Real Estate & New Goods – Keys To Growth

Tuesday 17 January 2006

Real Estate & New Goods – Keys To Growth In 2006

Online marketplace Trade Me expects to host over 35 million auctions in 2006 and expects the fastest areas of growth to be real estate and brand new items for sale.

“We expect to see over 1 million listings a week by year’s end – 50% up on present levels” said general manager, Sam Morgan.

“In 2005 much of our growth came from new goods sold by small parallel importers consistently undercutting big brand retailers – particularly in electronic goods, clothing and watches.”

“New goods now comprise 40% of our sales – up from 25% a year ago.”

Since it’s launch in July 2005, Trade Me Property has been the most popular online property marketplace in New Zealand*.

Morgan attributed much of Trade Me Property’s growth to the support of property agents. “We have been a bit overwhelmed by how quickly the agents took to marketing their properties on Trade Me. After just six months we had over 1000 agents list a property on Trade Me – double our forecast.”

Trade Me Property passed 12,000 listings in 2005 and the company is predicting this to double to 25,000 in 2006. The average visit length to Trade Me Property is 13 minutes, more than twice the time spent on any other property site.

“We also plan to expand into the lucrative wholesale car market, providing a closed marketplace for importers, fleet operators and manufacturers. We built and trialled a wholesale market late last year with over 100 dealers participating. We think we can save consumers up to $700 on an imported car by running dealer-only auctions cheaper and more efficiently.”

2005 proved a watershed year for Trade Me, with the Wellington company passing Telecom’s joint venture with Microsoft, XtraMSN, to become New Zealand’s most visited website .

Trade Me has 1.1 million registered traders and won the Deloitte Unlimited Fast 50 Award for the fastest growing ICT company in 2005 with two year growth of 1081%.

ENDS

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