Did Trademe get too greedy?

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surfisup1000

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#146571 22-May-2014 09:03

http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/10070204/Real-estate-boycott-hits-Trade-Me-share-value

Trade Me shares have been pushed down to a two-year low this week on the back of deepening concerns about the impact of a spat with real estate agents and slow growth.

Trademe hiked real estate listing fees by a large value and agents were not happy.

After copying the ebay model, trademe just don't know what to do now. They've picked the low hanging fruit such as expanding into jobs/real estate but now they need to show some real intelligence for the first time in their business life.

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#1050858 22-May-2014 09:03

Hmmmm. Here we go.

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Batman

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#1050868 22-May-2014 09:29

Boycott trademe and they will buckle

garvani

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#1050869 22-May-2014 09:30

Yeah they have gotten far too greedy. My mother is a Property Manager (rentals), they hiked the fee's up something fierce, so much so that they have pulled all rental advertising off trademe. Advertising is now purely on their first national website, which isn't the best as most people head to trademe for rental properties but i guess with time this will change. Im not sure if this was a company wide decision or just this local branch.

YadaMe

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#1050874 22-May-2014 09:35

I hated trademe when looking for a house, they still do not have a map view of houses for sale an area.. Maybe if they added useful feature the agents would be happier to pay.

freitasm

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#1050878 22-May-2014 09:50

joker97: Boycott trademe and they will buckle

Boycott as in "use the alternatives"? You mean, like Wheedle?

Yes, it's gonna happen...

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solival

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#1050880 22-May-2014 09:55

Looks true. We searched for a house about a month ago and property agent said that they are going to leave trademe because they are charging too much and recommend us other sites to visit. At the moment of visit that sites had considerably smaller listings than trademe though.

BTR

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#1050907 22-May-2014 10:39

What else can you expect for a publicly listed company, they have share holders to pay.

jonb

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#1050913 22-May-2014 10:45

When we arrived in NZ in 2007 the realestate.co.nz was great. I guess trademe would have offered very cheap listings at first to tempt real estate offices to list on both, as it isn't really in the best long term interests for estate agents to be advertising on a site (trademe) that also lets private sellers advertise with the same level of visibility. Now they have hiked the listing fees, personally as a consumer, it doesn't make much difference to me whether I search on realestate.co.nz or trademe.

DarthKermit

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#1050939 22-May-2014 11:14

freitasm:
joker97: Boycott trademe and they will buckle

Boycott as in "use the alternatives"? You mean, like Wheedle?

Yes, it's gonna happen...

One can boycott them for real estate, not for much else though.

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NonprayingMantis

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#1050951 22-May-2014 11:28

when I was looking round open homes a while back and looking at the visitor register, the column that says "where did you see this property" is filled with about 80% trademe, 18% realestate.co.nz and the odd 1-2 here or there for property press.

even with the price hike, Trademe is still one of the cheapest places to market your home effectively (vs property press listings etc) so boycotting it is the dumbest thing you can do as a real estate agent.

Just my 2c

mattwnz

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#1050980 22-May-2014 12:14

The additional cost for agents wit the pricing model change was still a tiny percentage of what other forms of advertising cost. Plus it Is the seller that pays anyway. If agents chose not to use it, I would suggest people either don't use agents, and sell their own housevia tradesmen, or use an agent who does.

ajobbins

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#1050988 22-May-2014 12:22

The reality is that even with the new pricing model, Trade Me is still incredibly cheap for agents compared to legacy forms of advertising like newspapers.

Agents had it good for a long time, paying as low as $1 per listing at one point in the past. And as always, they were billing their clients for the service, and usually at much more than their own cost.

$159 is NOTHING in the advertising budget, especially for the exposure Trade Me gets it - especially when you can pass the cost onto the vendor.

What would $159 get you in a newspaper? Probably not even a 4x3 ad in the local paper for 1 day.

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#1051006 22-May-2014 12:38

surfisup1000:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/10070204/Real-estate-boycott-hits-Trade-Me-share-value
Trade Me shares have been pushed down to a two-year low this week on the back of deepening concerns about the impact of a spat with real estate agents and slow growth. Trademe hiked real estate listing fees by a large value and agents were not happy.

After copying the ebay model, trademe just don't know what to do now. They've picked the low hanging fruit such as expanding into jobs/real estate but now they need to show some real intelligence for the first time in their business life.

I think that the answer is yes.

Charging to list AND a success fee seems like two bites at the cherry to me.

sbiddle

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#1051013 22-May-2014 12:45

The whole realestate.co.nz vs TM fight recently was very interesting.

If every real estate company simply decided to boycott Trademe and move to realestate.co.nz (owned by REINZ) it would have made things very interesting. We could have potentially seen a very sudden shift of power if TM lost all commercial property listings.

ajobbins

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#1051023 22-May-2014 12:53

Geektastic: I think that the answer is yes.

Charging to list AND a success fee seems like two bites at the cherry to me.

Then Weedle is for you. Good luck with that

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