REA Group: Bright Prospects for Online Advertising

On-line real estate classified market seems resilient in the face of turmoil elsewhere in the property market.

The REA Group’s new CEO Greg Ellis says that the Group will focus on improved profitability and improving the level of innovation in the coming year.

REA Group is planning a mobile website to compliment its flagship site realestate.com.au and is also looking at other new product development such as 3D imaging and adding video technologies to its site. That would be about time: their competitor open2view.com.au has had video walk throughs for years.

REA has had a good financial year so far with revenues up 45% to $155.6 million and nett profit up 48% to $22.3 million. And Mr Ellis says:

“There are no projected slowdown in the growth rates”

REA may be on to a good thing as it appears that, at least for now, on-line real estate advertising maybe a rare bright spot in the rather bleak economic forecast for the property industry as a whole.

Last week a report by Nielsen Online suggested that online media was becoming increasingly important to property buyers, sellers and renters. The percentages of these groups that admitted to doing on-line research were: buyers (87%), renters (85%) and sellers (79%). I’d love to know who the 21% of property sellers who do NOT check their house’s value online are: they could be a good deal waiting to happen for the informed buyer!

The most popular Australian property websites are still realestate.com.au and domain.com.au.