Plenty of upside for Real Estate Investar

Online property research portal Real Estate Investar (REI) became profitable on a monthly basis in April of this year but, with its current subscriber base making up less than 0.2 percent of its target market, the group is confident there is significant upside in its business model.

REI is a research portal offering a unique set online tools which members use to search for, value and analyse property investments at two online addresses, www.realestateinvestar.com.au and www.realestateinvestar.co.nz.

The company will be one of the companies presenting at the Simon Baker/Wholesale Investor events in Melbourne on October 23 and in Sydney on October 24.

REI currently has a property investment database of 51,000 investors it reaches with a weekly newsletter and has 3100 active investors who pay ongoing membership fees of $179 to $249 per month, delivering annualised revenues of $4 million.

But there is a much larger target market for the service, both in Australia and NZ and also in Asia, where investors are strongly focused on Australasian property.

“The property investor market is made up of 2 million investors across Australia and New Zealand, but excluded from these numbers are the more than 150,000 investors looking to enter the market at any point in time,” says David Hows, REI’s founder.

“Then there are the 400,000 Australian Self-Managed Superannuation Funds (SMSFs) which already hold $15 billion in residential investment property.

“And finally there is Asia, where Australia is the number three ranked market for residential property investment for both Malaysian and Singaporean investors, who also have a strong demand for online research tools.”

Hows says the REI model is unique in its focus on individual investors.

“Other online services focus on real estate agents and developers,” he says.

“Consumers are overlooked. REI has started to carve out a unique position in the market in this niche and has the ability to scale the business dramatically with further product and market development.”

REI revenues have grown strongly over the last few years as has its profitability. The company has gone from revenues of $1.65 million and a loss of $1.2 million in 2001 and it now on track to post a $420,000 profit on sales of $4 million for 2012. The budget target for 2013 is $5 million in revenues, to be helped by the launch of the product in Singapore and Malaysia.

“Much of the growth over the last 12 months has been driven by focusing on improving sales systems, increasing product pricing, improving sales conversation and customer retention and adding improved marketing tools and new sales channels,” said Hows.

“REI also has strategic partnerships with Fairfax/APM in Australia, PropertyIQ in NZ and iProperty in Singapore and Malaysia where it plans to launch membership tools in early 2013.

“The only barrier to accelerating growth is having the capital to increase marketing activity and to add the right people faster. We know what we need to do and our plans are clear, we just need to execute.”

The Simon Baker-Wholesale Investor events will be held in Melbourne on October 23 and Sydney on October 24.

To register and for more information please, click here