Login

u/Sensitive-Pain6643

r/AskRealEstateAgents r/AusProperty r/AusPropertyChat r/AustralianStartups
Created a competitor for realestate and domain. Not getting a lot of good feedback.
▲ 46 r/AustralianStartups

Created a competitor for realestate and domain. Not getting a lot of good feedback.

I dont have much confidence that this is going anywhere. I have gotten feed back from other reddit threads. Its seems like people are too deep into the two major portals. Going to pitch it to a few realestate companies on monday any advise?

u/Sensitive-Pain6643 — 12 days ago
▲ 21 r/AusPropertyChat+1 crossposts

Are we doomed to pay these same huge listing fees to get a chance to be seen?

If I am correct, this duopoly has been in place since ’95, and it hasn’t gotten any better with time. So why is it that people have put up with this for so long? There have been a fair few attempts to break it, but all of them have failed. Why? And what will it take? I mean, come on, people, both realestate and Domain are owned by American companies, and we are paying them $2–5k to be seen, whereas in their own home country (Zillow), it’s free to list. What am I missing?

Hypothetically, if there was a free platform to list properties, would sellers and agents even be willing to try using it for free for a while to list and test it out?

"

The core reason these companies failed in Australia was their inability to break the market power of the REA Group and Domain duopoly. Both buyers and sellers default to these two platforms, leaving alternative models starved of traffic, listings, and revenue.

Why Each Specific Company Failed

  • Purplebricks (Fixed-Fee Model Miscalculation): Charged vendors an upfront flat fee rather than a success-based commission. This model alienated Australian sellers who expected agents to take on the financial risk of a property not selling.
  • View. com.au(Freemium Traffic Deficit): Attempted a "freemium" listing model to lure agents away from paid portals. It ultimately failed to generate the massive consumer traffic volumes required to displace the duopoly or prove return on investment for advertisers.
  • PropertyGuru (Capital Access Failure): Attempted to enter via a public listing on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX). It was forced to pull its initial public offering (IPO) due to local investor skepticism and a weak tech market valuation climate.
  • :Different (Unprofitable Unit Economics): Offered flat-fee, automated property management software. The company burnt through venture capital trying to acquire landlords but could not scale fast enough to cover its high software development and operating costs.
  • ReValu8 (Internal Shareholder War): Attempted to bypass traditional agents by offering buyers cash-back incentives. Severe internal investor and shareholder disputes froze its capital runway, pushing it into liquidation less than a year after launch.

The Structural Market Hurdles That Crushed Them

  • The Two-Sided Network Moat: Real estate portals rely on a feedback loop where buyers only visit platforms with all the listings, and vendors only list where all the buyers are. Breaking this loop requires billions in sustained marketing.
  • Prohibitive Customer Acquisition Costs (CAC): The cost to change consumer and agent habits in Australia is unsustainably high. New platforms routinely spent more money acquiring a customer than that customer ever generated in lifetime value.
  • Vendor-Paid Advertising Culture: Australian real estate relies heavily on the seller paying upfront marketing fees. Because sellers are already conditioned to pay thousands to list on realestate and Domain, they rarely saw the value in risking money on unproven platforms.

"

reddit.com
u/Sensitive-Pain6643 — 12 days ago