This article is from the Australian Property Journal archive
realestate.com.au is continuing to expand its business with the purchase of Hubonline Global $6 million, a marketing software provider which helps agents manage their office sales.
REA will buy 87% of the shares in the company for $5.2 million at completion and will buy the remaining 13% within the next three months from completion.
Last month, realestate.com.au bought out another property listings portal, PropertyLook for just over $9 million.
Over the next six months, propertylook.com.au will be merged with realcommercial.com.au, realestate.com.au Ltd’s commercial property website.
HubOnline Global provides web based sales and marketing services to Australian and New Zealand real estate agents. It has over 480 offices providing its services to customers such as Laing & Simmons, Roberts Real Estate, Coldwell Banker, Marshall White, Belle Property and Thomson Real Estate.
HubOnline Global’s main offering is PropertiesOnline, a fully integrated sales, lead management and marketing application that helps franchises, real estate principals and sales agents to manage all buyer and seller leads manage the office website
PropertiesOnline currently allows real estate agents to upload listings on domain.com.au and realestate.com.au.
The HubOnline business will be combined with the realestate.com.au Web Design Services – Australia’s largest developer of websites for real estate agents and currently powers over 2,500 office sites including the Ray White and Raine & Horne Queensland head office sites.
“We believe that there is an opportunity to move beyond online advertising by providing our 10,500 customers across Australia, NZ and the UK with a market leading sales, lead management and marketing application. This will make it easier for agents to do business and help them drive greater revenues at lower costs,” realestate.com.au managing director Simon Baker said.
“HubOnline is a market leader and our preferred partner. They have spent 6 years developing and selling what is considered by many as the industry’s most advanced sales, lead management and marketing solution,” he added.
“realestate.com.au is our partner of choice. They have the marketing power and relationships to help take our products and services to the next level. We are looking forward to becoming part of their business and making our products and services available to their customers throughout the world,” HubOnline Global’s managing director James Tucker said
Meanwhile, Tucker will be joining realestate.com.au to head up the combined HubOnline and realestate.com.au Web Design Services business unit.
Bryce Graham, the current sales director at HubOnline, has been appointed as the major accounts sales manager for this new business unit.
By Adam Parsons
