spending clients.  With the real estate market slowdown agents have looked to reduce discretionary spending. REA have used things like dinner at high end restaurants, State of Origin games, Business Class flights and even brand new iPads to secure the relationship.  I personally have heard of a sales team being flown interstate to watch the AFL when discussions of reducing their yearly spend was raised.

Realestate.com.au has over 10,000 real estate agents throughout Australia and whilst many agents  spend around $1,000 a month there are offices who spend 10, 20 and even 30  times that amount which is primarily funded by Vendor Paid Advertising (VPA).  Realestate.com.au’s campaign to increase the share of wallet has been right around the country but it has been particularly successful in Melbourne where they have less competition from Domain and high dollar auction campaigns are popular .  As an example the Premier Property option offered by realestate.com.au can cost an owner well over $2,000 per month.

Many in the industry showed increasing concern towards REA’s motives when a video surfaced showing their intention to market direct to buyers and sellers. Check out the video yourself, particularly from 9 min 30sec of this video.

In response Greg Ellis issued a written response which seemed  to contradict itself from paragraph to paragraph. Why his response was not circulated widely by email is unknown but it might have something to do with the fact its easier to watch the video by clicking on the link if it was sent by email. I doubt to many would have typed in that long url.

In the letter he claimed that it was incorrectly reported that he wanted to cut agents out of the loop but then went on to state:

The development of site functionality that allows prospective buyers and sellers to access or claim property information that can be accessed by agents so they can cost effectively identify a new pool of leads.

I am sure I am not the only one that reads this sans spin to be that they are going to escalate their use of agents sold data, listing data and valuer general data to provide additional products to buyers and sellers direct and then sell those leads to agents…. as “cost effectively ” as realestate.com.au can do of course!

In an interesting side note REA reps have now started to sit down with salespeople and sellers in their homes to pitch $2000 a month Premier Property and other options in the marketplace. This appears to be very similar to the Redfin Portal in the US who have a team of salespeople on the ground in capital cities. The primary difference is that Redfin salespeople also present property and take a cut in the commission, something REA have repeatedly claimed they will not do.

REA’s dealings with the ACCC lately has not been good and has seen the scrapping of the Private Listing Policy which finally allows private sellers easy access to list on realestate.com.au.

The drought of sold data would certainly have some sort of effect on future revenue streams and to a certain extent current products but a successful ACCC action and a industry controlled competitor together would provide bad news for Australia’s largest and most successful real estate portal.

It’s going to be a very interesting few months as this all plays out but if it was bad news for REA it’s terrible timing for newcomer Onthehouse. A strong industry portal is not going to be good news for them.  Their original investor document and  subsequent prospectus highlighted the monetisation of client agents data.

The underwriter (and partial owner) took it a step further in their report when they stated :

“Low integration risk, with ongoing data feeds. PortPlus and Console databases are ready to be “plugged in” into OTH’s database. In addition, both businesses do not sell their software – they license it to each customer on a rolling basis. As such, they retain ownership and control over the software and its intellectual property. With the appropriate terms and conditions in place with clients, each business is licensed to access and upload the content that is captured by the software”

Customers of Portplus and Console are already questioning when the terms and conditions are going to change and just where their data is going to end up. I expect their competition will start to raise the issue and use this against them when pitching for business.  Even though the float was over subscribed, in their first month of trading the shares dropped to as low as 60c which must be a huge concern for the original operators of Portplus and Console who are restricted in selling many of their shares for quite some time.

Certainly, the “Noise” is getting louder by the day!   Join in and tell us what you think about the latest developments.

I have just realised that tomorrow the 17th of Feb (or that could be today, or even yesterday, depending on when you read this!) is my 10th  anniversary of having a presence on the internet. The day I uploaded my first website www.underdownunder.com.au for my business at the time, a backpacker tour company in Tasmania.

What a Pathetic thing to remember ,I hear you say! Does he have it in his diary? Did he get a Tattoo to mark the occasion? No I didn’t.

What I did was to go to the Internet Archive, Wayback Machine! What a fantastic service. The Internet Archive Wayback Machine allows you to enter a Web address and see what the site looked like over the years. You can select dates of major changes to sites over the years, right back to 1996.

Not only is this site a lot of fun, but it can be a very useful tool in analysing web presence history. Of course, besides my own site, the first name I entered was Google. Here we find the first loaded page for The Internet Giant, some might say God. Nov 11th 1998. And a Link page that is very basic, and says…

Welcome To Google

Google Search Engine Prototype

Might-work-some-of-the-time-prototype-that is much more up to date.

And have a look at the first search page…

Everything they are now is there, then. A solid foundation, that has not been compromised. The Logo is instantly recognisable and the function of the site is the same. Basic Principles adhered to and they are number 1. Yahoo, a similar result. From their first page you can see their direction albeit exactly what they are today, a bit of everything for everybody.

Now, try finding Facebook’s earliest incarnations of what we have today. They have blocked it from showing. Does this indicate a fundamental flaw in their character? (or ours?)

It’s interesting also to see the evolution of our largest Real Estate sites as well, RealEstate.com.au and Domain.com.au.

Anyway I won’t go into anymore musings over the many conclusions that could be drawn over timelines and changes we see, you can do that. Have a play around with it, you’ll have fun.

Or maybe you will think I am pathetic!!!

The Google Adplanner service allows advertisers more information on popular websites including demographic and traffic information.  Now whilst I don’t want to advertise on any of these sites we can still use the information to compare the portals and major brands in our industry and the results throw up some predictable and not so predictable results at the same time.

This article will feature a focus on Portals but the followup article will focus on the major real estate groups.

Real Estate Portals

In Australia there really is three levels of portals based upon traffic levels. Tier 1 includes Realestate.com.au and Domain.com.au. Tier 2 includes Realestateview.com.au, Homehound.com.au and Myhome.com.au.   The last tier covers everybody else.

Traffic

When you start looking at the results of the top two portals against the rest a few things really stands out . Both Domain and Realestate.com.au are far superior across all metrics  but of particular note is the pages per visit and time on site statistics.

The clearest way to demonstrate this difference is by comparing the time visitors spend on each site. This really ignores traffic counts and looks at how each site engages the visitor and keeps them on the site. Generally the longer a session time the better. Visitors to Realestate.com.au spend nearly 16:20 on the site every visit in comparison to the industry sponsored Realestateview which can only manage to hang on to visitors for  7:50 .

Another metric that really shows the difference between the top two tiers is the number of visits each visitor has to the site. With Realestate.com.au the average visitors returns 8.5 times against Realestateview.com.au just under 4 times.  This shows the effectiveness of the email alerts, property brochures and the general desire for visitors to return to continue their property search.

Google’s statistics  also confirms that the Property Seeker stats trotted out by RealEstate.com.au are totally exaggerated  but we all knew that didn’t we?.  We have already discussed this  a number of times but Google stats show the relationship between  real people and unique visitors based on cookies is about 4:10 which means their claims of reaching as many as 6 million “Property Seekers is out by nearly 4 million.   I guess if you are going to exaggerate you might as well do it with some gusto.

Demographics

The last thing that really stands out between the top two tiers is their audience demographic. All portals have a predominant female audience but both Realestate.com.au and Domain.com.au attract significantly higher levels (both at 43%) of males as a percentage of total visitors whereas the second tier all have  just 38% of all visitor males.

Realestate.com.au

Domain.com.au

RealestateView.com.au

Homehound.com.au

Myhome.com.au

Despite their similarities there are still significant differences between realestate.com.au and domain.  Domain.com.au’s audience is not only better educated but also has significantly higher  household income.

Realestate.com.au

Domain.com.au

RealestateView.com.au

Homehound.com.au

Myhome.com.au

Despite keeping visitors longer and having them return more often the trend for 2010 is not a great one for the Tier 1 portals.  Realestateview.com.au , Homehound.com.au and Myhome.com.au have all made significant increases in their traffic over in 2010 whilst Domain has stayed fairly stable and Realestate.com.au has dropped back significantly.

This loss in traffic  started with the new site but has since stabilised. Overall though REA has dropped more monthly traffic from their peak in 2010 than all the Tier 2 Portals combined.  Despite significant gains by the tier 2 portals percentage wise realestate.com.au is that far out in front that the gap seems hardly dented. The real damage will be caused if the trend continues and if it does it will  make some people very nervous at REA as they have nothing to gain and everything to lose.

Tier 1

Market Reach

At the top of the article the total reach against all Australian internet users for each site was looked at.  When you filter the audience down to those who are looking for real estate on the net the market reach becomes far more impressive.

What is incredible here is that homehound and realestateview.com.au are really closing in on Domain as far as market reach is concerned.  With realestateview.com.au recently purchasing myhome.com.au they can start putting pressure on myhome if the can add their traffic to the mix and not lose it.  Realestateview.com.au will also need to find out what they are doing wrong with session times, make their site more sticky and increase visitor loyalty.

So no matter what metric you use Realestate.com.au is by far the number 1 portal in Australia. It gets more traffic, more repeat business and is more engaging than any of its competition.  So why they try and fake their Property Seeker stats is beyond me.

(edit:  Had to fix up the Domain Education graph as it was pointing to the REA one)

Let me make this clear, I think it is great to see more competition and realestateview.com.au have certainly ramped up efforts in recent times, however there are still a number of questions that they need to address.

As realestateview.com.au are pushing ‘industry owned’, they will need to be open and transparent with the industry.

1. Ownership: As we have seen in the past with REA and the previous owners of MyHome, the issue of ownership is important and realestateview.com.au will need to make it clear who owns what % of this entity.

2. Fees: What are the basic fees and what controls are in place now and what will be these fees in 10 years time? What controls do you have in place on these fees?

3. Competition: As an industry site are you going to have your members compete against each other for the search results positions? Will there be multipler levels of memberships and if so why?

4. Visitors: Costs aside, one thing REA and Domain do very well is bring actual benefits to their members through property inquiries, how are you going to address this?

So should you support Realestateview.com.au? In a nutshell, if you are happy with the terms, cost to benefit and if there are some strict guarantees in place, then yes, however there are still some serious questions that this site needs to answer.

Technology wise, they need to take some big steps, remember, feeding to sites has a cost from most feed suppliers.

In my humble opinion myhome.com.au and homehound.com give around the same return as realestateview.com.au (enquiries are all that matter) and they are free, so I just cannot see how they can justify any costs at all until they can give a return and put some guarantees in place. Otherwise all you are doing is building up another portal who can hurt your wallet later.

We need competition to keep domain and REA in check and being cheaper doesn’t cut it, you have to provide value for money and time!

I am all for competition, but at this stage realestateview.com.au are asking more questions than they are answering.

Property Portal Watch author Alice Allen announced that “Listings from For Sale By Owner portal buymyplace.com.au have now been added to domain.com.au,”

For years now I’ve wondered why domain.com.au would use an agent subscription based model and position themselves in the marketplace as a real estate industry portal who also allows Private Sellers to upload onto their site for a nominal fee?

They seem to want to have their cake and eat it too. But unfortunately, I think this decision to upload listings from buymyplace.com.au will highlight their strategy to have a foot in both camp. It could easily be interpreted by agents that they are stabbing them in the back or biting the very hand that feeds them.

In my book, in the real estate portal world you’re either one thing or you’re another. And if domain.com.au are going to take further subscription payments from agents then they need to decide.

Domain.com.au you’re either an industry portal or you’re a Private Seller portal. I don’t believe that you can continue to be both and remain relevant into the future.

On top of all this, the timing of this decision couldn’t come at a worse time, especially after the extensive changes that have just been made to the realestate.com.au site.

The new changes to realestate.com.au haven’t been overwhelmingly popular with users and agents.

Without the benefit of statistics, but from reading lots of the feedback via social network sites it appeared that domain.com.au may have actually made up some ground on REA in the past few weeks as many property seekers jumped across to use domain’s site.

I’m not sure whose decision this was but I don’t think it’s going to go over too well within the real estate community.