An Australian estate agent on a fact-finding mission to the UK has revealed the eye-watering cost of listing on property portals in Oz and marvelled at how ‘cheap’ Rightmove and Zoopla are in the UK.
The comments by Charlotte Pascoe, who is a high-profile Melbourne agent with a 15-year track record within the Oz industry, will shock agents in the UK who complain about the monthly cost of using UK property portals.
Pascoe works as General Manager at Pascoe & Leggo, a 45-branch franchised network covering most of Australia’s key property markets.
She says branches in Oz pay between AU$30,000 (£15,800) and AU$35,000 (£18,500) a MONTH to list on the Rightmove equivalent Real Estate Australia (REA).
“If you want to do in-portal advertising on top of that it can be an extra AU$1,000 to AU$5,000 a month,” says Pascoe.
This compares dramatically with Rightmove’s average monthly fee of £978, although this can reach £1,500-£1,700 depending on the extras agents choose to pay for.
During the interview with Chris Watkins, she describes REA as a ‘cash machine’ that would make even Rightmove blush, and that Oz’s answer to Zoopla, Domain, charges around AU$4,000 a month for agents to list on its platform (or approximately £2,000).
Property portals
Pascoe also reveals that Oz property portals charge based on the location and size of the local market, not the size of the agent, unlike in the UK.
“We’re all being ‘rogered’ together, evenly,” she says.
“To try and avoid paying these huge fees we’re now offering vendors an ’off-market’ solution and sell the homes via Facebook instead and this has been successful for our franchisees.”
Pascoe tells The Negotiator that these portal fees contrast with average selling fees charged by agents in Australia which are between 1% and 2.5% depending on the area and average prices and that average fees income per sale in Victoria, for example, are between $8,000 to $10,000.
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Yes spot on Gordon. I believe fees in some part of Oz can reach 4% and that many agents charge extra for services that UK agents offer as part of their fee.
What isn’t mentioned is that the fees are much higher in Australia with a modest house bringing in a fee of AU$20,000
Hi Gordon, it may appear this way, but in reality this is not the case. I have worked in both the UK and Aus industries, and I report on this each month so I can unequivocally tell you that it is actually more around the $7-10k mark on average in Australia for sales commissions.