Interest in Online Apartments Growing

Shane Moore
Saturday, 03 November 2007 06:33

Online apartment resource ApartmentReviews.com.au has recorded another month of solid growth, continuing the trend that has seen the young site achieve double digit growth every month so far this year.  Unique visitors to the site grew by over 25% from September to October, just above the six month average of 24% per month.  By comparison, for the month of May this year realestate.com.au grew it's number of unique visitors by 5.4%, domain.com.au by 2.8%, and myhome.com.au actually decreased by 17.2%. (Source: Nielsen NetRatings).

Although the results are very strong, the site's founder, Shane Moore, is keeping it all in perspective "Yes we're growing much faster than the major real estate sites in this country, but they are very well established market leaders, we are a very young site and we have a unique offering quite different to the majors.  In terms of actual visits, they probably receive more traffic in the first hour of the month than we do for the whole month!".

Moore is also quick to point out that his business is not actually in competition with the majors "We offer a complimentary service.  The big sites like realestate.com.au provide classifieds, we don't.  What we provide is unbiased information on apartment buildings, and we allow people to leave reviews and ratings for others to view.  I would encourage people to view our site first to find out which apartment buildings are most suitable, then use the big classifieds sites to actually find an apartment in their chosen building".

Whist most online businesses would be happy with the growth apartmentreviews.com.au has achieved over the last six months, Moore insists there is much more to come "This is nothing, we still have a very long way to go.  The growth we've experienced is due to search engines and word of mouth, we've spent basically nothing on advertising since we launched because we haven't needed to.  When you offer a great product, people will want to use it regardless of whether or not you run an expensive advertising campaign.  We have some great new features coming during the first half of 2008 which will further boost our popularity".

The online real estate industry may seem like a crowded market with media giants such as News Ltd, PBL and Fairfax involved, but apartmentreviews.com.au proves that it is possible for newcomers to find their own niche and grow their business.  Moore remains bullish about the future "We're a tiny niche player right now, but one day people won't consider buying or renting an apartment without checking our site first".