Property Portal Price Gouging
John Andrews
Andrews Property Consultants, acquisitions, buyer's agency/building advocacy, retail leasing.
Property Portals Price Gouging
The most expensive portal, Realestate.com.au typically presents itself as the most visited property portal by buyers, which undoubtedly is the predominant reason vendors want to be listed on it and why most agents have a subscription to it. This is a rationale that makes perfect sense if you are an agent or a vendor but not necessarily for a buyer for the simple reason that not every agent and not every property is listed on their servers, or on Domain's servers, due to the very high cost to agents which is generally passed onto their clients who ultimately foot the bill.
If we consider Homely.com.au, the free portal, one finds that in most cases, but not all to be sure, that the listings that appear on the major portals Realestate.com.au and Domain are duplicated on this site for the simple reason that agents using the main portals can also list on Homely.com.au at no cost, while agents who don't subscribe to either or both of the main portals can also list their properties on Homely.com.au for free, so that potentially, Homely.com.au may well offer buyers more properties to choose from, currently they nearly have the numbers to make such an assertion.
If, as agents, we would like to avoid the price gouging into the future, where the portals extort thousands for listings, a far cry from the $30.00 dollar fee to list a vehicle on Carsales.com.au, what we need to do is inform the buying public of the fact that the main portals do not have a monopoly on all the properties available in the market, after all we are at the front line of contact for buyers. If we can, in our general marketing, on websites, window cards, business cards and brochures etc, incorporate “see our listings on Homely.com.au” we can start to influence the buying behaviour of buyers as they begin to see the wisdom of taking their property search elsewhere, which obviously substantially weakens the main portals bargaining ace, visitor numbers. Something would have to give over time, either the buyers or the portals need to change their behaviour, and we as agents can make the difference, if we don't take some sort of action, we can expect the status quo to continue.