Global online property advertising business REA Group has pulled back its New Zealand presence, closing its allrealestate.co.nz portal.

REA Group, which was founded in Australia and is listed on the ASX, offers web-based property rentals and sales ads in 10 countries around the world.

It launched into New Zealand in 2005.

But now REA is set to close its own website on November 30 and redirect traffic to realestate.co.nz, which is owned by the Real Estate Institute and a consortium of six of the largest real estate companies.

The change gives realestate.co.nz access to the more than 9.7 million unique browsers, including more than four million in Australia, who use the REA Group’s international network of real estate websites.

These browsers will be able to access realestate.co.nz from a tab on the home page of every REA Group portal and from the map of New Zealand on the REA Group websites.

By removing a main player from the market, the alliance should also see the competition between realestate.co.nz and Trade Me Property heat up further.

Trade Me gets far more unique browsers per month: just on 700,000 in September, versus realestate.co.nz’s 260,000.

But Trade Me is more expensive for real estate professionals to use.
They have to pay $699 a month for their rental and sales listings, whereas the same service on realestate.co.nz is $200.

Allrealestate.co.nz had more visitors than realestate.co.nz until late 2006.

But since then it has been overtaken by a revamped realestate.co.nz and since May this year, realestate.co.nz’s three month moving average of unique browsers has been about 50,000 higher than allrealestate.co.nz.