2nd Chance for Myhome
Further to the post which i published last month MyHome has been rescued and was purchased a few days ago by Shane Dale. It is believed he paid just over 1 million dollars for Myhome which he was involved in creating a few years ago.
Shane was the owner of SurroundPix which Myhome purchased a few years ago for amount believed to be around 7 million dollars. It appears Mr Dale has done quite well from the deal and now has a chance to put his stamp on the real estate portal sector.
Lets hope he has some fresh ideas for the website and some bold plans to turn Myhome into a major competitor of Domain and REA. I wish him all the best!
Comments
This is great news especially considering the new owner is not a large media company. I think the best companies are private companies who do not need to answer to a large public board of directors. This way they are able to make decisions quicker and you often get more innovation as the team has greater freedom.
I am really looking forward to seeing what direction the company will take.
Micky
17.06.08
9:22 am
I bet you are happy Micky!!!
Let’s see if shane can do a better job second time around. He has no corporate board to hide behind now so all decisions are made by him. My advice is for him to fix how users search for property. If he sorts that out then Myhome is on the way to being competitive.
T-Bone
21.06.08
11:28 pm
They have started off on the right foot. I just heard they are removing all subscription fees for agents making it free for them to subscribe.
Now, this is what Myhome initially launched their website with, free membership for a period of time. I assume they will not make the same mistake again and will make it a free website indefinitely.
Real estate portals with a fee based subscription model will not succeed. REA and Domain get away with it because they deliver results. Any new portal needs to raise revenue through other means such as advertising.
Rodney Munch
22.06.08
9:04 am
Ryan here from Vode Property
Our agency has never had a subscription with Myhome because of the lack of value for money they provide. The subscription cost was $175 per month back in January this year.
We already subscribe to Realestate.com.au and Domain.com.au which amounts to quite a lot of money each month. Both of these websites are successful for us and yield results for our vendor’s properties. I highly doubt there are many property searchers out there who do not use either Domain.com.au or Realestate.com.au to search for property.
This raises the question as to why we would want to outlay more money on advertising when we currently have our bases covered with the two major portals we subscribe to.
We would consider swapping one of these portals for a subscription with Myhome but only if we were guaranteed at least the same amount of results. Myhome has no where near the same amount of results as either of these websites. Just before Myhome went broke they increased their subscription to $225 per month…….for what?
They need to crawl before they can walk, meaning they need to get listings, browsers and results before they can charge money. They won’t get listings unless it is free. Now i know it is free i will certainly be looking at getting our agency on board, i would be a fool not to!
Rhino
24.06.08
9:18 am
If the business model they used the first time was based on charging agents and selling advertising on the website and Myhome went broke then how will they possibly survive with only an advertising based revenue stream?
They will need to spend a significant amount of resources on marketing as a lot of old users would now think the website has shut or is about to shut. This means more money spent on marketing than what was previously spent.
So less revenue greater expenditure outlay, hmm doesn’t add up. He must have huge coffers or an elaborate plan which we don’t know about.
T-Bone
26.06.08
9:28 am
You’re forgetting about their sales staff who were previously a large drain on their resources. If you do not have a subscription based model then your wages bill will reduce by almost 70%. These companies including Realestate.com.au, Domain.com.au and the Old Myhome would have a wages bill which amount to around 40% of gross revenue. This is because they have sales staff out trying to compete with one another and get agents to upgrade their subscriptions.
For Myhome to operate all you would need is a handful of staff. A receptionist, administartor, CEO, a systems specialist, data feed manager and one web developer/designer. You would have a few server/IT hardware costs, rent for a small office and then money you spend on marketing.
You could get away with all of this on less than $1million a year.
Rhino
28.06.08
9:45 am
How can I put together a site for $1 million a year?
Ann
14.07.08
10:02 pm
Just to clarify on my point above, I didn’t say “you could put together a site for $1 million a year” i said “it is possible to run a real estate portal for less than $1 million a year.”
This didn’t include the cost to develop and launch a portal.
Actually, you could probably get away with running a portal for much less, as long as you did not need any sales staff. Breakdown in costs:
- CEO – $100k
- Receptionist – $40k
- Web Consultant – $40k
- System Consultant – $50k
- Designer $5k
-Servers/Security – $20k
- Marketing – $100k
So less than $500k running costs. You can easily spend a lot more if you get loose with the marketing and start throwing your money away.
Rhino
15.07.08
8:08 pm