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realestate.com.au Launches in New Zealand

Published: Fri 3 Jun 2005 09:32 AM
Media Release 3 June 2005
realestate.com.au Launches in New Zealand and Anticipates Growing Interest From Australian and Offshore Property Investors
Interest in New Zealand real estate is expected to boom amongst Australian and offshore real estate investors as realestate.com.au, Australia’s largest real estate website, launches New Zealand properties for sale on its site.
realestate.com.au is bridging the Tasman by enabling 1.6 million visitors to its website each month to quickly and easily search New Zealand properties. A recent on site survey showed that 30 percent of visitors to realestate.com.au were interested in investment properties and that one in four respondents wanted to search for New Zealand properties.
This reflects recent investment trends where New Zealand is recognised as highly attractive for investment properties due to strong local market growth, lower entry prices, and favourable tax treatment.
New Zealand real estate agents and developers have long recognised the value of advertising to the Australian market and this explains the surge in New Zealand properties being advertised in Australian papers and on Australian radio.
Chief Executive Officer of realestate.com.au, Simon Baker, said “The response from New Zealand real estate agents and property owners has already been fantastic. They are genuinely excited about the opportunity to advertise their properties to an additional 1.6 million property hunters on realestate.com.au.
“We have already signed up more than 80 agents to advertise New Zealand properties for sale on the site. These agents will join the 6,233 Australian agents already using realestate.com.au.
“During the last 12 months we have had many calls from New Zealand agents and developers wanting to advertise properties on the site. This, together with the strong demand from users of the site for greater choice in investment properties has led us to expand our service into the highly attractive New Zealand market."
Leading New Zealand developer of inner city property, Kitchener Group of Companies, is one of the first to use the realestate.com.au service. Sales Manager of the Kitchener Group, Peter Holmes, said it as an easy and cost effective way to extend market reach.
“realestate.com.au will enable us to take our product to another dimension by exposing it to a large Australian customer base, “ said Peter Holmes.
“In property development, fifty per cent of our sales are generated from Australia, so advertising our properties on realestate.com.au is nothing but a positive for us. It also offers a great on-sale opportunity for New Zealanders as local properties can be exposed to a broader offshore market."
realestate.com.au has recently attracted more international interest to the website than ever before, with 260,000 international visitors to the site each month. This suggests that offshore interest and investment in property is becoming more commonplace and reflects current demands from Australian investors to seek New Zealand real estate.
About realestate.com.au
Launched in 1995, realestate.com.au is Australia's most popular and comprehensive source of real estate listings and information. It is locally and internationally recognised as Australia’s number one property website with more than 75 per cent of all agents and developers advertising 350,000 properties for sale and for rent on the site every month.
In April 2005, the realestate.com.au website attracted more than 1.61 million unique browsers. Of these, 1.35 million were Australians and 260,000 were international visitors.
realestate.com.au is listed on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX: REA) and has five business units: realestate.com.au, realcommercial.com.au, realestate.com.au Publishing, realestate.com.au Web Design Services and realestate.com.au Home Loans.
ENDS
FACT SHEET
May 2005
About realestate.com.au
- realestate.com.au is Australia’s largest real estate site having more properties, being used by more agents, and being visited by more people
- realestate.com.au has properties for sale, a complete directory of agents, properties for rent and share accommodation
- realestate.com.au Australia’s only true national one-stop-shop for information on properties to buy, rent, share or holiday.
- realestate.com.au is the easiest, fastest and most user-friendly way for successfully finding property that’s right for you.
- realcommercial.com.au, realestate.com.au’s sister site, is Australia’s largest commercial property website
realestate.com.au Metrics - More than 6,230 agents (75 per cent of the Australian market) list properties on realestate.com.au.
- realestate.com.au features more listings than any other real estate website in Australia with over 350,000 active properties for sale and rent on the site at any given time.
- realestate.com.au attracts a monthly readership of 1.61 million consisting of 1.35 million Australians and 260,000 international visitors.
- The most frequent offshore visitors to realestate.com.au are from the USA, UK and New Zealand.
- On average, each month visitors conduct 21.3 million searches.
- Over the last year, the number of visitors to the site has grown by over 50 per cent, reflecting the continued emergence of the internet as the best medium for finding property to buy, rent or share.
- Each month, realestate.com.au visitors stay on the site for an average of 30 minutes, view more than 77 pages and return 2.8 times.
- Collectively, visitors view more than 120 million pages every month, ranking realestate.com.au sixth most popular site by page views.
Customer Demographics
- A recent visitor survey indicated that 51 per cent of visitors to realestate.com.au were considering buying a property, 20 per cent were looking to rent and 18 per cent were monitoring the market.
Competitive Market Snapshot
- realestate.com.au has been recognized as the most popular real estate site in Australia since October 2000 by Nielsen//NetRatings.
- In April 2005, realestate.com.au had 639,000 more visitors than the second place site, Domain.com.au.
- In April 2005, realestate.com.au had 1 million visitors that did not visit the second place site, Domain.com.au.
Product Offering
- realestate.com.au has a search facility that enables users to find property by price, location, building type, number of bedrooms, car spaces, and so on.
- The site offers automatic email notification for new properties that match customized user criteria, and other tools including virtual tours, detailed location maps, sold property price information via the “Sold Database” as well as finance and stamp duty calculators.
- realestate.com.au offers a full range of online and educational services to real estate agents including web design, development, hosting and free e-marketing seminars.
Profit Statement
- Over the last four years, realestate.com.au has increased revenues from $3.8 million to $33 million, become profitable, grown its share price from $0.08 to $1.50, and has grown its market capitalization from $8m to $150m.
realestate.com.au History
Launched in 1995, realestate.com.au is Australia's most popular and comprehensive source of real estate listings and information. It is locally and internationally recognized as Australia’s number one property website with more than 75 per cent of all agents and developers marketing more than 330,000 properties residential and 32,000 commercial properties for sale and for rent on the site every month.
In April 2005, the realestate.com.au website attracted more than 1.61 million unique visitors consisting of 1.35 million Australian and 260,000 from overseas.
realestate.com.au is listed on the ASX (REA) and has five business units: realestate.com.au, realcommercial.com.au, realestate.com.au Publishing, realestate.com.au Web Design Services and realestate.com.au Home Loans.

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