The announcement of the decision by the REA Group in Australia to shutter their NZ website allrealestate.co.nz and direct traffic to this website represents a major success for realestate.co.nz and a major opportunity for the real estate industry.
Allrealestate.co.nz launched in NZ in October 2005 – just at the time that the market was really beginning to open up with the web searching being the most efficient means to access content. Their early success leveraged their international traffic partnership with the Australian site of realestate.com.au and coupled with a significant marketing campaign. Their traffic grew as sighted in the graph below through 2006 until with the re-launch, re-branding and re-platforming of realestate.co.nz their traffic began to suffer towards the end of 2006. The key issue was content – fighting against the comprehensive industry support of realestate.co.nz and the enormous pulling power of trade me – their appeal to the consumer began to falter and through 2008 the margin to realestate.co.nz has widened.
The benefits of this move will apply across the board to both consumers and real estate professionals:
Consumers
The key to the web is comprehensive content – people searching for a place to rent or a home to buy, ideally want to find one website that showcases every offering on the market, that way their selection is made with complete information. Now whilst realestate.co.nz is the most comprehensive real estate website in NZ it does not feature all listings. The fact is that with a competitor like allrealestate.co.nz actively selling their service out around real estate offices offering subscriptions deals, some offices decided that their offering was better resulting in split content across the sites (and other websites).
Now with the exit of allrealestate.co.nz we can actively convince the remaining offices who did not choose to subscribe to realestate.co.nz to come across and fill the gaps and make this website the true comprehensive portal for all the real estate listings in the NZ – perfect for the consumer whether they be buyers, sellers, renters, investors, landlords or businesses.
The real estate industry
This move is great news for the real estate industry. With less confusion as to which website to promote their listings on, the industry can rely on realestate.co.nz to actively grow the consumer reach and usage of the website to ensure that their client listings achieve optimal marketing. Not only that, the industry can save the costs of an alternative media option and at the same time support an industry owned site which every agency has a vested interest in through the 50% ownership held by the Real Estate Institute (REINZ).
Having an industry owned site grow even stronger with this move will ensure that the alternative media competitor of Fairfax owned Trade me will be required to be more circumspect about price increases as realestate.co.nz now more than ever provides a more effective price competitive option. Currently the subscription costs of the 2 sites shows the profit ambitions of Trade me. A single office subscribing for all property and rental listings pays $699 per month to Trade me, by comparison the same office can secure the same service for $200 per month from realestate.co.nz – with the added confidence that the subscription is invested in the site operation, development and marketing – and not for dividends to Australian shareholders.
This is a fantastic opportunity for this industry and this website – it is a new phase – one that holds the tempting opportunity for realestate.co.nz to cement its role as the most valauble real estate website in NZ.
Congratulations Alistair, this move is a massive endorsement of our site, http://www.realestate.co.nz ,and confirms that the ambitions we had when launching the site were right on target. The industry support has been humbling for all involved and both you and the team should be very proud of this latest achievement. The Australian capitulation shows that our industry can work together for our clients and our own industries good, and succeed. Many doubted us at the start, now no one can.
Well done
Bryan Thomson
[...] What does this mean for Real Estate in New Zealand. [...]
I agree with Bryan’s sentiments above, well done to all the team at http://www.realestate.co.nz.
From my own perspective as a Business Broker the gap between http://www.realestate.co.nz and http://www.trademe.co.nz widens even further as the subscription they offer does not include business listings which can be uploaded individually for a further $199 each. As to the presentation and functionality of the business listings, there simply is no comparison.
It has happened with ebay and will surely happen with Trademe. If thy continue to operate in such a “greedy” manner people will loose faith in them and start searching for cheaper alternatives.
This is especially relevent in NZ as we traditionally support the underdog.
Jared
A very well observed comment it will be interesting to see how Trade me develops in the coming year – how much the expectations of Fairfax will impinge upon the management strategies
Big E for effort Alistair! From the from the gray haired
elder. Still awaiting your call. Cheers, JC
There is no doubt that since Fairfax has taken over Trademe has gone from a small local company (that is doing very well financially) to a large money hungry corporate.
This is just my perspective and might be a bit bias
It really is an important day in the development of Real Estate portals in NZ. Interesting to note that REA in Australia have also not renewed their arrangement for traffic from Nine-Msn, and in turn domain.com.au is Nine-Msn’s new partner?
Hello Everyone,
I have read everything mentioned on here with a great deal of interest.
I would like to point out a few things.
1. New Zealanders have been once again defeated by Australians.
2. I wouldnt be calling these websites the underdogs.
Where is the sense of pride and patriotism? Everything gets sold or merged across the ditch and for what? So the REINZ has affiliation with Australia? HAs it ever been the other way?
I have recently visited a website that has been launched in newzealand propertycorner.co.nz. I would call this website the underdog. People that pride themselves for being 100% new zealand owned. Their vision to compete with Australian companies makes me regain faith in our country and its people. Go and have a look at it. I see great success if they carry themselves through these times.
Thanks
JJ
David
There is a general move by real estate portals across the world to look seriously at the fees being levied by these portals as the question of relevancy of audience is a key question these days. In the UK propertyfinder.com left the Times and other such changes are happening.
Jim
In operating this blog I carefully monitor all posts to ensure that inappropriate comments or “off context” comments are moderated out so as to provide readers with a valuable interchange. I like to err on the side of allow varied open communication to engage in a good debate.
Your post above is in my judgment erring on the side of self – promotion, something much maligned in the blogging community; however I have posted it as I felt it was worth highlighting the comments you make and answering them.
1. I think you must have misread this blog post it is NZ’ers defeating Australians – realestate.co.nz is a wholly NZ owned site and have effectively caused an Australian owned site to retrench back to Australia
2. I don’t think anything in the post calls the other sites underdogs – we have been battling as underdogs for over 2 years against much better funded global media owned operations and have succeeded.
3. There is great patriotism in this website – it is owned and operated by NZ’ers for the benefit of NZ’ers in general. The affiliation with Australia gives us massive international linkages – a very valuable asset in the online world.
4. Your promotion of this new website as an underdog is your perspective, however just because it is new and NZ owned does not necessarily mean it needs to be supported. In reviewing the site I see that it has a couple of thousand listings – this is the key to success. I wish the site well – competition be it local or international is good.
Hi Alistair,
I have no affiliation whatsoever with property corner. I was merely stating the fact.
i understand where you are coming from. At the same time though it looks like a Giant has taken over a new zealand website.
No matter what we say or do it has happened and i was pointing out my concern. thats about it.
But thanks a lot for your feedback.I will be watching this topic with great interest.
Regards,
JJ
Jim
I stand corected – I took from inference that because you hyperlinked your name to their website you were endeavoring to represent them.
I am still confused by your reiteration of the phrase “it looks like a Giant has taken over a new zealand website” – The very simple fact is that the Giant (REA Group – Australian owned ASX listed and part owned by News Corp) the operator of the NZ website allrealestate.co.nz is closing down its NZ business. The beneficiary of this move is directly Realestate.co.nz Ltd – a 100% NZ owned business owned 100% by interests within the NZ real estate industry. I cannot see how you keep seeing this as a “Giant taking over a NZ website” – unless I am interpreting you as saying we are the “Giant”!!
The only way realestate.co.nz is benefiting directly from REA is through them linking their ongoing traffic to realestate.co.nz. Just means much much more traffic.