It seems some everyone wants to jump in on the bandwagon of Australia’s inflated housing prices.
In an article in The Guardian, it was found that Australia pays the highest prices for real estate listings in the world, with some home owners paying up to $4000 for a listing.
One presumes that’s for more expensive properties and the owners can afford it, but still, it’s a ridiculous price for a small space on the internet, a few words and photos.
The problem can be squarely laid at the feet of the market dominance of realestate.com.au trading as the REA Group and to a lesser extend Domain.
REA Group is now a $27bn company and posted a net annual profit of $460.5m in August, driven by a 23 per cent increase in revenues to $1.5bn. The company hiked its prices by 13% in the past year.
Australia is one of only about three countries where the home seller pays for the advertising costs. In other markets, the cost is part of the agents fee.
According to The Guardian the Australian prices are more than 50 times what they were 15 years ago for a top-tier listing.
Even agents have had enough, so it must be bad.
But what’s the alternative? A new player in the market would take years to get up to speed. Maybe a disrupter in the vein of Uber or AirBnB needs to take on the market.
Maybe DIY kits need to become more popular, or you could simply take our neighbour’s approach.
When he wanted to move into the area, he simply letter-dropped the houses he was interested on our street with a flyer saying how much he was willing to pay and his contact number. After negotiations, not including financial settlement, he bought a house within a month.
Do you think we pay too much? What should be the alternative?
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