Is Your Internet Search Missing Opportunities

When it comes to property listings and research, are you team green, team red or brown (you use both).

I am referring to the digital battle between the 2 biggest real estate websites domain.com.au and realestate.com.au

For the history of real estate advertising on the internet, it didn’t really matter what you used. Because the same information was on both. So as a buyer, it really came down to your preferences of the User Interface. But the differences are now widening that can have impacts for both buyers and sellers.

The biggest influence that has a flow on affect to the others, is what it costs to have a property on each site. In these examples I am using the top tier product for both sites which maximises your placement in the search results and I am discussing the most common pricing for a property in my area. Because as you will see, this will vary.

So to realestate.com.au 1st. Their top tier product is called Premiere. Their pricing works on a flat rate depending on what zone you are in. The with a slight price increase from 1st July, to advertise a property will be $1,137

Domain.com.au on the other hand uses a combination of geographical zones and price points. So for example the Western side of Lake Macquarie known as Zone 4 is in the cheapest zone. The cost will then depend on if your property is valued less than $699,999 or higher than $700,000. Under $700,000 will cost $450, over $700,000 will cost $570

So if we take domain’s top level pricing, it costs an extra $567 to advertise the same property with the same information on realestate.com.au

And here is where we start to see a difference. If an owner or agent decides to cut corners to save on costs, you will find that a property may end up soley being listed on domain.com.au. I had some clients i sold a house for late last year and they are exclusively a realestate.com.au user. And they had been looking for months. And I mean probably on the site several times a day. As we were wrapping up their sale, they stumbled upon a home accidentally on domain and ended up buying that house. It was not listed on realestate.com.au and if had it not been for that chance, they could have missed it. I also feel the sellers of that particular house did miss other opportunties from other people who didn’t know it was for sale.

Let me stress that it the context of a $500,000 + asset, you should never cut corners on marketing to save a few hundred dollars where you eliminate part of your potential audience where another buyer could add 1000’s to the final price. But as a buyer, understand that there are those who do it and your search methods need to reflect that to make sure you don’t miss the one.

From the record, the last 12 months of enquiries on listings I have had for sale has been 34% from realestate.com.au, and 24% from domain

Finally as a prospective buyer, make sure you a registering your details with these sites, and other local agents, for alerts of new listings. Selling what is called “Off Market” is also changing the dynamics of your search. This is where properties are being sold without advertising on the main pages of these sites. The agent might sell directly to a contact they have, through social media or utilise a feature like domain’s Early access where the site will send an alert to registered customers matching the criteria of the home available, but it won’t be advertised through the normal search function.

If you any questions about how this information can affect your sale, or you want assistance with buying, feel free to reach out.