REA Group owned portal realestate.com.au have announced a price freeze on residential agent subscriptions until 2010.
Officially, the leading Australian portal last raised its prices on 1 September 2008, meaning the price freeze will last at least 16 months from September 2008 to February 2010.
A statement from the company says the decision to freeze residential subscription prices follows close consultation with real estate agents and comes at a time when there is a need to help boost activity among the residential real estate sector.
The price freeze covers residential subscription prices only, and does not apply to realcommercial.com.au, realholidays.com.au and developer subscriptions.
realestate.com.au has attracted a lot of attention in the last week after apparently hiking up its prices on other products as much as 45% per annum, according to some reports. Prices rose on 1 February for agents using “add ons” like Feature Property, eBrochure, or Guaranteed Top Spot and Banner Advertising.
realestate.com.au have said it will not freeze prices on its depth products which are different to subscriptions and are only used by a small percentage of agents.
Jamie Pride, realestate.com.au’s CEO commented on the residential subscription price freeze, saying: “As the market leader in online property listings, we are listening to what our customers are saying and want to focus on working with them in 2009 to add value to their core business and make their advertising dollars go further.
“We recognise some real estate agents may have had a tough year and the company wants to make things easier for them and for ordinary Australians who are looking at selling their property via an agent,” he said.
According to data collected by Deutsche Bank Group in 2008 agents spend $1.1 billion on real estate advertising in Australia in print and online, of which 12 per cent is invested into online advertising. realestate.com.au suggests the price freeze will therefore help free up much needed marketing dollars in a tough market.
“We are going to wait until early 2010 and assess the situation, before we look at raising prices again because we want to ensure our customers continue to have access to the marketing power that realestate.com.au brings,” said Jamie Pride.
In December 2008, realestate.com.au generated 15 per cent additional email leads for agents, and a further 15 per cent unique browsers to the site compared with the same time last year according to Nielsen Market intelligence data. In addition in January 2009 realestate.com.au attracted a record 4.8 million people to the site, according to internal company statistics.
Agents on pre-September 2008 residential subscription rates will have their residential subscription price brought into line with the September 2008 subscription rate at the time of their renewal, then no further increases until 2010.
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