homesales.com.au one of Australia’s fastest growing real estate sites, has topped the 100,000 listings mark.
Capping a year where the carsales.com Ltd owned site grew by more than 750%, the 100,000 for sale listings mark was passed in December 2011^.
2011 was an important year for homesales.com.au. It welcomed many new agency groups, introduced improved functionality and, in addition to topping the 100,000 listings mark, in December homesales.com.au also ‘soft’ launched its rental site. Now with more than 10,000 rental listings, the new service adds even more value to homesales.com.au’s consumer and agent offering.
Most recently (in late January), homesales.com.au also released in-depth property data within its property details pages. The data is provided by Residex which has been providing data to Australian consumers and the finance sector for more than a decade.
One of the unique data products offered at homesales.com.au is the Street Statistics#. Shown within homesales.com.au’s property details pages, Street Statistics provide low, medium and high values for properties within the advertised street. homesales.com.au also delivers suburb-by-suburb information including medium weekly rents, rental yields and demographical information ranging from average household income right through to birth place.
General Manager, Rhett Dallwitz says
It was an exciting milestone for the business to pass the 100,000 listings mark.
To reach this volume within such a short period of time shows the commitment we have to making homesales.com.au a success. Not only from within the business also from the wider real estate industry.
Mr Dallwitz continued:
homesales.com.au is focused on more than just a six-figure sum of listings. Our new rental site is an important launch for many Australian consumers.
We’ve also leveraged our current relationship with Residex to offer our consumers information not available on other online real estate websites.
And we have more launches and enhancements in store. 2012 promises to be another exciting year for the brand as we release a suite of new online offerings and niche products
Backed by Australia’s number one automotive online classifieds group, carsales.com Ltd, the homesales.com.au brand is able to leverage the companies 20+ online sites and 15+ million user sessions** each month.
Ajay Bhatia, Director of homesales.com.au and CIO of carsales.com Ltd said:
By engaging with consumers we are able to develop user friendly products with new cutting edge technologies leveraging the expertise of the carsales.com Ltd team. This year will bring strong growth to the homesales brand as we further mark our foot print within the real estate industry
With more than 3500 real estate agents listing on the site, including the majority of Australian real estate franchised brands, homesales.com.au provides agents an excellent opportunity to promote their listings and brand to a new network audience.
homesales.com.au is a free-to-list website for licensed real estate agents with no lock-in periods. Agents can list either via the 30+ bulk-uploader providers feeding through to the site or by manually listing via the easy to use manual uploading system.
Agents wishing to list on the site can do so by calling 1300 291 914 or emailing support@homesales.com.au.
About homesales.com.au
homesales.com.au launched in 2009 as a dedicated residential real estate site. Since then the site has grown to feature Australia-wide inventory, including listings from more than 3500 agents providing premium exposure to a vendor-rich and location specific markets.
About carsales.com Ltd.
carsales.com Ltd listed on the ASX in 2009 and is the largest online automotive, motorcycle and marine classifieds business in Australia, attracting more Australians interested in buying or selling cars, motorcycles and boats than any other classified group of websites. carsales.com Ltd’s first revenues were reported in the financial year 1998. The company is one of only a few to have made the BRW Fast 100 for five consecutive years. carsales.com.au is Australia’s number one automotive website and in May 2011 attracted 9.2 million user sessions *. The Carsales Network of websites includes CarPoint.com.au, discountnewcars.com.au, quicksales.com.au, homesales.com.au, Redbook.com.au and motorcycle, boat, truck and machinery websites. The network boasted in excess of 15.2 million user sessions** in May 2011.
* Source: Nielsen Online Market Intelligence, Automotive Publishers May 2011 **Source: Nielsen Online Site Census, Carsales Network Aggregate, May 2011 ^ homesales.com.au internal reporting, Jan 2012.
# Not available for Victorian properties
6 Comments
Mike McCarthy
Disappointing to see what appears to be an “infomercial” for homesales.com.au.
Why is the industry giving this site any oxygen? They are actively promoting and seeking for sale by owner, which is not in the interests of home sellers as they often end up under-selling the property through lack of marketing and market knowledge. The saving they make in paying commission to an agent is usually more than lost in the price they achieve for their home.
Great model for cars (although many car dealers might argue with that) as it is a far simpler transaction and negotiation. . . not so great for houses and their owners.
Sell Property
I agree with you about the article being a little like an infomercial Mike. It read very much like a sales pitch didn’t it?
But Mike, the statement you made regarding fsbo’s is not backed up by any statistical proof from you….and to my knowledge there is none. Anecdotally, I have seen fsbo’s and agent assisted sales, out perform agent sales at least as often as I have witnessed the reverse. Getting the right price at the beginning and the best marketing reach, is infinitely more important than the mode of sale.
In relation to homesales, their results are ok but really kinda below par I think…. considering the backing they have.
TheHomePage looks promising to me, although it’s too early to tell as we have only been using them for a few weeks. I haven’t personally used homesales for our clients, so I can’t say how well they perform in the lead creation Department. My comment about their sub par performance really relates to the listing numbers which at 100,000 isn’t very impressive. TheHomePage already has 130,000 listings I am told. Even PropertyNow has about 4,000 which is fine considering we haven’t invited agents on in any meaningful way yet and have zero paid advertising or telemarketing departments.
Of the contenders who might be portal game changers I can’t really rate homesales very highly at this point in time. Its a good site but should be doing much better.
Andrew Blachut
PropertyNow
Sal Espro
So, yet another successful real estate website fragmenting the marketplace.
Does this benefit buyers, sellers, agents? (Stats, schmatts, I always say!)
Pleeeeaaaase, can someone can up with another model so this old bloke can die less discontented!
Roger Newcombe
http://www.google.com/trends/?q=domain.com.au,+realestate.com.au,+realestateview.com.au,+homesales.com.au
Go to wear the party is at – In footy they call it Back to basics – Keep it simple?
this link tells the whole story
Glenn Batten
Umm.. thats not the whole story… not by a long way…
The first mistake is you did not restrict the stats just to Australia and the result changes dramatically when you do
http://www.google.com/trends/?q=domain,+realestate.com.au,+realestateview.com.au,+homesales.com.au&ctab=0&geo=au&date=all&sort=1
In fact these stats show Domain clawing back realestate.com.au during 2011
But remember that this is just searches.. There are several problems using searches to compare the portals and even more using the specific queries you selected..
Realestate.com.au would tell you that many people dont search for realestate.com.au at all, they just go straight to the website..
Domain and realestateview would tell you that most people searching for domain and realestateview would not search the full domain name.. they would just search the words domain or realestateview not domain.com.au and realestateview.com.au
Different states will provide you vastly different results. In NSW Domain dominates the searches
http://www.google.com/trends/?q=domain,+realestate.com.au,+realestateview.com.au,+homesales.com.au&ctab=0&geo=au&geor=aus.nsw&date=all&sort=1
The real test though is actual traffic. Across the board REA still dominates but it is not by as much as your suggest graph would have you believe..
http://trends.google.com/websites?q=domain.com.au%2C+realestate.com.au%2C+realestateview.com.au%2C+homesales.com.au&geo=AU&date=all&sort=1
Unfortunatley we cant break down traffic into states… and if you could I suggest you would find that different states would have vastly different results.
Roger Newcombe
yeah good side move … in a couple of markets the 2 majors clearly dominate.
However … consumers seem to have confidence in the 2 major brands – 1 especially –
what is the point of these mediocre property portals?
Invest where the audience is and maximise your exposure… simple really ..
http://www.propertyportalwatch.com/2012/03/worlds-most-dominant-portals-global-leaderboard/
http://www.propertyportalwatch.com/2012/02/top-10-australian-property-portals/