Australian industry-owned portal realestateview.com.au has just announced the acquisition of myhome.com.au for an undisclosed sum.
myhome.com.au was formerly owned by by PBL Media, and offers sale, rental and share listings across Australia. The website is also connected to sister sites covering property sales, home financing and renovations.
realestateview.com.au general manager Petra Sprekos said this acquisition complements realestateview.com.au’s existing offering for estate agents and consumers and will substantially increase content.
“In particular, it will add to our strength in New South Wales and Queensland, with over 2,000 agencies already listing on the site in these states,” Sprekos explained.
“This adds to the recent launch of realestateview.com.au in New South Wales and the content-sharing arrangement with reiwa.com.au.”
“realestateview.com.au and myhome.com.au will continue to operate concurrently and share content,” Sprekos added.
“To ensure a smooth transition we have retained the services of Shane Dale, former CEO of myhome.com.au and his team.”
Dale says he welcomes the acquisition. “Industry and consumers need a strong industry-owned portal and the sale of myhome.com.au to realestateview.com.au will ensure that is the case,” he states.
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{ 19 comments… read them below or add one }
I can’t believe this.
Wasn’t it Shane Dale who set up the original My Home and sold it to PBL for a lump, then bought it back for a song, re-established as a free to list only now to sell to Real estate view ?
Will history repeat itself?
In both sale cases didn’t Shane end up as CEO ?.
Well done Shane.
Vic, yes history will repeat itself.
The REI team, who are clueless, will get pressure from the over political establishment they work for once they figure how much time and cash they are spending on flogging a dead horse.
They will then have to shelf the project until they can find other patrons on REI boards who actually believe the quote shane used…
“Industry and consumers need a strong industry-owned portal”
Thats almost word for word what Ms Sprekos and her backers have been saying for as long as I can remember. And its rubbish and more than cringe worthy.
What the industry needs is REI’s that do what they are founded to do – improve the real estate industry and act as advocates. Running a cash burning portal that will never ever match the big guys is so stupid I feel sick.
Grow up guys, you missed the boat 10 years ago…and you just dont have the skills.
So what realestateview.com.au has done is to pay, an undisclosed sum of money for the content from a free portal with no significant income streams.
The questions that beg are firstly what guarantee do they have of agent / group loyalty and secondly will they ever recover this investment as I am sure not too many agents are going to be willing to pay for what they were getting for free.
Think back to when Domain purchased Just Listed what did they really gain from that?
Kerry Packer once said… There is only one Alan Bond to come along once in a life time (or words to that effect) Said by Kerry when he bought back Channel nine, from Bond, for $800m less than he sold it, to Bond, for.
Me thinks ReView is the reincarnated Bond.
This is crazy. As a Victorian agent I’m fairly peeved about this. How much money have they wasted on this purchase? Mark my words Myhome is a dud.
Enzo is a nutter who just wants to be seen as being able to pee with the big boys!
Correction, Shane is not CEO of the new My Home, just being retained by ReView.
Understand that Shane cannot give us the story behind this amazing deal. However, ReViews rationale for the transaction and it’s plans for the future would be of more than just interest to it’s many stakeholders.
I think Craig A sums up the situation pretty well. This goes some way to explain my last comment as well.
Many questions were raised as to their motives when they launched their so called “National Industry Portal” and I don’t believe any real answers were provided.
How is realestateview.com.au going to recover this investment? By extracting as many dollars out of real estate agents as they can!
Agents need to ask are they really going to be any better off than they are with REA or Domain in this regard in the long term.
So do the REI’s across Australia have shareholding in realestateview? If this is the case how can they work for the industry impartially when they have an interest in pushing their own site (well sites now)?
Im amazed at these negative comments on REV’s buy of MyHome. What a great move by realestateview to get hold of another portal and consoldate it with realestateview.com.au which is in effect owned by REIV and its members. How can you criticise this and on what grounds? Agents like you (if you are agents) seem hell bent on throwing money at costly commercial sites owned by media groups rather then supporting your own site. REV along with reiwa.com.au in WA are growing due to support from institute members and YES James we do want national industry portal so keep watching this space and start supporting your institutes. David Airey President Real Estate Institute of Australia
Wow, so no one thinks this is a good purchase?
no one really knows if its a good purchase, it may well be.
but does the REI have the skills to deliver? nope
are the REI’s $’s and time (aka their members $’s and time) best served doing other things? yes
David,
Trevor has nailed it with his comment about REI’s not knowing how to run portals. Most haven’t got a clue. They are Real Estate Agents or ex-Real Estate Agents not Online Marketing, Digital Sales Execs or IT Web Experts.
More importantly the back end of the big commercial sites are now run by people who have international experience with global online businesses. They understand SEO, they understand SEM, they analyse and report on it everyday.
They slice and dice their customer categories each month and are bringing in CRM systems that provide data not only for their own benefit but also their customers who are agents. Go and ask Peter Richards the Marketing Guru at McGraths in Sydney what REA and Domain provide him each month for each of the Franchise offices in the McGrath group.
The two big sites give guys like Peter real recent data in terms of who is looking at McGrath properties in what suburbs, for what agents and for what properties. All in big and growing numbers. That’s a reason why the monthly fee from both is worth it because its increasingly measurable and decipherable. Thats why print will eventually die.
REIV and MyHome just can’t do that with any confidence. They just don’t have the eyeballs at the front end or the grunt, knowledge and technological development of the others. End of story.
David,
its not about ‘supporting our own site’ or even ‘keeping the B#stards honest’ or what ever A Current Affair style pitch REI’s want to put on it.
Its all about making sure VENDORS time and money is spent in the right places. You should know this, you’re an experienced agent……
Stop playing ego serving, mis-guided, political games and get on with the task at hand.
All agents had a duty to represent their vendors assets as best they can. David, I have seen countless people from REI’s suggest to agents that they should support REI sites over Domain and REA.com. You and I both know that REI sites have a fraction of the traffic so please tell me, how is this advice good for the vendors who turn to agents for advice?
David,
Your comment is condescending and does not add value to the discussion.
You seem to expect everyone to follow you (REI’s), like the pied piper of Hamelin.
The fact is that REV a paid subscription portal, bought My Home a free to list portal… and nobody knows which way they are going. Free to list or paid subsription model?
How can you naively say get off your existing train and “follow me”, when no-one knows where you are going to?
Agents and commentators are simply wanting to know this so that that can decide whether they want to jump on your train or stay on the one that has a clear and proven destination.
Surely the most important things for an agent to do is to provide the most leads possible to their vendor’s property for the cheapest cost possible – especially in vendor paid advertising
Therefore, with online generating far more leads than print and being far less costly, why dont we ever see the REIV or other institutes come out and say “dont use print – use online – it is in the best interests of your vendors”?
It is interesting that when you look at a marketing programme for a house and see $400 for internet and $5000 for others marketing, that everyone one is fighting over the $400?
Why? Well i guess they have conceded that they have run and lost the print advertising game (around 30 years ago) and therefore are wanting to be an online publisher.
Problem is, why should an institute be a publisher? There is no logical reason … they should be providing their members with independent and honest information about the best places to advertise.
Anyway, isnt the real challenge for realestateview that they need people to actually look at the site? Good luck at competing with REA and Domain on that front … last i looked, REA just delivered a $90m profit!!
Trevor, you are just delivering the crap that the major portals hand out. The fact is that Domain and REA need the agents more than the agents need them. Lets face it, most agents in this country haven’t got a clue. They blindly follow each other. If they opened their eyes and all moved in unison to another internet provider, Domain and REA would be dead in a month. They won’t do that because they don’t trust each other. That’s simply the way it is.
The REA and Domain websites are not rocket science like you seem to think. The layouts are ok but the delivery of enquiry has been dropping for several years. They make it harder and harder to get the basic statistics so that their real performance cannot be challenged on an enquiry vs cost basis, because it would look pathetic. They confuse all the statistics with terms like “engagement” so that the bare numbers cannot easily be compared on a year to year basis. It’s an old ploy of advertising people use, and it’s called “baffle them with bullshit”.
REA and Domain couldn’t care less about as you put it ” represent their vendors assets as best they can”. All they care about, is how is the best way to rip as much money as they can out of the agents. The agents are their own worst enemies, because they will not make a major shift in their advertising policies no matter how much it costs them, and they will not act collectively, because they always think that someone will get a better deal than they do. REA has not got the divine right to represent all the real estate agents in this country, and the way they are cranking up the prices, the time has come for an alternate provider.
A public company with a share price and complaining shareholders is NOT the way to go. An industry based product would be preferable, and to say that the REI’s are not capable is garbage. The REA profit turned back into an industry owned site would support it EASILY.
Hmm
Strange,the rea annual report states big increases in leads to agents?
Also I wonder REA s annual report states over 16m in marketing!!.
Carsales.com.au nearly double that.
I wonder what these Industry players think they are doing.
Isn’t the real issue that some in the industry are jealous that in their life time they have seen an opportunity to make money from creating an online business vapourize in front of their eyes
And the worst part about it for them is that it went to News and Fairfax …
Brian,
Think you may have made a very good call on that. While the various REI’s stumbled and bumbled and refused to believe that the online world would take over in the early 2,000′s both News and Fairfax jumped on the horse and bolted.
I remember being at the 2008 Australian Real Estate Awards in 2008 when the president of the association launched the new fandangled National website from the institutes. Everyone in the room just fell off their chairs laughing at its ineptness and amateurness. Both Domain and REA were in the room as sponsors and they couldn’t get the smiles off their faces.
The difference here is that the institutes by and large are run by agents and REA and Domain are run by experienced Marketing and Sales Execs. Like it or lump it the game is over and the REI’s will never be back in the contest.
The opposite of this is Alastair Helm in NZ who despite the presence of Trade Me has managed to build a great presence for his site. Guess what ? Alastair is not an ex-agent but a savvy Sales and Marketing guy.