Do you think realestate.com.au is scared?

Latest news from the industry...

OnTheHouse (asx oth, who own Residex) rejected a takeover bid from Macquarie. They're instead teaming up with realestateview which is a sales / rentals search provider.

Not sure if they're good enough to knock realestate.com.au off of their monopoly perch, but glad to see someone having a shot.

 

I quite like realestateview. With reiwa in WA and realestateview, re.com.au is no longer my default property search site.

 

It would take a lot of effort and a lot of financial muscle power to knock REA off their perch. As terrible as they are. many people have no issue using their site on a day to day basis and see no reason to change their behaviour.

 

Altavista was the default search engine before google. Netscape had about 80% of market share of browsers until Internet explorer. I'm saying that REA will be replaced any time soon, just that it is possible for something to come along that replaces a market leader in a short amount of time.

 

They would have to market a similar and better product for a cheaper price. If anything it might make re.com.au drop their prices

 

Allhomes is the only website people look at in Canberra... It's slowly gaining traction in other markets.

 

Coming from someone who has been working on something like this for a year or so, I would have to say that it has been sufficiently difficult. In order to actually entice people, you need to definitely have more listings than REA. That way, you can safely tell people that you are able to find listings on your site that they wont be able to find on REA. Everything else is secondary.

 

I applied for an agents account and never heard back from them so they must not be too keen.

It must be a difficult balance marketing the site towards readers (buyers / tenants) and listers (agents / owners)? Both sides don't want to go there unless the other is.

 

Spot on. It's a game of chicken and egg which we have been playing for awhile now. Agents see no need to switch as you can never provide them the traction that the big boys can provide and users are simply too comfortable with the way things are.

 

Real Estate | Houses & Property for Sale | realestateVIEW

just like switching from Telstra to iinet, I am now switching over to realestateview.com.au , there you go..

 

Yes. I own some REA Group shares.

 

The format of realestateview looks like zillow in USA.

 

Realestateview.com.au is an offshoot of one of the two majors iirc.

So why panic?

 

REA's main competitor (Nationally) is Domain if they are scared of anyone it's Domain. Domain have been number 1 in NSW for quite a while (REA) a very close 2nd, and they are giving REA a real run in VIC. The other states are more fragmented in terms of who owns the listings market etc.

By the way allhomes.com.au is owned by Domain.

This is also an interesting read on the topic Untitled Document

 

It's only been owned by domain for a few years. It was started by a Canberra real estate agent 15-20 years ago. It has only spread to other cities since domain bought it.

I think the advantage it had over the other sites is the extra information it included - you could see prices previously paid for each property. You could see how old the listing was etc.

They still do this for Canb properties, but have noticed it's not included on their listings in other states.

Other advantage was anyone could list their property, didn't have to be an agent and it was relatively cheap. It's not cheap any more.

 

Any idea when this was sent out?

 

Quite a while ago looks like around June 2014 Australian real estate industry looks for online alternative

 

I think it would take a lot to unseat the big 2, and I am sure they have people that watch what is going on, but anything can happen.

 

I personally hope they are knocked about a lot !

The price they charge to agents (which is then passed onto the end client in the form of 'premium listings' etc is huge.

Yes, as a capitalist I can understand that they are simply charging what the market will absorb but their customer service is a joke, phone calls not returned etc. When we met with their rep and he informed us of their annual price increase (I think our subscription went up by about 50% over 4 years) he more or less implied - don't like it, bit of bad luck that, we have the monopoly and you have no choice.

Do I think they will be knocked about a lot, yeah, I do... They remind me a lot of how the Yellow Pages used to act. Charge clients excessive amounts and treat them very poorly because they had the monopoly.

When I worked for the Yellow Pages, before getting made redundant clients would often say to me that despite the on-line advertising portal results that they were achieving, they were still committed to leaving 'because your company has treated me like crap and charged me too much for too long and now I have other options.

 

Like any business, things change, NO one thought that NOKIA would be shrink in terms of market share and this will happen to APPLE as well.

Real estate.com.au has had a strong presence in the market for quiet some time. They have built up great relationships with real estate agents on both a SALES / Rental level. I am pretty sure this will change, as customer demands increase a new company / provider will come up with other solutions.