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.
Yesterday we reported that the REA Group would be closing down its operations in New Zealand at the end of the month. Today the REA Group and realestate.co.nz jointly announced a marketing deal that sees realestate.co.nz become the New Zealand node on the REA Group network.
From the press announcement on the REA Group site, it looks like the allrealestate.co.nz URL will be redirected to realestate.co.nz. In addition, “will be able to access realestate.co.nz from a tab on the home page of every REA Group portal and from the map of New Zealand on the REA Group websites.”
In the release, Alistair Helm, CEO of realestate.co.nz, said “This alliance is great news for New Zealand’s real estate agents and consumers; because together with the REA Group we can run a much stronger real estate web portal than if we continued to compete as two separate portals. We believe this will mean a more efficient and cost competitive solution for the real estate industry as compared to all other media options.”
I think the big winner from this move is realestate.co.nz. They have, in one move, managed to remove a roughly equal sized competitor from the NZ market, increased traffic, gained a few more customers, have a better ability to increase yields, and can now truly lay claim to being the largest real estate portal in New Zealand.
While some people may fear a massirve hike in fees, i think this will be unlikely. The major shareholder in the site is the Real Estate Institute of New Zealand and they would have a hard time justifying to members any profiteering from this.
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Naturally I am keen to comment to your article.
I can clarify that realestate.co.nz is wholly owned by the real estate industry in NZ – as has been recently shown in your profile of our site – 50% of the company is owned by the Real Estate Institute of NZ (the member organisation that represents all NZ licensed agents and offices) and 50% owned by a company called Property Page (NZ) Ltd which is owned itself by 6 of the largest real estate companies in NZ.
I can further confirm that this move is in the best interest of the consumer – who get a far more comprehensive single portal and for the industry a more valuable industry owned site. The principle of the site has always been to safeguard and protect the industry from the profit motives of the major media owned competitors – we maintain and will into the future a very cost competitive and highly transparent subscription model – $200 per office per month – no discounts.
The company whilst industry owned is independent – yet is not a charity – it seeks to make a profit which he shareholders are keen to reinvest to keep growing the website and brand to become the #1 real estate website in NZ.
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