REA Group Expands Connect Prospecting Product to Rentals

Australian portal operator REA Group has today announced that its Connect product will be expanded and made available to leasing agents.

Released to sales agents in Australia in April 2021, Connect is suite of listing prospecting tools that allow agents to promote their services across the Realestate.com.au network, see enhanced data on sold and on-market listings as well as build customisable proposals and digital listings agreements.

The service was developed with PropTech business Realtair, a company in which REA Group invested a reported A$7.3m for a 19.9% interest last year.

REA Group General Manager Residential, Simon Hope, said this complete picture of the rental market aims to help agents easily determine, or maximise, the rental yield of a property.

“Sales agents have experienced some great success prospecting with Connect, and we're delighted to now expand this solution to include leasing agents,” Simon said.

“We also expanded Connect late last year introducing a new Market Insights feature for selling agents. The inclusion this week of leased and ‘for lease’ listings into Market Insights enables agents to access up to date supply and demand metrics across the rental market.”

REA's development and expansion of Connect come at a time when real estate portals around the world are increasingly leaning into the idea of being a source not only of sales leads for their customers but of listings and mandate leads as well.

With housing shortages prevalent around the world, many portal businesses are deploying resources into becoming the top of the funnel for seller leads. Both Scout24 and Axel Springer (through Meilleurs Agents) are using referral models to generate revenue from seller leads and British portals Rightmove, OnTheMarket and Boomin have all recently upgraded or released tools to help agents capture more listings.