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Over seven in 10 house hunters will pass a listing by if it lacks one key piece of information, REA Group’s data reveals.
REA Group’s annual Property Seeker survey discovered that the number one pain point for aspiring home owners searching for properties online is listings that do not disclose the asking price.
With the majority of the survey’s 6,000-plus takers struggling to find a property within budget, respondents expressed deep frustration with listings that do not reveal pricing information, noting that these out-of-budget listings’ properties would continue to show up on the search results due to inaccurate or missing prices.
Melina Cruickshank, chief product and audience officer at REA Group, stated that the firm does “a lot” of consumer satisfaction research.
“The data consistently shows, listings that don’t have pricing displayed remain the number one source of consumer dissatisfaction on our platform, with a whopping 72 per cent of buyers saying they would skip over properties that don’t include a price.”
With REA Group powering major search hubs like realestate.com.au and Flatmates.com.au, this is a significant portion of Australians refusing to consider unpriced properties.
According to Ms Cruickshank: “Consumers are increasingly demanding greater transparency, particularly when it comes to price. Buying property can be a highly stressful process and home buying budgets are a big part of the search criteria.
“Understandably, consumers want to know where they stand early in the process.”
The chief product and audience officer stressed that if agents wish to get clients on board, transparency is key.
“We see so many real estate agents securing their next listing by being highly transparent in the way they market and sell their vendor’s property,” she explained. “This has been one of the more interesting aspects that continues to trend in our research.”
Pricing transparency is particularly important given the current context of housing unaffordability. Recently, REA Group’s chief financial officer Janelle Hopkins shared that a typical Australian household making $105,000 per annum could afford just 13 per cent of homes on the market.
The latest ABS data from Q3 2023 revealed that the quarter saw a slight relaxation of interest rates, but ANZ head of economics Adam Boyton warned that “any relaxation remains a very long way off”.
And with Domain predicting a nationwide upturn in home prices by the New Year, it looks like budget will continue to remain at the forefront of buyers’ minds – and their web searches – for some time to come.
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