Whats the deal with Premier Listing Prices on Real Estate.com

Hi,
Why does agent in Dec Bay QLD charge me $1069 for a premier Listing (for house $550 to 600k)on Realestate.com.au
and agent in Fern Tree Gully VIC wants me to pay $3040 for premier listing (for land in Belgrave $420 to 450k).
WTF - I know fees can be suburb specific, but this is a HUGE difference. Vic agent says this is what he is charged. hmmmm
And both are Ray White too.
Please can someone explain

 

realestate.com.au has about 65-70% of visitors/web traffic of everyone browsing real estate websites - so they charge an exobitant amount to even list there, let alone bump up listings via premier where they spam your listing to anyone remotely looking in your direction - eg. when someone does a search for dwellings for hermit crabs they'll show you a kennel for a great dane as a first listing and tell you "see - look we get 1000s of views on your listing".

It genuinely costs that much for the agency to have a premier listing on realestate.com.au. The bigger/more in demand the suburb the more it'll cost you because they theorise there's more people looking and hence your listing will be seen by more people (as in the strawman example above).

IMHO I don't feel it's worth it. Qualified buyers will know where to look. Properties aren't something appealing to discretionary consumers - you can't place big billboards to passer bys and convince them they should look at your house and consider buying it.

 

realestate.com.au does have a monopoly on this and will charge different fees for different locations. Before committing to paying any extra fees, I would try to replicate what I think my typical buyer would be doing.
e.g. If you search for Land in Belgrave (and surrounding suburbs), there are currently no listings in Belgrave & only 12 in surrounding suburbs. Based on this, I doubt you are going to get much additional interest in your property by paying for the premier listing.

If you were selling a house in Belgrave, there is more competition (but still only 17 listings in Belgrave & 75 in surrounding suburbs). Paying for the premier listing would ensure you are closer to the top of the first page for Belgrave searches and probably on page 2 or 3 for searches in surrounding suburbs.

My issue with premier listings is that realestate.com.au appear to have effectively exploited their monopoly, so that every individual vendor is incentivised to pay a premium to effectively jump the queue and agents are incentivised to sell this to their vendors. If no one paid for premier listings, every listing should be in basically the same position (based on date of listing) but everyone would save thousands of dollars. e.g. if you are listing a house for sale in Pakenham, there are premier listings on the first 6 pages (assuming the search filter is for a house in Pakenham), so vendors will feel like they have no choice but to pay the fee to ensure potential buyers will see their ad. In reality, I assume most buyers use much more specific search criteria (or the map), to focus on properties they are actually interested in and can afford.