realestate.com.au v domain.com.au

Ray White Killcare Peninsula uploads the homes we are marketing to 8 web sites in addition to our own (9 if the property is priced above $1m) however the vast majority of people will see those homes on one of two sites that dominate the NSW market realestate.com.au or domain.com.au.

So whilst we might all have our own preferences as buyers based on which site we like the look and feel of, which of the two sites is most effective in reaching buyers when you are selling?

The following points are a broad generalisation of the results our office sees (this may not be applicable to other markets and results certainly fluctuate significantly from property to property);

• Listings on realestate.com.au get approximately twice the number of views as domain.com.au
• This difference is lessened on lower priced properties and increased at the higher end
• A feature or highlight listing on realestate.com.au increases the number of views to approximately 2.5 those of a standard listing with domain.com.au
• While less people will view a given property on domain.com.au this is offset to a large extent by a superior enquiry ratio.

To summarise, we find realestate.com.au to be the more effective site however the differences are not significant enough to ignore domain.com.au. As a vendor you can’t afford not to be visible on both sites.

And finally something that will be of interest to buyers is that apparently not all agents use both sites. At the time of writing this I searched for all residential property for sale on the Central Coast of NSW. On realestate.com.au 4,042 properties were listed and on domain.com.au 3,502. When you consider that realestate.com.au only accepts advertising from licenced agents whereas domain.com.au also accepts advertising from private vendors, the discrepancy is even greater. Clearly not all agents are representing their vendors effectively.