As a followup to recent articles relating to the industry revolt and ACCC investigation into RealEstate.com.au, Australian Financial Review journalist Ben Hurley has released another article that takes aim at RPData and their valuation strategy . RPData have been working on a valuation system similar to US portal Zillow in the USA where they provide a valuation to consumers. Naturally this has upset real estate agents and valuers alike around the country
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11
Jul
2011
Project Rebellion: RPData in the Firing Line
In a followup article to the Front Page Project Rebellion article, Ben Hurley from the Australian Financial Review has published a new story on an ongoing investigation by the ACCC into the activities of RealEstate.com.au and to a lesser extent Domain.com.au . Questions directed at some of Australia’s leading real estate groups have seemed to focus on excessive price rises (see 1 , 2 , 3 and 4 ) of realestate.com.au and the effectiveness of competition in the real estate online classified space. Simon Baker, the ex CEO and substantial shareholder in REA has made some interesting comments on this blog recently regarding realestate.com.au prices : If the franchise groups were serious about competing with realestate.com.au or at least providing a competitive offering, wouldnt they first start internally and attempt to organise group buying of REA subscriptions for their franchisees? Imagine if all Ray White or LJ Hooker offices got together and negotiated as one for their REA subscriptions (and additional products)
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23
Jun
2011
Project Rebellion : Front Page News!
Over the past several weeks Ben Hurley from the Australian Financial Review has been conducting an investigation into the revolt by real estate agencies around the country against Realestate.com.au. Today on the front page of the Australian Financial Review Ben’s article “Real Estate Agents Revolt” appears.
Read moreIn what seems like remarkable timing, sitting in my email this morning was an invitation to partake in the Annual Customer Satisfaction Survey for realestate.com.au. Now is the time to let REA know what you think of them, the good and the bad. The email includes a comment “The survey questionnaire can be completed by personnel who have contact with realestate.com.au” which seems to infer that you can get anybody in your office to also submit on your survey link.
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10
Jun
2011
Realestate.com.au Backs Down From The Fight!
Realestate.com.au has always promoted itself as a portal for real estate agents but recently we have seen a surge in real estate agents using technology to operate from a digital storefront and list their properties on the portal. At first many of these websites were not run by real estate agents but REA quickly enforced this rule.
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24
Jun
2010
New Realestate.com.au Statistics on the way
The new web design from Realestate.com.au was built from the ground up.
Read moreThe new realestate.com.au website rolled out in April this year.
Read morePretty much everyone hated the realestate.com.au House Hunter videos when they were released but it seems that the launch of their recent realestate.com.au website found agents and consumers squarely in one camp or another. You either loved it or you hated it although I have noticed that many who originally hated the new site have swapped sides as they have learnt to appreciate some of the new changes
Read moreJust as RealEstate.com.au complete the launch of a new web design News Limited are putting the final strokes on a strategy to strike back and one of the weapons of choice in the fight will be a video and website called “For What It’s Worth”. This tussle between the two giants for the real estate advertising revenue has all the drama of a soap opera and our current story is reminiscent of the Empire Strikes Back, the second movie released in the Star Wars franchise. The Star Wars movie saga featured the Jedi, who use the Force for good, and the Sith, who use the dark side for evil in an attempt to take over the galaxy. In the original Star Wars movie the Sith had control of the Galactic Empire
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