REA's agent anxiety
With its investigation into the dominant property advertising portal, the ACCC is not fooling around.
The 10,000-odd men and women who own Australia's residential real estate agencies wouldn't agree on many things, but the one thing they all share is a visceral hatred of REA Group, the owner of near-monopoly digital real estate marketplace realestate.com.au.[[In 2015, while working for a broking house, my small team surveyed a large group of east coast residential real estate agents on what REA charged for different ad packages in various postcodes. None of the agent feedback on REA is printable in a family newspaper.]]
So when Australian Competition and Consumer Commission chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb went nuclear last week and sent a Section 155 demand for information to REA Group – just after REA had rammed through another hefty price rise – she inadvertently achieved hero status among the real estate industry's honest toilers.
Well played, Gina. Even if your Section 155 inquisition merely makes REA more circumspect about the wording of its advertising contracts, a flood of letters is bound for Canberra nominating you for a place atop the King's Birthday honours list.
The bad vibes between residential real estate agents and REA dates back to the Pliocene period. And the fire of enmity burns ever more brightly following REA's decision to hike subscription prices from July 1 by up to 57 per cent, and to increase advertising package prices by another 10 per cent.