Record number of Aussies actively tracking their property prices
With the price of property a hot topic of conversation, it seems Australians are more eager than ever to gauge the worth of their real estate assets.
Property portal realestate.com.au has reported that now, more than 3 million Australian properties are being tracked by their owners through the platform’s owner dashboard – a 41 per cent increase on the number of owners who claimed their property profiles last year.
Moreover, home owners are also visiting realestate.com.au’s property owner dashboard more frequently. In October alone, 600,000 owners visited their personalised dashboard, an increase of 43 per cent in the last year.
The listings firm credited the jump in users to the release of its new valuation generator earlier in 2023.
“On the back of the realEstimate launch in early 2023, a surge of Australian home owners have connected with realestate.com.au. Almost 200,000 consumers became realestate.com.au members in October alone,” the company said in a statement.
The tool combines several proprietary valuations models with “hundreds of unique data points” to deliver valuation estimates for properties across the country.
The property information portal might be primarily thought of as a place where homes for sale or rent are listed, but REA Group chief product and audience officer, Melina Cruickshank, said engaging owners is core to REA’s consumer strategy.
“The current generation of owners and sellers have very high expectations around immediacy and transparency. Our connection to owners is important so they feel informed, can stay close to the market and ultimately feel confident in their decisions. We know updated realEstimates via our platforms consistently drive fresh conversations with real estate agents,” Ms Cruickshank said.
She added that the platform was also able to gain valuable insight into the behaviour of property owners who keep tabs on their holdings.
“Owners who track their property are much more likely to become sellers faster and seek finance advice,” Ms Cruickshank said.
On realestate.com.au, an average of 40 per cent of listings are for properties that were tracked by their owner prior to taking it to market.
In Ms Cruickshank’s eyes, this engagement also serves to equip the real estate market more broadly with crucial information about upcoming seller activity.
“Our huge owner cohort provides our agent customers with access to a wide range of individuals who are at various stages of the owning/selling journey,” she noted.
She added that the information flows both ways: “Exclusive features in our new Pro subscription are designed to enable agents to better leverage our highly engaged seller audience. Owners are particularly interested in following their local agent’s activity to inform choices and help them work out the best time to sell.”