realestate.co.nz

realestate.co.nz is the most comprehensive real estate website in New Zealand with over 107,000 listings representing over 95% of all listings of licensed real estate agents. Nielsen Online places realestate.co.nz as the number 2 website for real estate in terms of web traffic.

realestate.co.nz is a joint venture between the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand (REINZ) and Property Page (NZ) Ltd (PPL), a company with shareholding by the major real estate companies in NZ.

The website has grown significantly since it was re-launched in August 2006 as a re-branding of realenz.co.nz, owned by REINZ since the early 1990s, and now has a total net revenue of around NZ$3 million.

Ownership | Market Position | Key Measurements | Market Coverage | Advertising Model | Financials | Site Sections | Technology | Key Management | History | Recent Press | Information Sources

Ownership

realestate.co.nz is the property of the company Realestate.co.nz Ltd which is a joint venture between the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand (REINZ) and Property Page (NZ) Ltd (PPL). PPL is a company with shareholding by the major real estate companies in NZ – Harcourts, Harveys, L J Hooker, Ray White, Bayleys and Barfoot & Thompson. Each of the joint venture partners owns 50% of the shares.

Market Position

realestate.co.nz is the most comprehensive real estate website in NZ with over 107,000 listings representing over 95% of all listings of licensed real estate agents. The website only features listings of licensed real estate agents and has a subscriber base of over 90% of all offices in NZ. In terms of web traffic as reported by Nielsen Online realestate.co.nz is the number 2 website for real estate.

Key Measurements
(September 2008)

• Listings of 107,000 encompassing residential property for sale and rent, lifestyle property, commercial property for lease or for sale, businesses for sale and farms and agricultural land
• Total unique browsers (Nielsen Online) – 269,000 (Sep 08)
• Total page impressions – 9 million
• Proportion of international traffic – 26% of all visitor sessions, major country traffic – UK, Australia, US.
• Average session duration – 9 minutes 30 seconds

Market Coverage

New Zealand and Pacific Islands.

Advertising Model

Subscription model of NZ$200 per office per month. This is a flat rate fee for all offices irrespective of size and provides for unlimited listings. A casual listing service is available at NZ$64 per listing – with unlimited display time.

Featured listings on the home page and suburb page (which generate around10 time standard traffic) are charged at NZ$795 for a set 14 day period.

The website also has display advertising sold by a third party company to mainstream advertisers. The website does not take advertising (display) from real estate companies.

Financials

The company has a total net revenue of around NZ$3 million and generates a positive cashflow (October 2008).

Site Sections

The key sections of the website are:

• Homes for sale
• Homes for rent
• Lifestyle property
• Sections for sale
• Commercial property for lease
• Commercial property for sale
• Businesses for sale
• Farms and agricultural land
• Ideas – inspirational design ideas in partnership with Trends Publishing International

The website also links to social media such as the Unconditional blog (realestate.co.nz/blog) and Voices, a free agent blog platform (voices.realestate.co.nz).

Technology

The website operates off a SQL database aligned to a cold fusion based CRM application. The majority of content is data transfer in pipe-deliniated flat file form with some XML. The front end of the site is PHP running off a MySQL database.

Key Management

• Alistair Helm – CEO
• Phillip Dunn – COO
• Peter Driscoll – Operations Manager

History

The current website was launched in August 2006 as a re-branding and re-platforming of the original website, realenz.co.nz. This website was set up by the Real Estate Institute (REINZ) in early 1990s and underwent a variety of incarnations and ownership structures. During the early 2000s, realestate.co.nz (owned by PPL) and realenz.co.nz (owned by REINZ) were both operated in competition. In late 2005 the two parties agreed to operate a single site and a joint venture agreement was established from May 2006.

The website has grown significantly in the past 2 years with subscriber base growth peak at 1,300 real estate offices, representing 92% of all offices. Website traffic has grown by 80% in the same period.

realestate.co.nz faces significant competition in the market from two major media owned websites: allrealestate.co.nz owned by the REA group is the number 3 website in terms of traffic with 209,000 unique browsers in September 08; and trademe.co.nz/property is the largest traffic website featuring real estate in NZ with a total unique browser traffic of 630,000 in September 08.

Recent Press

All media is channelled through the Unconditional blog: realestate.co.nz/blog.

Information Sources

Management Interview
Site Review

1. realestate.co.nz Open Home Service

   New Zealand property portal realestate.co.nz has added a new open home service functionality to its website. ...

2. REA Group Directs Traffic to realestate.co.nz

   Having decided to close down most of its New Zealand operations, the REA Group has now entered a marketing arrangement to drive traffic to former competitor, realestate.co.nz....

3. realestate.com.au (Updated 9/2008)

   realestate.com.au is Australia’s largest residential property portal with 4.1 million visitors to the site each month.  These visitors can search 430,000+ for sale and for rent listings from 8,300+ agent offices or 95% of the market.  realestate.com.au was launched in 1997 and in the year ended 30 June 2008 had revenues of A$106m. realestate.com.au was the foundation of the REA [...]...

4. realestate.com.au Sees Traffic Increase

   REA Group owned realestate.com.au, Australia's number one property portal, has announced record traffic to its website. The company says this means more Australians are actively searching for properties to buy online....

5. realestate.com.au Mobile Search Grows

   Mobile property search seems to be taking off in Australia, especially for market leader realestate.com.au, which said it was seeing “exponential” growth in traffic to its mobile website in December. In fact, the CEO of realestate.com.au parent company REA Group has described mobile as a “critical device in the medium to long term” in a recent interview with zdnet.com.au....