There's a property stickybeak in us all, but selling property is big business

The Take a Stickybeak campaign, promoting the REIWA’s real estate portal, strikes an amusing note.

It comes with a 30-second video campaign aimed at establishing the website as the state’s leading real estate portal.

The reiwa.com website is an industry-based portal that lists properties for sale or rent as well as new homes and developments across WA. It is owned by the Real Estate Institute of West Australia who teamed up to secure marketing support from Kerry Stokes's West Australian Newspapers.

Its competitor sites are News Ltd's realestate.com.au and Fairfax's domain.com.au.

The October Nielsen numbers showed reiwa.com attracted more than 1 million visits per month from over 400,000 unique visitors, generating over 10 million page impressions and around 65 million searches a month. Numbers dipped in November, as for much of the industry, to 351,000 unique visitors generating 9.5 million page impressions, with an average session duration of eight minutes.

Even though the site only shows properties in Western Australia, reiwa.com is the sixth biggest real estate site Australia wide, according to a recent Hitwise Top 10 for real estate.

Charlie Gunningham, the executive manager of reiwa.com, says it's a fun marketing campaign that recognised that everyone likes to have a stickybeak at property.

Indeed is that not the truth! Especially around this place.

I often recall the words of property sage Max Raine in singing the praises of the Sydney Morning Herald's property column, Title Deeds during my lengthy editorship.

Max Raine often noted that Title Deeds, especially when it appeared on the front page of the Saturday property section in the years after its 1987 launch, brought increased numbers of readers who were not actually in the market place for property to the SMH real estate classified pages. And then they quite often became buyers once they were there.

Here at Property Observer we have that same approach in mind - seeking to provide articles for everyone from the property naive to the property passionate. Our readers can be anywhere along the property journey - from those possibly starting out on their first home to those searching for yields for their next property investment. For those looking for advice on buying a simple small storage space to those embarking on setting up their smsf. And ofcourse the curious stickybeaks.   

Interestingly, total visits to all the major Australian property listing sites had its most recent peak last January, according to the blogger Michael Daley who undertakes analysis of Hitwise Competitive Intelligence data. Nothing higher since.

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As far as the most common city- and state-based property searches, "melbourne" dominates, followed "nsw" then "perth", which certainly punches above its weight.

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Recent data compiled by JP Morgan indicated there was a $1.56 billion Australian classifieds market, both print and online, in the past financial year. 

The total online classifieds market was worth $640 million, with the big three made up of employment, real estate and cars. 

The report concluded the total real estate advertising market totalled $586 million – with its online ads being a $219 million segment.

The analysis of the online/print advertising price differential show that the dollar amount spent on print is currently 3.5 to 4.5 times that of online real estate advertising.

The News Ltd lead REA Group ranks as the clear leader in the online residential real estate classifieds market with a near 70% revenue share, followed by Domain, the Fairfax-owned site, with 27% share and in third place, the industry portal, realestateVIEW.com.au with a 4% share.

The newest entrant, Metro Media Publishing, a 50%/50% joint venture between FXJ and leading Melbourne real estate agents, has a forecast online revenue of $20 million by the end of 2013 financial year. JP Morgan notes this would place it as the number three player in the online real estate classifieds market.

realestate.com.au attracts more than twice as much website traffic as its nearest competitor, domain.com.au.

Residential real estate is the largest classifieds market by size at $586 million in the past financial year, accounting for 38% of the $1.56 billion total classifieds market in Australia.

However, online still only comprises 37% of the real estate market, significantly less than employment (58% of total) and automotive (90% of total).