REA Group is looking to win back unhappy agents with new initiatives

REA Group's head is driving initiatives that flips the business model most real estate companies have where the agents give more to these companies than they get

Rightmove could learn a thing or two from its Australian equivalent which has launched a charm offensive to ‘give back’ to its estate agency customers.

The claim has been made by Oz portal operator the REA Group whose Director of Industry Relations Steve Carroll has said it realized recently the game was up when agents in Australia began referring to it as a ‘necessary evil’.

REA and Rightmove were competitors in the UK during the late noughties when the Australian firm briefly but unsuccessfully backed Propertyfinder.co.uk in a bid to take on Rightmove. It was eventually sold to Zoopla.

Carroll, who is the Australian firm’s equivalent to Rightmove’s Miles Shipside, says it had been battling a reputation among agents for being all about ‘take, take, take’.

“We had a bad name in the industry and some agents believed we were going direct to the seller and cutting out the agent, but that was 100% never our intention,” he says in a recorded video interview with Chris Watkins shared with The Negotiator.

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