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Real Estate Industry Partners (REIP) has announced a brand-new proptech partnership with a property portal.
It’s teaming up with property search engine PropertyMate, an “industry-owned, industry-driven” player in the space with its own lofty goals for growth.
REIP CEO Sadhana Smiles said conversations about an allegiance came about from a conversation with PropertyMate co-founder Steven Abbott, following on from a referral through one of the REIP shareholders.
“We felt that because it was an industry-based product — or industry-based partnership — that it made a lot of sense for us to work together in the first instance. We’re both coming from the same page on the hymn book.”
From Mr Abbott’s point of view, fully realising their aligned intentions to give back to industry and “create a really collegiate offering for the industry was right up our alley.”
“We really feel the industry — once collegiate and gathers itself together — can do amazing things,” he quipped.
Ms Smiles acknowledged that “the industry’s been very fragmented for many years now and has been very poor [at] collaborating.”
“What REIP and PropertyMate are trying to do is bring the industry together to make it less fragmented and certainly to collaborate with each other.”
PropertyMate “looks to modernise search and discovery and not just be another portal,” as explained by Mr Abbott, who shared that PropertyMate has big plans to be “the number two platform digitally in the country.”
“Inspiration was taken with designers from industries like travel and retail and fashion; TripAdvisor, Airbnb, etcetera, have shifted the dial on the way consumers interact with search and discovery,” he outlined.
“We feel that our tech and ability, with our agent-first approach, allows the agent and the vendor to gain access to buyers pre-market, therefore adding significant value to the industry.”
For Ms Smiles and the REIP, it continues their push for the industry “to collaborate [and] understand there’s value in the data sets that we produce.”
“For years now, the industry has given its data away for free, not just to portals but to suppliers. As an industry, we need to take ownership of how the data is used,” she opined.
“If we are going to monetise the data, then the industry should be the one monetising the data and using the funding for its own benefit. At the moment, that is not the case. Our suppliers monetise the data and the industry gets nothing out of it.”
The CEO said that for the REIP, “it’s about collaborating with partners like PropertyMate and others to make sure that the industry has the opportunity to use various products that are aligned with the REIP vision and values and pillars.”
Stressing that the forming of high-quality partnerships by the REIP are aimed at bettering the industry, Ms Smiles espoused the importance of the industry group’s ability to “bring alternatives to our clients and make sure that their properties are marketed across as many different platforms as we possibly can.”
“What we are doing is giving our REIP members the opportunity to actually push their listings onto as many different platforms as we can to expose their clients’ properties to as many different eyeballs as we can.”
She also acknowledged the increasing cost pressures portal listings are placing on agencies and consumers across the country, conceding that Australia “has one of the most expensive portals in the world."
“Every year, prices go up and our consumers are being put under more and more pressure to pay more and more for advertising. But do they get more and more value back?”
According to Mr Abbott and PropertyMate, they are “very much about providing value.”
“We are our own industry agitator in effect. We want to challenge the notion of continually driving costs on digital media and create our own platform that provides both industry data solutions, consumer product and agent value.”
To this end, he does believe “sky’s the limit.”
With the core data flow done right and the correct value offering and revenue drivers in place, a “really exciting workflow discussion” will come into play.
Even so, the co-founder said the company is mindful of not underdelivering, stating the business’s main aims at present are to “get it right” from a sensible start, and that includes adding value to both REIP and PropertyMate.
“Property Mate generally wishes to listen to the industry and consult, and that’ll be robust; that’s in its nature as an industry, [and] we’re all strong with our views and passionate. That’s okay. We’re open to that,” he commented.
“We’ve got to be willing to listen and learn, and by doing that, we feel they’re on the right path.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Grace Ormsby
Grace is a journalist across Momentum property and investment brands. Grace joined Momentum Media in 2018, bringing with her a Bachelor of Laws and a Bachelor of Communication (Journalism) from the University of Newcastle. She’s passionate about delivering easy to digest information and content relevant to her key audiences and stakeholders.
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