Rob: But what I want to focus on today, is that realestate.com really isn’t just a listing portal if you change your perspective. It’s also a behavioural database of pretty much every single perspective buyer and vendor in the country. And so, what I was hoping today, we could have a chinwag about the insights and the understanding of those behaviours and how agents and agencies can benefit from those insights. 

So to start with, who are you, Luke, and what do you do? 

Luke: I’ve been at REA now, realestate.com.au as a lot of your audience will know it for over 10 years, which is a lifetime in a digital sense. So predominantly in customer facing roles, really Rob dealing with agents and agencies, New South Wales and Victoria. But I’ve recently stepped into this role as national customer training manager alongside someone who, a lot of people might know Tara Christen. She’s been in the industry for 20 years. She’s really on the cutting edge of those digital trends that we’re starting to see. Whereas the role that I’m playing in the nack that I have is really joining the dots between what the lives of our customers are. You know, how they integrate with not only realestate.com.au, but also outside of REA resources as well. 

So I think my role is that conduit between REA and their business. So we do it at scale, a lot of in-person presentations to a lot of larger groups events, training sessions, some short form videos, online content webinars, all that sort of stuff. So it’s full on Rob. It’s demanding, but it’s you know, it’s a hell of a lot of fun as well. 

Rob: All right, well let’s get some of those insights and those data-driven understanding of customers out of you today. Let’s start with, you know, in marketing we use personas, customer personas, we sort of group people together by similar behavioural trends. How do you approach customers at REA group? 

Luke: We probably don’t use personas in the traditional marketing sense, but that being said, we have such an advantageous position with where we’re at because we have such a strong audience that visits our website every month. I think at last track there was over 13 million individuals who hit realestate.com.au in one month alone. 

So it’s, you know, effectively it’s half the population that are coming. And when they come, they’re spending about 35 minutes on average, per month per user. It is a large sample size, and it is a long time that they’re engaging with the site. So we have that, like I said, that advantageous position being able to identify exactly where they sit in the property cycle at any given point in time. 

So whether they’re buyers, renters, vendors, landlords, some people could be all four at once we identify those trends and where people are at and then impart that knowledge back to your audience that the agents, so, to give an example, like we have on average every month there’s 40,000 buyers come to REA and they tell us, yes, I was the successful purchaser of this specific property. So what we can then do off the back of that is reverse engineer all of their behaviours and all their patterns that they’ve had on REA and then that can then power our intelligence and a lot of the time use artificial intelligence to better connect with and provide value to the real estate professionals that are working in this industry. 

So a lot of them have access to this information. They can start the relationship early with these prospective buyers and real estate directors and agents are often asking me, okay, so why do you bother with owners? Well, that is the real crux of the reason right there. It’s so that we can track these people, but also so we can reverse engineer all their behaviour before they’ve made the purchase and then we can provide that intel and help shape really positive experiences for a lot of agents. 

Rob: So someone jumps on your site. How do you differentiate between someone who’s just browsing for fun because they’re dreaming of buying a new house one day and someone who’s browsing with intent. 

Luke: It’s a good one. There’s a couple of ways. So I’ll start with the easy answer. So when it comes to intent, you’ve got those legitimate, really, the calls to action, which are, whether it’s an email enquiry or a phone enquiry. They might click on the mortgage choice mortgage calculator to work out whether or not they can actually afford the home. They might register for an inspection or request an open for inspection. So they’re the legitimate calls to action. 

But in terms of sort of, you know, browsing with intent and the what we’d call the inferred signals, that might be things like frequency, duration and consistency. You know, one user months ago only been on site for three minutes. One of their friends sent them an email or a link. They clicked on that link. They opened up the property. It was a beautiful coastal property with the horizon pool that overlooked over the ocean. And then we don’t hear from that user again for another 12 months. But then in 12 months time, we start to realise that they’re on the site every single day. They’re visiting for over 30 minutes when they do come to the site and they’re looking at maybe core three or four suburbs, well, we can suggest that those inferred signals suggest that they’re browsing with intent. So frequency, duration and consistency are the things that we sort of measure. We know that that time in the buying journey now has really pushed out. 

So traditionally it was 34 weeks for a buyer from the time they decided they were going to buy to when they did purchase, it’s now blown out to 44 weeks, which tells us that a lot of people are doing a lot more research. They’re taking their time. And there’s a phrase in the market, Rob, that we’re hearing, which is no longer FOMO, fear of missing out. It’s now FOBO, which is fear of better options. People don’t want to make the purchase because they want to hold off in case there’s another option around the corner. 

Rob: Fear of better options. I’ve never heard that one before. I like that. 

Luke: It definitely is not one of mine. That’s for sure. 

Rob: Related to that is, is part of that journey would be if you are a vendor, finding an agent? I read in one of your or one of realestate.com’s brochure things that nearly two thirds of sellers start without a preferred agent, which amazed me. I just figured everyone had a preferred agent from from past experience or from simply seeing local branding. 

So how can agents influence that, apart from their regular brand building exercise that they’ll be doing day in, day out anyway in their local area? How on earth, on realestate.com do you stick your head up? 

Luke: Yeah, it’s the million dollar question. I think, like Tara and I speak about content that agents put out there that does one of three things that either attracts people into their network, nurtures those people that they currently have in their network, and then it converts those people that they have to a transaction or a listing, if you like. 

So what we’re speaking about now is really that attraction side of their business. I think the first step and the most crucial step in attracting is identifying exactly who these people are, which, unless you’ve got a microphone tapped under people’s kitchen benches in every house in your market, it’s pretty hard. Right? It’s hard to do that. But we do have tools at REA that help agents with that, one of which is if a buyer sends through an email enquiry, they can also identify whether they’re looking to sell, and we will flag that without pro subscribers on REA. So, although they might not have necessarily proactively reached out to sell just yet, that indicated that they’re looking to sell. So first step is to identify who those people are which is the most crucial one, the second step is to provide value. So helping them with their purchase, providing them some data, some insights, but it could be as simple as, you know, if you live and operate in the same community, are your kids in the same netball group and are you going to that netball game every Saturday morning? Do you want to help out with the scoring and the third step is to convey what a lot of marketers refer to as the unique value proposition. I like to use the word ‘superpowers.’ What is your individual ‘superpower’ as an agent, and have you conveyed that to these people? It could be that you are really good at styling and furnishing. It could be you’re an expert negotiator. You might be a social media whiz who has an extended network on TikTok, Facebook, Insta, the whole lot. So whatever that is, make sure convey message to people. 

It’s funny, I was out with a couple for dinner recently and they were having a chat about the fact they’d just gone on the market. And as I naturally do, I’m very curious about how it came to be that they chose their agent and he said he’d received the text message out of the blue from the agent that they’ve listed with. It turns out what had happened was they’d spoken to another family as they were dropping their kids off at school. That family was friends with the agent and passed the information on, and very subtly that agent just sent through a text message and said, “Hey, this is all of the data that I’ve got about properties that I’ve sold in the same price bracket as yours.” 

Now, this agent hasn’t sold the lion’s share of properties in the market, but they’ve sold more properties in that price bracket than anyone else. What they’ve identified there is their own individual superpower. They’ve got that 1.5 to $2 million bracket, sown up and they found a little loophole, a little way to get in and actually communicate that to people. 

So yeah, identify who they are, provide value and then convey your superpower. 

Rob: And that would be via the profile, the agent profiles on the platform, right? 

Luke: Yeah, absolutely. It can be. Like you said, two thirds of people have started the process without an agent in mind. All they’re doing really is if they’re not coming to realestate.com.au or any other portals straight away. They’ll google the name that they’ve heard about. So word of mouth definitely still plays a part because people hear the name first, but then once they Google the name, more than likely they’re going to run into the REA profile and they’ll be able to see all the information about the agent there. 

Rob: I do love how offline and online blends, you know, you bump into someone at school, drop off whatever it is, and you’re going to research them and you end up online in a portal or then you end up on the agency website. It’s amazing how everything blends together. So your messaging has to be so consistent so, so what does, what does a top, top agent profile look like on your site? 

Luke: So majority of them on our site we’re finding are complete. And we’re talking about having an updated cover image, the videos are there, and they’re current as well, and they really portray the agent really well. We’ve just launched agent reels, which is a really cool video that the agent can use to market themselves. 

Yep. So think like what you can see on Instagram with reels on Instagram. Agents can do the same thing on their REA profile now, which is really cool. Social media links are up to date. The awards that they’ve won are there, and they’ve also got reviews all of their information about themselves. 

So that’s the good ones. But if you want to talk about like that top 5% and, you know, around the country, I’m talking about a handful of agents that I’ve worked with might be updating their cover image or their video maybe once a month, and it will be frequently there based on new properties that they might clearly highlight their superpower, and they can do this in their description or on their video. So what is the specific thing about them that sets them apart. The other thing that some are doing as well is that they’re copying the reviews that they get from their clients, and they’re pasting this into their description. Now whether you’re getting the reviews on REA, Google, any other provider, they’re grabbing those reviews and putting that into their description. And we actually now syndicate with Google as well, which is a really cool thing that it’s going to make life a lot easier as well. Little footnote there for agents. And then the last thing that, again, the top four or 5% of agents are doing is they’re actually replying to their clients, once they do submit a review and they are replying publicly. So I think a lot of agents get into the trap of just getting a review and thinking, that’s great. I’ve got my review on there. 

It’s all done. But we need to put ourselves into the shoes of the prospective vendor. What they’re doing is that they’re looking at these reviews as social proof. 

An agent is responding to people after they’ve submitted a review it shows that they’re the type of agent who is still willing to work with people even after the transaction’s done. They’re still willing to engage. They still have a relationship outside of the cut and thrust of just selling the home. 

Rob: Yeah, that’s one thing I did want to talk about is, is those reviews. Because if you, if I jump on realestate.com now and look at any one area, there’s going to be a dozen agents who have got a really high star rating and, 20 plus properties sold. 

Are reviews just table stakes? Should you be asking every single person you deal with for a review? I mean, is it that simple? 

Luke: It is and absolutely it’s not just table stakes. It is a little output, but big impact. And I say a little output and well aware that there are a number of providers out there and it can be a little bit cumbersome to ask a past client leave a review on multiple different platforms. 

I think that’s, you know, not something we want to be doing. And as I mentioned, we now syndicate with Google as well, so we can have one review left that goes to both. 

76% of sellers who use online sources, Rob, have told us that they are using ratings and reviews when they’re researching agents. It’s over three quarters. So the proof is in the pudding there. Again, it’s a little bit awkward depending on what market you’re in. I know there’s some agents who just don’t feel comfortable asking past clients for reviews. Because it’s, you know, it’s a little bit of an awkward sort of thing to ask, but it definitely does have big implications based on prospective vendors and what they see. And we’ve got to compare what we do in this industry to what other industries are doing. We shouldn’t be comparing ourselves just to other agents. You look at any other, like hospitality, retail, even book sales, the beauty industry. I mean, they’ve been doing it for years and doing it really well. So the average consumer, they’re thinking the same thing. 

They’re comparing outside of industry about their experience. I put it to any agent who wants to question it. If you are a prospective vendor and you are looking at two agents side by side and one of them had 30 reviews on their profile and the other had none, my suggestion is it would be a red flag. The person who doesn’t have any reviews, particularly given that sometimes people are taking up to 10 or 11 years until they sell their property, they haven’t been used to the industry. They know what to expect. It be a red flag if there were no reviews. 

Rob: So add request review to your post-sale workflow is that’s what you’re saying. 

Luke: Yeah, well 100%. And if I can add a little bit of work as well, once that review comes through, definitely reply and reply publicly so that hits your profile. 

Rob: Righto. That’s a good take there. Now, if I’m a if I’m a prospect, I’m jumping on realestate.com. I’m looking around, I submit. Because I can send a message to an agent, can’t I, through realestate.com. What’s best practice here? Because I reckon this is I know a number of agents were pretty slack in this and they know they’re slack, but they they got so much going on. 

What does great look like and how can they make this work for them? 

Luke: Yeah, so the first step is immediacy, so making sure that the response that we have is immediate. Now, granted a lot of agents might be in meetings, appraisals at the that an appraisal request comes through. So being able to respond really quickly isn’t always tangible. 

But I think you mentioned that you know that the average response expectation of a seller is that they are responded to within 48 hours, which is pretty fast. 

And we know that usually it’s only a two or three horse race. So on average, the seller is sending through a lead request to 2.5 agents on average so, and what we are finding off the back of that is the agent who is most successful in actually winning that listing is the one that responds quickest. The seller is seeing the response that they get as a reflection of how well buyers are going to be served, should they give their business to that agent if they’re slow to respond to them, then they see that as a reflection that they might be slow to respond to buyers and potentially buyers might get off the hook. 

So immediacy is definitely one. The second one I would say is personalisation as well. So when you ask about what does great look like in terms of lead responses, personalisation I think we do well in terms of the name of the seller or the address of the property that they’re sitting on. But what we need to do is go that extra mile, start calling out the unique home features of that property. What are the things that set that apart? And communication preferences. 

So we know that the consumers who are over 45, they sort of like a mix. 50% of the time they want a phone call. 50% of the time they want text or email. Whereas if you are under 45, they only want a phone call 25% of the time, which means that a lot of the time, a text message, WhatsApp message, and email can suffice. And then the last thing I would say is that it is outcome focused. So whatever the message you give is, it needs to be really focused on what that seller wants and the outcome that you as an agent can deliver. We know that the number one most important quality of an agent, according to sellers, was that the agent truly cares and wants the best outcome for them, so if you can find a way to deliver that message. you’re definitely going to be in the box seat. 

Right. 

So it’s finding a way to make sure that someone can answer that prospect or that appraisal request, even if it’s not with an instant appraisal, it is with a response. Right? So it might have to go to the office and the office does it. 

Yeah, spot on. Yeah. Find a way to get back to them as soon as you possibly can. 

Rob: Let’s now move to a listing. And if I look at how things have moved, we’ve gone from, you know, photos into videos. Where are videos going? How important are videos, and what does great again look like? 

Luke: So aside from images, the most highly engaged with medium on our platform, we’re finding are videos. Like if a photo, as they say, tells a thousand words while a video tells a million words. 

So in terms of selling the property or moving the property, absolutely. It’s really powerful. But it’s also not just property related. We know that it’s agent and agency related as well. And like I mentioned, we’ve got agent reels that agents can use. A lot of consumers are seeing this as the digital interview, so their opportunity to get to know the agent before they have to show their hand. 

And if a video makes an agent more familiar, we know that familiarity breeds trust and trusts breeds a greater likelihood to invite you into their home. So it’s uncomfortable, I get it. Like a lot of agents struggle with video. But you know, if you can find a way to do it. It definitely has impact and there’s some ways that you can get around it too, so it isn’t so uncomfortable. 

You know, like even things like an interview, like this sort of style can sometimes disarm the feelings that a lot of people have of nervousness. Even voiceovers can be really important. So if you don’t want to put your face on there, have a voiceover over the top of a property walkthrough or whatever, and then subtitles are really as well Rob. What we’re seeing from consumers is that over 80% of videos aren’t watched with the sound on, you know, they’re on a train or they’re sitting on the couch next to their spouse, and they don’t want to have the sound on, so they’re watching it with subtitles. If you can do a voiceover and put subtitles across the bottom, it’ll help relay the message that you want to convey. 

Rob: Yeah, that’s a good take there. It’s about quality of video. You know, you can pay a few grand and get a pro to come in and create amazing video of a house and then chuck over some mood music, or you get yourself a gimbal and you walk around and talk about the house yourself. 

Have you got any data or any stats about whether one works significantly more than another because if a vendor doesn’t want to pay for a high-end video, is it that much worse just to have the agent wander around and show the property themselves? 

Luke: So in terms of attracting the buyer pool, absolutely not. In actual fact, we’ve found that authenticity is the thing that more people are engaging with. As opposed to you know, highly polished, high production value videos. That being said, like every agent agency, whether you are part of a bigger franchise or a boutique, there is a brand reputation to uphold. So you don’t want to do that to the detriment of your brand. And I know that there’s a lot of franchises with strict guidelines around the way that videos are shot. I think if you can still do that and maintain the authenticity of message, then that’ll go a long way. 

Rob: I feel there’s some agencies that actually invest some of their own money into those videos, and it’s well worth it because the production value increases enormously, doesn’t it? 

Luke: Yeah, absolutely they do. And I know like I said, we’ve got a captive audiences like real estate is an industry that whether you are selling or buying or neither of those things, people are so captivated by it. They want to know, they want sticky beak about the property around the corner, what they sold for. So agents have this captive audience at their fingertips that they can engage with. It’s not like you need to go out and find this audience. People are genuinely very keen to know about what’s happening in the market. 

Rob: Yeah, well, so what’s happening next in this space? You know, photos, videos, long descriptions. How else can how else is realestate.com going to help vendors market their property and help help buyers understand the unique nature of each of those properties? 

Luke: We move pretty quick, Rob, and I’m happy to say that it’s only a few weeks away that we are going to launch what we’re referring to as property walkthroughs. Which are short, sharp videos that agents can take simply in the palm of their hand through a phone and walk through that listing and pop it up on the listing, whether it’s online through an app or on the desktop. 

So they’re going to be really cool. It’ll give, like I said, every agent an opportunity to be able to do it. I think the benefit for the agent is, it gives them the opportunity to showcase themselves and the listing for the vendor. It’s a really dynamic view of the property that you can’t necessarily get through just photos and for the buyer, it’s a more realistic representation of the home. 

So I think everyone wins with the fact that, yeah, we’re launching these property walkthrough videos from the 1st of July. 

Rob: Righto. Okay, well, there’s something new. Let’s talk about ads. Now, you know, there’s the pay to play space, do properties that rank the top of the list, do they sell better? Is their data to back that up? Now, you’re probably going to say yes because you want agents to spend their money with you, right? But if I’m looking for a property in suburb A and you are constantly showing me one in suburb C, am I going to suddenly start looking at that property? 

Or if I look at it once and you keep showing me that property, am I going to end up buying it? What does the data show? 

Luke: So I will talk to the data because without the data, I’m just another person with an opinion and the data tells us that yes, both of those categories are correct. So when you refer to the at the top of the search results, what we refer to with that is the Premier Plus listing, which is the premium, you know, the best option that you have in terms of listing. know, and we’ve had this in market for a couple of years now, so across tens of thousands of listings, so there’s a really large sample size. We know that Premier Plus listings will sell 12 days faster than a normal premier listing, which is the tier below. Now part of that listing package as well is that the vendor and the agent have the ability once within the campaign to push a button and push that property back to the very top of the search results, right? So when a consumer does a search, it sits at the very top. Now, they can only do that once within the campaign, but the week after they do that, what’s called a listing bump. 

After they do that listing bump, we see 105% more page views in that week following. So twice the amount of page views and we know the Premier Plus listings as a result of getting more page views, they get 20% more enquiries. So, generally speaking, more enquiries means more competition, and more competition means a higher sell price. 

Rob: So the pay to play space does work. 

Luke: Yeah, absolutely it does. And to touch on the other, you know, part you mentioned whether if you’re in a different suburb and you’re being enticed with other properties as a buyer, does that, does it actually entice you to view them? We know that there’s like the active audience who are proactively coming to the site and they’ve got their core three or four suburbs that they’re looking at. But then you’ve also got that passive audience who aren’t necessarily as proactive, but if the right option came across to them, then they would be willing to engage. Now, whether or not that person is the eventual buyer or not, is kind of irrelevant. All that, the vendor is concerned with. 

The agent is concerned with. He’s getting the highest sale price. And I don’t think, you know, there’s no buyer in the land who wakes up in the morning Rob and says, you know what? I’m going to pay $150,000 above market value for this property. And yet a lot of buyers end up doing that. And the reason they do that is because of the competition that it drove them to actually drive that higher sale price. 

So absolutely out of area marketing definitely works to create competition, and the competition creates the higher sale price. 

Rob: Right. I wanted to talk to you about AI. Now every single company in the world is playing dabbling or not, but pretending they are, what are REA group doing and what’s going to benefit agents and agencies in the near future. 

Luke: I’ll start with what REA is doing in this space to start with. And the first is that we’re delivering a more personalised experience to our consumers. who come to our app and our desktop device now. 

And what I mean by that is if you think about the way that Netflix or Spotify will tell you, Rob, what sort of music you might be interested or what TV shows you might be interested in. 

We are preempting the types of properties that consumers might be interested in based on their search. We are preempting the types of agents they might be interested in based on their search as well. 

And we’re giving a homepage experience that can literally have hundreds of thousands of different iterations based on what that consumer’s previous experience might be. So definitely playing in that space. I mentioned before the fact that we reverse engineer when someone claims that they purchased a property. So we can also provide data to agents, and this starts to blend into how agencies using it really well. But we can provide data to agents that suggests that as a consumer, this person is at the late stages in terms of being ready to buy or ready to sell. And their propensity to want to buy or propensity to want to sell is a certain score out of 10. 

And that, again, is based on their behaviour on our website. So lot of artificial intelligence that powers that to get those results through to agents. You know, there’s things that are a little bit rogue that agents are doing as well, that work really well. One of those is the conversation that they have to have with vendors midway through a campaign that might not be going so well if they need to have a conversation with that vendor about reducing the price. What I’m finding they’re doing is go to, whether it’s our comparable market analysis report or any data, and they’ll just copy all of the data. They’ll paste it into chat, GPT or whatever they’re using and say, you use this data to craft a price reduction compensation for me to have with this vendor of this property at this address? And it’s spinning out the most polished diplomatic responses and whether it’s letters or conversations that they can then go and have with their vendors it’s making them look like absolute experts. I think, which is a really cool way to do it. And it means that, the conversation is, is backed on data and it’s based back on fact as opposed to it just being the agent’s opinion that we need to reduce the price of the property. 

Rob: In the future, I know agents and agencies are concerned, AI is going to become more and more of a customer touchpoint, taking away the face-to-face. 

How do you see this playing out? Is there a point where. Yeah, people want that personalised touch,? 

I mean, realestate.com is a listings portal. It is impersonal. How can you make that more personal? And you’re saying that the AI now is driving a lot of the content, the dynamic content the customers do see. How else can you see this rolling out over the next few years? A really open-ended question for you. 

Luke: No, I like it. I think that it’s going to help really to preempt the types of consumers that might be ready to list. I think, which, again, if you’re a consumer, you’re a little bit nervous about that because you’re thinking, okay, how do people know about this? But I think it’s going to help agents connect the dots there to those consumers who might be ready to list. I also think that based on trends, we are going to be able to provide better economic predictions about properties, what a property is going to cost, or how much it’s going to make, that that buyer is really, you know, still the most important thing when they’re when they’re looking to purchase. So I think it’s going to help agents have, you know, better conversations around economic predictions as well. But think it’s going to help them to cherry pick the right buyers. I think there lot. Call it peripheral noise or peripheral work that agents have to do at the moment to try and find that right buyer. think AI is definitely going to help them cut through to the chase and get the person that they need to get the deal done and start negotiating a lot earlier and negotiating more importantly. With the right person. So in a nutshell, yeah, absolutely personalisation is, is here to stay. And I think it’s only going to enhance it with AI, and I think it’s going to fast track their ability as in the agent’s ability to have the right conversations at the right time with the right people, as opposed to a lot of wishy-washy tyre kicking conversations. 

Rob: Yeah, that’s fair. That’s a fair point and I think that’s a brilliant point also to end it there, Luke, this has been a really fascinating. Conversation. You know, there’s so many different little segues we can take when it comes to this, but you’ve really created some value here showing people how they can improve their own performance in realestate.com. 

But also just generally I’ve learned a lot about how you review and understand customers and how you reverse engineer things, which I think is really valuable. And, you know, as our industry evolves. realestate.com will continue to be a giant in it. And it’s brilliant to see how many tools that realestate.com is putting out there to help agents list and and vendors list their properties and really get the best price possible. 

So thank you so much for your time today, Luke. 

Luke: My pleasure, Rob. Thanks for having me on. 

Rob: And thank you to all our listeners and viewers if you’re watching us on YouTube. Thank you again for watching the Property Edge Podcast. Do stay tuned for more episodes. Head to the Property Edge website for more information. Until the next time, bye-bye. 

Note: This transcript has been edited for clarity.