justlisted website

Though this website is relatively new to the real estate world of search sites, it appears to be gaining popularity. Last week, on a round of agent visits in my local area, comparable sales were given to me on a sheet by justlisted, rather than the usual RPData.
The site looks fresh and clean and seems to have a lot of agents already on it's subscriber base.
Will be interesting to see if it starts to give www.realestate.com.au and www.domain.com.au a run for their money.
You can check it out at www.justlisted.com.au

 

Seems to have lots of listings ...

The feature I don't like is that once all the results come back I am not able to sort properties by price. Maybe I just have not found a way yet.

I can do this just fine at www.realestate.com.au and www.domain.com.au

 

Jacques

I saw a liftout in one of the papers recently when it was launched so there appears to be some money behind it.

I had heard that some of the bigger REA's were collaberating to have a united site ( presumably to get market share of Realestate.com.au and Domain) and I was wondering if this was it , of whether one of the media groups was behind it. Any idea who is behind it ?

See Change

 

Justlisted is part of the Sensis group of companies (also own TradingPost etc). Any real estate agent can join and list properties on the site for free- so many smaller agencies use the service as well as the larger offices that may also be members of realestate.com or domain.com- these sites charge a monthly fee for a fixed contract time. JustListed also launched a magazine, but this hasn't been as successful as they hoped- the big media players continue to suffocate it. The print media is where they hope to make money, but this may be past tense now!

 

Actually the old site propertypage has been replaced with www.homehound.com.au which looks like the bigger franchises getting together and producing their own site: L.J Hooker, Century 21, Ray White, Raine and Horne and The National Real Estate Franchise Association of Australia.
I don't know how successful it's going to be, particularly as they also advertise on realestate. Why would a buyer bother going to both, if the bigger one covers them and all the other agencies?

Not a bad looking site, though.

 

Since I last posted about this, I very rarely use HomeHound now due to the slowness of their site and lag time on alerts compared to the other three major search sites. Without pics on the emailed alerts, it also is more time consuming and I haven't come across one property yet that wasn't already on realestate or domain. They will really need to bring up their standards and come up with something special to stay competitive in the marketplace, in my opinion.

 

Jacque,

I bought my development site via a search on homehound.com.au. I didn't even know the site existed until one of my REA's pointed me to it. I asked why she didn't just list it all on realestate.com.au and she said that the agencies were trying to "push their own site". So I figured that I might get eyes on something on homehound that others might not see if its not listed on the other two biggies. Turned out that way for me in the end with my property getting very little interest and allowing me to get the price right down. I can't help but think that if the vendor had paid the twenty bucks to list it on realestate.com.au as well then I might not have gotten away with my price.

As an aside, I thought long and hard about this situation and came to some interesting conclusions that I'll share with you. Firstly, the big agencies seem to be running scared about re.com.au and domain due to their "reach". They're trying to run a counter site but it won't work (I agree with you there). So why are they scared? I see that, sometime in the future, re.com.au or domain will completely dominate this space. They will ultimately merge and be the single point of call for all real estate listings, and I mean ALL listings. At that point in time the old school agencies become much diminished in their power. Vendor's still want an agent to represent them, but their advertising becomes centralised in "the" realestate website. So agencies with their shop-fronts with minimum local reach and their expensive overheads are now obsolete...

Fast forward to Michael's new business idea. Why don't I create a "virtual agency" which lists solely through the internet engines and doesn't have the overheads of shop fronts and physical locations. You can set up agent representatives in all the majors so that vendors can still meet their agent, but these are "work at home" type agents akin to the mortgage broker market. You standardise the uniform and the agency colours to create a brand and eventually you can even franchise it. Just my thinking, but what a powerful concept if you pulled it off. A bit like some of the businesses that now flourish using eBay as their sole channel to their customers, but this time its an online agency using realestate.com.au as the sole channel to their customers.... Now if only I could figure out how to pull it off.

Cheers,
Michael.

 

Isn't this what www.run.com.au is attempting to do in the property management side of things. Have an online agency to handle all property owners and renters queries, while having satellite offices/agents throughout the land to let them deal with the issues closer to the source.

On the Justlisted point, i remember about a year ago they started handing out the justlisted magazine to train commuters for free. About one month later that stopped and have never seen it again.

 

The JustListed mag was pulled after it was evident that it was superfluous to the already established website.

Michael, you're right in that HomeHound was begun by a group of the bigger agents (C21, Laing and Simmons, Elders etc) and we can both agree that the concept just isn't going to work in it's present form. With every purchaser/tenant wanting to save time these days by visiting one or two search sites that suit their needs, these sites simply can't survive and will have to develop or introduce new reasons for ppl to continue using them.

The concept of a virtual site definitely is the way of the future, but some of the more tech-headed agencies already think like this, despite the presence of their physical offices. McGrath, for example, doesn't have display properties in their windows in some offices and I can see other agencies following suit. However, what we must also remember, is that there is still a portion of the community who DON'T have net access (or necessarily want it) and therefore will still use the local papers, classifieds, Homes Pictorial guides, local agent windows etc with which to locate property.

There is also the fact that you are talking about a service industry, not a product one (like Ebay) where it is real people being employed by others to sell what is often their largest (and therefore most emotionally charged) asset. This alone will always ensure that agencies retain a "face" to the selling and buying public.