Niche Australian property portal watersidepropertysales.com.au says is has passed the milestone of 10,000 listings, all of which come from the nearly 500 agents signed up.
watersidepropertysales.com.au first came online in June 2010, focusing only on residential and commercial property on the waterfront or with water views. The portal operates on a free-to-list model, generating revenue through premium listings and Google Ads.
Managing director Vic Del Vecchio says his next strategy will be to use the portal as an advertising platform for sales of other things connected to water such as boats, jet skis and surf gear. Del Vecchio adds that these listings will be not be free.
According to Del Vecchio, one lead is sent to an agent for every 35 visits to watersidepropertysales.com.au, and this increases when a property is featured. The portal offers 11 featured property listings per region along with 16 “property of the week” places on the homepage.
“We reckon that there are at least 1,000 more agents in Australia that have property listings on or near the water who would benefit from exposure on our site and we welcome them on board,” Del Vecchio says.
Del Vecchio is financing the development of watersidepropertysales.com.au with private equity from himself and two partners, and says they are “under no illusion as to the time it will take to become financially viable.”
Advertising Partner
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{ 24 comments… read them below or add one }
Our site is niche for all properties on or near the water of with waterviews and as such we believe in opening up to private sellers. This has been done since the article was presented and we are getting good enquiry. There is a small charge for private listers. http://www.watersidepropertysales.com.au/private_sales_and_rental_listings_information
Also we are in the process of expanding our site for listings in Austral/asia and the oceanic/pacific islands. Currently there are 30 listings from Australian agents and many Indonesian agents have expressed an interest in marketing their holiday and time share properties to the Australian market.
Really like your site Vic. It makes me want to move to live by the water in Australia.
Vic
Well done
Are they all paying?
And how much does it cost to advertise on the site?
Thanks
Simon
Vic, We suggest keeping Private for Sales off your site. You are looking at biting the hand that currently feeds you.
We are in contact with REIA and hope to offer Australian REALTORS a self-supported portal to replace the one’s currently dominating the market.
Your move to allow Privates could benefit the cause.
Thanks
Lewis
Lewis,
We will not discriminate as to who advertises on our site. In fact we do not consider ourselves to be in the real estate business. We are an advertising platform…a newspaper in a niche area of anything connected to water lifestyles.
We do aim however to eventually be able to be able to present ALL real estate that is on the market for sale in this niche area.
Wish you luck with your negotiations with the REIA. But to be successful as a portal you will need to give the users what they want – and that is a choice of EVERY property for sale. Particularly as FSBO is the growing market and will continue whilst the internet makes it easier for self marketing.
I have the view that Agents should concentrate on finding sellers and managing their leads. The advertisers/publishers will find the buyers and provide you with the leads.
Rhys,
getting easier to purchase Australian properties- love to see you over in “God’s own country”
Simon,
$129 for private sellers- for 3 months- but extension until sold, for free.
$49 per month for private rentals
$ 49 per month for featured properties, (private sellers and agents)
$49 per week for Property of Week (private sellers and agents)
Third party advertising rates are about to be released and should be on our site within the next week or so:
Our initial thinking is around $900 per month for a top banner add throughout the site/throughout Australia.
Or a sponsorship of that space for 6 months at a much lower pm price.
Forgot to answer “are they all paying?” – NO
I wish to congratulate the people at waterside for such a simple effective
advertising niche portal.
My wife & I were able to navigate thru the site with ease & clarity, easily finding
what we were looking for.
Considering the value of water property, & the costs of agent advetising,the rates for private selling are very very reasonable – almost immaterial in the scheme of things.
My wife & I will certainly be using this service.
Kon,
Great to see that you and you wife find our site easy to navigate.
The guiding priciple we used to build our site were SPEED. CLARITY and FUNCTIONALITY. We are always looking for more feedback on whether we have met this criteria.
Vic you are making claims that you or other portal providers are experts in the marketing and advertising of real estate. Better experts than REALTORS themselves. In reality you may be a web design expert but even understanding end user preferences on portal design as it pertains to real estate is beyond your grasp. Here are statistics from a survey completed in 2009/10 that had over 100,000 home seller respondents:
92.7% of respondents stated “strongly agree” to not having their home exposed online beside private for sales.
62.1% of respondents actually stated “Agree or Strongly Agree” to being exposed online ONLY with the brand they have Listed with
71.2% “Strongly Agreed” their home needed no exposure to unqualified buyers
88.5% “Agreed or Strongly Agreed” that their privacy was a major concern when exposing their home online
99.99% of respondents when informed of the realities of photo recognition technologies and cross platform data collection “Agreed or Strongly Agreed” that their personal privacy would be compromised if those realities were used to collect data about them.
This and similar information is what makes REALTORS the experts on what the consumer wants and needs.
Your site offers no innovation, no privacy controls, no copyright restrictions as to data transferability, no guarantees of data integrity, no co-branding options, etc, etc., yet you think you know more than REALTORS on how to get their leads for them?
Somehow the Portal owners in Australia failed to notice the Giant in their backyard. The world’s largest global real estate brand has set up shop.
Of course maybe REALTORS will remain ignorant to the realities of online marketing until a few court cases appear but we hope REIA will step up and inform them of what damage is being done to their businesses and their clients.
Lewis,
We simply provide the platform for ALL properties to be displayed to help realtors in their sales programs and anyone else who chooses to sell privately.
Marketing is really a much more complex strategem than simply advertising.
Advertising is just one component of it and this is where we sit in our niche. In doing so we meet the needs of a niche market. A market where those wanting to buy something ON or NEAR the Water can come and they will see everything on sale in that niche. Having said this, we have a long way to go to present the whole range in our niche, but to not include private sellers would be to deprive the buying public of CHOICE.
I have no problems at all with a group of realtors, or ALL of them getting to gether as group, to set up their own advertising platform. And if in doing so they want to preclude private sellers from their site, so be it.
I am not a “web developer expert” but we use web developers to do the work that WE give them the briefs on.
In so far as the Australian scene is concerned, you know nothing of it and if you did, you would know that the REIA has strongly supported a national portal exclusively for real estate agents. It is called realestateview.com.au. They are having a go but are finding it almost impossible to gain the support of all it’s agent members in this country. The anecdotal evidence is that agents expect their institutes to support, train, lobby etc and to not waste their subscription fees on commercial operations to which they are not skilled- ie advertising.
I’ll ignore the personal attacks as he “knows not what he sayeth”
Why wouldnt the big two just have a waterfront properties tab?
Vic,
A properly configured and designed portal run by REIA will not only be self funded by 3rd. party advertisers but will also be a revenue source for the Association in amounts that will exceed the current required fees, dues and insurance payable by REALTORS. Universal mls posting is required which realestateview has not reached. There are other features their site lacks but with proper information this can quickly be resolved.
REALTORS putting all their regional and local advertising efforts behind their own portal cannot be replicated even by the current #1 site in Australia. REALTORS learning about Links, SEO indexed listing pages, etc. will only inform brokerages and their agents about the dangers of what losing your Google ranking to a portal will cost them today and more importantly tomorrow. Luckily $$$ speak louder than words.
Your portal, being currently a “FREE” posting site, must see the potential in 3rd party ad revenues otherwise there would be no way for your portal to become profitable or…you are using the bait and switch approach like currently used on Australia’s #1 site.
Since Privates are posted on your site your portal’s integrity cannot be guaranteed to potential home buyers and thus any search results will continue to be unreliable.
If any statement made in my comments can be proven to be false or incorrect please feel free to clearly state where the errors have been made.
Lewis.
Vic, a final thought.
If I was a criminal looking for homes to break into in Australia, I know right where to go.
Homes with often quiet tranquil settings. A good look through the photos to find homes without alarms. Homes that often are vacant but loaded with great contents.
Even a google map view to let them know just how isolated.
Some homes have great photos that reveal very private details about the families that live there. In some of the higher priced homes great Art Work can be found.
Did I also say from most listings can be determined race, religion and age of family members residing in those homes?
Have you tracked the break-in rate on the homes you have posted on your site?
This is the reality of online marketing/advertising.
Snoop,
Most franchise agent sites and most ALL property portals have the tab for “waterfront” and and for other niche areas such as rural etc.
Because we are concentrating our efforts (SEO) on the keywords likely to be used by searchers for the types of properties on our site we hope over time to be consistently on page one of google search. To date we are achieving this with several of the main key search words/phrases (for our niche) and we continue to work on this. The others then need to separately work on these words, which some are doing. Then it becomes a matter of priority of effort on their part.
Lewis,
I wouldn’t try to argue against your poll results. The questions were framed by realtors to get responses that would help them. Advertisers’ polls would be aimed at the reader/consumer. Which suggests where each party should position themselves. Agent/realtors try to get sellers/manage leads and advertisers get buyers/leads for realltors. This is the way we coexist.
As long as we at http://www.watersidepropertysales.com.au don’t lose sight of our vision: “to provide an internet advertising platform for ALL properties ON or NEAR the water or with waterviews”, the viability will come from various sources.
But from what I understand of your motives, from what you have said here and what you say on your web site, your vision is “Lets make squillions from third party ads”
Some agents groups and some individual agents have made a lot of money from astute investments and start ups in the portal industry in this country, with two of the largest still having shareholding in REA. I say good on them for their foresight. But these are individuals who had the foresight and business acumen. They were not a membership/cooperative group.
Good luck if you can pull it off, it will be the first time since Lenin and Mao did it.
I get the feeling Lewis watches a lot of Alex Jones.
Hi Vic,
Congratulations an reaching this fantastic milestone.
I am enjoying your comments and wit and the little tussle with Lewis Nelson.
Cheers
Ueli
Changing tack on this post, but related to Lewis’s view on REIA looking to set up an agent owned portal.
The recent announcement in Australia, by http://www.onthehouse.com.au to go to an IPO to raise $50m and capitalize at $80m juist goes to show the amount required to make a portal successful against the two dominant players REA and Domain. Onthehouse valuation apparently includes the acquisition of two giant Australian CRMs (Port Plus and Console,) which have a significant portion of the Australian real estate agents as clients.
If successful with the IPO it will no doubt be the Third dominant option and leave all other players or wannabees struggling to be relevant. And this would include Realestateview, My Home and any proposed Lewis driven REIA portal.
Vic once the listings disappear from onthehouse.com.au the IPO will have proven to be a wasted exercise and should basically prevent any other venture capital appearing via IPO for other sites.
Vic you still fail to see the flaw in your business model. Without content you are worth nothing. In the US realtor.com just moved to top spot again. Although NAR has outsourced to host and build the product they still own the domain.
All these portals are simply a figment of your domain name. Worth nothing without content. Content will only be posted until agents are ready to offer a single source portal.
And $80 million??? Do your disclosure rules in Australia require full disclosure of all facts. Ie, valuation is conditional on agents continuing to post content and awareness REIA is now aware that all agents should cease and desist posting on these portals? I suspect law suits will follow any offering without this essential disclosure.
Lewis
Lewis,
You make a good point re the disclosure. Yes the valuation clearly would be dependent on the content being provided by agents and investors should be aware of this fact.
However, what if the prospectus is taken up mostly by Real Estate Agents.
Zillow is also issuing an IPO for $50m.odd, would be interested to see the outcome on this float.
I love watching Vic and Lewis going to head to head. Please keep it going!
Actually Vic this would make tremendous sense if a similar site could not be set up for a fraction of the IPO suggestion.
Actually the Franchisors and the large independant Brokerages should have bought this site if not for the above comment on valuation.
What is shocking is how 2000ish all these portals remain. Online Marketing Technology has surpassed all the leading portals about 14 months ago. It’s almost as shocking as any news that a Warren Buffet type was consider buying into these IPOs, would also be.
Lewis,
Your philosophy on business is “iron curtin” stuff. You want agents to control the media and you want all private sellers banned. You want all portals irrespective of whether they are free to list or charge agents to disappear. Next your’e going to be wanting all newspapers to disappear and television and radio stations to be owned by realtors. Perhaps the internet should also be taken over by realtors. Having achieved all of this you can then control which third party advertisers, advertise with you and you could charge them whatever you like.
What you seem to miss with your philosphy is that it is NOT about realtors and what they should get, but about the CONSUMER. The consumer owns the data that real estate agents use to make money for themselves. It is the consumer that is asking for the choices of advertising media and portal they want their properties advertised on and it is the CONSUMER who decides whether they want to entrust their property to and agent to sell or to try to SELL it PRIVATELY themselves.
It is realtors who run the real risk of disappearing if they were to blindly follow your philosphy. And it is the reason why you are having real trouble trying to get the support you need to get your business model off they ground.
Your ignorance of the Australian Portal scene is highlighted by the fact that there is already a significant “real estate agent’s site” in Australia and it operates on a subscription basis. It also owns a free to list site. Two different domains and two different business models. Ask the REIA to update you on this and then find out whether the rivers of gold from third party advertising are coming to real estate agents from these sites.
Lewis,
What you are proposing – has it been achieved anywhere else in the world?
It has already been achieved in Canada as realtor.ca is used by over 95% of ALL home buyers in our country. They use it because 100% of all active mls listings appear on it with accuracy, timeliness, and consumer protections all built in.
The only problem we have is our association caved to government pressure instead of taking it to the courts, where constitutional experts unanimously stated we would win but with a government budget of 15 million in the coffers and a willingness of the competition bureau to use it all on appeals, our association put it’s tail between it’s legs and accepted posting private for sales on a website owned by REALTORS. We believe this was the first instance of a democratic country dictating what content would appear on a privately owned website.
Vic is wrong on what the consumer wants and who owns the data. When an agent agreed to sign a contract with a seller, that seller ( as they have for over 60 years) agrees the data contained in that listing is the Listing Brokerages and NO one elses. The Listing Broker is obligated by law to handle that data in a manner commensurate with both marketing the property and protecting the consumer. In Canada monthly agents are fined $1000′s of dollars for the mishandling of information and open themselves up to lawsuits for damages.
The portal business model is built on false assumptions, lack of knowledge and no future proofing of their business model. Homes for sale do not need to be posted on a plethora of websites in the modern internet world. A single source best serves the consumer, allows for privacy and confidentiality protections, allows for implementation of new marketing tools immediately, allows for lowest costs and finally allows for additional revenue streams to be generated by the Listing Data which allows for the commission rates charged to be reduced as these revenue streams supercede actual commissions charged.
Any portal owner who is building a portal thinking they are offering a marketing tool for agents or homes lacks any understanding of the online marketing of real estate.
REIA is under the same false assumptions that your portal, zillow and all the others have been constructed under. As REIA and it’s members discover the income potential from an agent controlled site they will sooner than later remove all listings from sites who are competing against their own.
What other business in the world is foolish enough to promote a competitor and damage themselves all at the same time???? That is what Vic and all the other portal owners are hoping will continue. Sorry the net moves too quickly for this to continue.
BTW there are solutions for any portal builder or owner who wants to attack this market but they cannot do it without a partnership with agents.