The Australian challenger portal Homely has reached the milestone of 400 partner agents across the country listing on its portal. The Melbourne based company which was founded in 2014 by brothers Adam and Jason Spencer has also reportedly seen traffic double over the last 12 months. Commenting on the milestone of agent sign-ups, Jason said:
“It’s a huge mix of partners which gives us greater leverage to roll out the Homely.com.au platform and to realise our dream of providing a truly affordable digital real estate marketplace which we believe this industry desperately needs.”
The upstart portal does not charge agents to list properties, prides itself on not having banner ads on its site and sees its value proposition in building a community of buyers and sellers and capturing the ‘passive activation market’. Another big focus for Homely is the content around locations, with street reviews and area profiles as well as forums being big features of the platform.
Although the incumbent market leader realestate.com.au recently recorded record traffic and spent big on an ad campaign, the increased scope for challenger portals with slightly different models is something that several experts pointed to in the Global Online Marketplaces conference last week. The speed with which Homely reaches its next milestone will be very interesting.
