The REINSW are holding their official launch event tonight to mark the first stage of rolling out the National Industry Based Real Estate Portal, RealEstateView.com.au and their National Sales Data platform, PropertyData.com.au into the NSW market.
Prior to the launch a number of the major real estate franchise groups have demonstrated their support for the REI move by agreeing to upload their NSW property listings onto the RealEstateView.com.au portal.
It’s anticipated that other networks and lots of independent agents will also join in and show their support for a National Industry Based Real Estate Portal and National Sales Data System over the coming weeks.
The press release states:-
Partnering with the Real Estate Institute of New South Wales (REINSW), the launch in NSW marks the 5th state in which propertydata.com.au – the industry-owned data product and realestateVIEW.com.au property portal will be operating – making it one step closer to becoming a truly national portal.
Petra Sprekos, General Manager of propertyDATA.com.au & realestateVIEW.com.au says, “This launch marks a significant milestone in our plans to become a truly national data product and portal for our agents. As NSW is the largest property market in Australia, this expansion will allow us to continue to grow our data product and the portal to become one of the leading offerings in Australia.”
In addition Ms Sprekos said “With major agents such as Century 21, Laing & Simmons, LJ Hooker, Raine & Horne, First National and PRDnationwide already publishing to our portal, we are confident that uptake of realestateVIEW.com.au will be strong as agents are looking for more cost effective tools to run their business.”
propertyDATA.com.au & realestateVIEW.com.au are currently offering a $1800 discount off the yearly subscription fee to the first 100 subscribers through the foundation membership package.
For only $385 per month for metro agents and $275 per month for regional agents, foundation membership provides access to;
1) PropertyDATA.com.au which provides latest sales and auction results collected via the REI call centre, access to the dynamic prospecting tool – known as GoProspecting and on the market data to get a well rounded view of the market.
2) RealestateVIEW.com.au which provides a low cost advertising solution, free multi-loading to the large portals, free rental archive to benchmark rental values in the market and free website powering .
For more information on how propertyDATA.com.au & realestateVIEW.com.au can benefit your business – visit www.realestateVIEW.com.au/NSWLaunch. (after tonight’s event) or email [email protected].
I had a brief discussion with Petra Sprekos yesterday and she was pleased to see the level of support that they’ve been receiving both from within the real estate industry and outside of the industry. Petra was also very happy to see that the visitor numbers to the site had already started climbing quite significantly.
Also, earlier today Kevin Turner of REUNCUT posted an “Exclusive interview with Enzo Raimondo of REIV and David Airey of REIA about the National Real Estate Industry Portal ~ http://ow.ly/1Syrl“.
During the interview REIA President, David Airey commented that “RealEstateView.com.au is a very important part of the national fabric of the real estate institutes. The success for example in Western Australia of REIWA.com.au is evidence that Real Estate Institute members will suppoort their industry owned portal and this expansion on the eastern seaboard by RealEstateView.com.au is just a great initiative”
David also went on to say, “I think industry members will support an industry owned portal rather than the commercial alternative and the results that RealEstateView.com.au can deliver will be just as good as anybody else and probably I’d like to think better in time.”
REIV CEO, Enzo Raimondo said “We’ve been doing a lot of work over the past 18 months on putting together a national platform, not jut as a portal for consumers to search for property but more importantly, the tools that agents need for managing those listings, the collection of data right round the country, so we can give it back to the agents to use for CMA’s, valuations or whatever else they’d like to do with it and also a Prospecting Tool.”
He also went on to say that, “We’ve definitely driven the cost of these services down and that’s our intent right around Australia.” (You can hear the rest of the interview here).
During the interview, Enzo also told Kevin that they are currently in talks with one of the data providers with regards to having them come on board as well. At this point in time Enzo couldn’t say who it is but with REINSW and EAC/Red Square recently parting company, I can only assume that the data operator in question would be PriceFinder (PDS Live).
Whilst it’s only speculation at this stage, I hope my hunch is right because, if so, this could exert some real pressure on RP Data’s current stronghold on data throughout the Australian real estate industry.
At tonight’s launch, I’m looking forward to catching up with Wayne Stewart, President of the REINSW to see if he can shed some light on what the REINSW’s proposed launch strategy is.
One thing is for sure, it’s going to be very interesting to see how it all unfolds.
18 Comments
Pete Richards
It’ll be fascinating to see how it all plays out.
You only get one chance to make a first impression, so they need to get the roll out right and get early momentum running into spring. It’s essential that they get high impact early, if they do they could really give the two dominant NSW players a shake, which can only be good for the industry.
What is a slight concern to me, as a target “punter”, is that nobody (as yet) has approached McGrath corporate to talk to us about getting on board. Maybe they wanted to hold back and keep the wraps on the product until launch date, but if I were in their shoes I’d be putting aside a pretty hefty budget for press (yes, press) advertising, and making sure that my sales forces spiders through the market super fast.
James
Just a couple of points from above.
5 States does not make up the whole of Australia.
I think that they will struggle with their subscription model. With the introduction of Google into the marketplace, even REA and Domain are coming to realise that their subscription based models may not cut it going forward and they are both already in a much stronger position.
Some REINSW Members think the money being spent on the big launch tonight would be better spent on Consumer (AdWords) or Agent advertising. Of the supposed 1700 plus members in NSW, how many will be at the Opera House?
Peter, as for your comment, this is to some extent due to this project being driven out of REIV and Melbourne.
Anyone else note the absence of comments on the last three posts about this topic from the REINSW?
Vic
Seems definitely an incredible amount of work has been put into this project with lots of statements on policy and bits of strategy being espoused. A clear and unequivical vision and mission statement would be helpful.
Petra and Enzo, can you provide this?
Nick
James, they have been spending a massive amount of money on Adwords.
Elizabeth
Congratulations on what sounds like a very posh launch. There just may be a few sore heads this morning in Sydney.
The pricing sounds attractive. But I suspect that this is just the basic package.
How many packages are there? Will the basic package cover all the statutory requirements?
I still have questions unanswered and after the launch and above posting by Greg Vincent, I have even more questions.
Petra states
Leanne Pilkington
Thanks Elizabeth – all of the Laing + Simmons listing should have been uploaded and I have emailed all involved to find out why that hasnt happened. One of the most attractive parts of this product is the data / prospecting tools which are basically driven by the portal. Any cost / benefit analysis really needs to focus on the product as a whole, not just the portal part of it.
Greg Vincent
Leanne, I’m pleased to see that you posted that Laing + Simmons were having issues.
I think the REI’s and RealEstateView.com.au/PropertyData.com.au are going to come under the pump and will have to be prepared for a lot of criticism as well as the groundswell of support.
To show that this is an industry site provided by the industry for the industry then I believe the REI’s and REV will need to be as open & transparent as they can be without leaking too much with regards to strategy.
Leanne, the fact that you are on the board of the REINSW and they haven’t uploaded the Laing + Simmons listings could be seen that they aren’t showing any favouritism but it also doesn’t instil the confidence that agents will be looking for at the first hurdle.
I agree with you that the launch is not just about the portal, but unfortunately that’s the main thing that most agents will be focussing their attention on because they want a real alternative to REA and Domain PLUS they want to be able to provide an initial point of difference within their marketing (at least until the rest of the agents jump on board realestateVIEW).
If B2 readers haven’t seen the launch video as yet here’s the link http://www.realestateview.com.au/NSWLaunch/
On the video you’ll see that there is a whole lot more to REI’s launch into NSW than just a property portal.
Chris Hyde
Interesting read.
Things take time to get right, its just a matter of how long.
As Elizabeth has pointed out i’m curious if they have approached the Franchisors or gone individually to the Franchisees.
Also, Greg, I think there is only Pricefinder that isn’t associated with anyone, and I think that this will take it to the next level. In my opinion, Pricefinder services are better/easier to use then RP Data, and i use both many, many times a day. RP Data is expanding yes, but in the Property Valuation direction (recent acquisition of Valex & Sandstone).
Vic
Posting a Vision and a mission statement would help to begin to understanding where “the train that has left the station” is going to.
Leanne Pilkington
Hi Greg,
I would love to be able to blame REV for the issues, but I actually think it is our end. We are in the process of changing from one XML uploader to another and thats where the problem seems to be – but we are on it!
Petra Sprekos
On Wednesday night we officially launched propertydata.com.au and realestateview.com.au to NSW estate agents.
The response already has been incredible but plenty of work in front of us.
We have launched a bundled offering focusing on recent sales data and government information and mapping, as well as a prospecting tool to assist agents in growing their business. The third component of the total offering of course is realestateview.com.au
For more information about the full product offering please visit http://www.realestateview.com.au/nswlaunch
Our overall vision is to provide data and listings tools to assist agents in growing their businesses, in collaboration with the REI
PaulD
Greg,
You seem to be the spokesperson for REV, so I was just going to ask you about your statement higher up in this thread, which says – “To show that this is an industry site provided by the industry for the industry then I believe the REI
Elizabeth
Petra,
Thank you for your post. It does start to answer some questions.
But you also managed to avoid answering some questions with detail.
Do franchise agents get a discount for your services?
Ownership. Still too many questions here, and PaulD has raised greater concerns.
Product and pricing – if your data solution and website solution perform equally to what is commercially out there already, then you have a great pricing strategy and that is very attractive.
I accept that at around a launch things can be rather hectic, but if this whole approach has been 18 months in the making, surely there was enough time to have the franchise listings on the site? It would appear that Leanne was not aware her listings were not on the site until i searched for them.
Now you ask some questions about me.
Firstly, I was not as close to operation destiny as REIV and Enzo were. However any active REI member will remember the continual promises which were being made about the new industry initiative at the time.
Secondly, having spent some of my career in franchises, we were brainwashed about supporting the industry and how homehound and myhome were the solution.
Thirdly, in reading the above accounts of how we are told about industry solutions and industry ownership coming to save the day, and constantly being disappointed, perhaps you can appreciate that I have a sense of history repeating itself.
I am happy to read that now everyone is more transparent in acknowledging that Data is the focus. Early posts here were talking about the website. It is also good to see you acknowledging that the website is a method for you to collect the data. But what is your pledge to website pricing, data pricing, will the cost for each be split in future, and what about price increases? PDSLive?
The most important thing now is for greater information exchanges about the website and data services. In this day an age you need to be commercially competitive. It is not longer a case of providing a half baked solution but selling it through emotional catch phrases.
The opportunity is yours, and indeed perhaps this is the last industry opportunity. But it needs to be done right, engage us when we ask questions, answer them as best you can, and provide us a service which rivals everything out there now.
I will send you an email over the weekend. Thank you for the offer I do appreciate it.
Greg Vincent
Paul, I’m just as interested to know what’s driving the National Industry Based Portal as anyone else.
PaulD
Greg,
So, in the PS. regarding the REIWA – doesn’t that even raise a question to you??? I thought Enzo Raimondo said that there would be no free rides, because people had to get used to paying for a service like that. I agree with him. So here we have 600 odd agents getting a free service, and that’s only in WA. What about all the other agents on the east coast? The old saying – It’s not the quantity – It’s the quality. The quality, are the agents who stay and pay. It’s easy to give something away – it’s harder to retain agents AND have them pay for the service – much harder.
Greg Vincent
Yes Paul it does raise some questions but it also shows that they are trying to find the best way forward to pull it all together and keep the costs down for agents. Asking WA agents to pay for a 2nd subscription to an REI site would make as much sense as asking the current Victorian REV subscribers to pay a subscription to the REIWA site.
I’m interested to know if REI memberships are going to be incorporated somehow so that the benefits of the state based institute membership could also be incorporated into the REV, PDOL subscriptions.
If not, do members get a discount?
Paul Collins
We run a boutique agency in Perth, Western Australia with 10-25 listings at any one time. We are not happy with realestate.com.au and notified them we will not be renewing our subscription. We were called immediately and asked if we could meet which we did and it only re-inforced my decision to leave. There would be a price point at which we would stay but they would not negotiate on price.Realestate.com’s website is too busy and confusing and damn annoying not to have the agent’s contact number on the same page as the property view. Honestly, who is running realestate.com because you wouldn’t advertise your property in a newspaper only to ask the reader to turn to another page for your phone number? As for the standard subscription(>$10,000p.a) for realestate.com.au and realcommercial.com.au that doesn’t even get our logo displayed on the listings page.
W are annoyed with double digit annual increases(10%, 18%…) argued on the basis of increased traffic(whatever happened to fee for cost of service?). I just don
Nick
PaulD if you click WA on the map on the front page you get a new window pointing to REIWA so there is obviously some kind of partial merge done. Its not quite double standards provided that its a stop gap measure and they will do something more permanent in the future.
Paul Collins do what everyone else is doing and put your number in the name field so it says “Paul Collins 0400 000 000”. It both amazes me at the ingenuity of it and annoys me (as a programmer) that they are abusing the field.