View.com.au lets buyers see all - even property not for sale yet

That's the ambitious tagline for view.com.au, the property listings portal launching this week with a new website and app, a new blue brand insignia and the promise to open the front door to every piece of real estate potentially available to buy or sell in Australia, not just properties that are on the market.

View.com.au is the flagship digital platform of View Media Group (VMG), the real estate digital media and agent services business formed 12 months ago by Antony Catalano and Alex Waislitz, the co-owners of ACM, which publishes this masthead.

The new view.com.au - renamed, rebranded and repurposed from the realestateview.com.au name and orange logo familiar to ACM web users and newspaper readers - rolls out across the ACM network from Thursday and will be marketed nationally with a high-flying TV advertising campaign unveiled during Saturday's AFL grand final.

With AFL broadcaster Seven West Media having invested $100million of cash and media services in VMG, television viewers can expect to see View commercials popping up in Home & Away and Sunrise and their other favourite programs over the coming months.

VMG executive chairman Antony Catalano said the new View portal offered "a complete view of the market, with all established properties across the country featured, whether they're currently for sale or not".

"That means view.com.au will showcase more than 11 million properties in Australia compared to some of the portals which feature around 140,000 properties for sale," Mr Catalano said.

"We feel that restricting consumers to only being able to search for those properties that are currently for sale is extremely limiting."

View allowed buyers to look at all properties, listed or unlisted, and if a property wasn't currently for sale they could express interest "to hopefully stimulate the market and encourage transactions that might not have otherwise occurred".

Mr Catalano said view.com.au offered an "enhanced new way for buyers to find properties and for vendors and agents to connect with those buyers" through a "freemium" listing model.

The site allowed vendors to list properties for free "with upgrade options available for those agents who wish to further promote their listings and their brands".

"We've listened to the industry and the time is right for an offer to come to market with an alternative model that addresses the real estate industry's concern at the continually escalating price of advertising," he said.

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From an initial 26 per cent stake in listings portal realestateview.com.au in early 2020 to full ownership, Mr Catalano has positioned View as a disrupter and challenger to Domain, which he previously ran for the former Fairfax Media and which is now majority owned by Nine Entertainment Co, and realestate.com.au, controlled by News Corp.

Seven West Media managing director and CEO James Warburton described VMG and the new View portal as "an exciting game-changer for the property industry".

"Antony's experience and the expert team he has assembled will help VMG be the ultimate destination for property seekers and sellers in Australia," he said. "Seven West Media is firmly behind Antony and the VMG team and looks forward to its success."

The new View app and website features a map-based search function delivered by Nearmap and promises high-resolution aerial imagery that is regularly updated.

"Unlike others in the market who default consumers to a list view, we'll default our search results via a map," View chief executive Toby Balazs said.

"We've had a look globally at best practice search for property and we've consumer-tested a range of options and without doubt the preferred experience is map-based search. The map also enables us to more seamlessly display both listed and unlisted properties all in the one unified experience, so consumers can look to buy, rent, sell or research property in context and on the same platform."

Nearmap head of strategic partnerships and alliances Vlad Gagovic said its mapping offered "incredible resolution, recency and coverage, with up to 95 per cent of the population captured".

"Finding the perfect property in the perfect location is an emotional and often very slow journey," Mr Gagovic said. "The functionality we are building together will become an indispensable new way to find, explore and select your next property or suburb."

The new View brand's marketing campaign launches on September 30 with TV commercials during the AFL grand final.

VMG chief marketing officer Paul Tyrrell said the ad featured a "property eagle" to illustrate in a humorous way that View's maps allowed property-seekers to "see all".

"Our aim is to present View as the solution to the problem of finding property that suits you," he said. "We want to have a bit of fun with it, so we have played with humour. Keep an eye out for our property eagle."

The initial media campaign will run until early December across Seven and ACM, with property sections in ACM newspapers renamed and rebranded to View.

"It's fantastic having such wonderful media partners in Seven West Media and ACM who are truly invested in the success of VMG and the View launch," Mr Tyrrell said.

With ANZ bank having invested $50 million in VMG in February, Mr Catalano said view.com.au was a major step in the group's plans to build a "digital real estate superstore" that reached beyond the $1 billion digital ad market to tap into Australia's $300 billion worth of property transactions.

"While VMG is much more than a portal play, it's critical that we have a consumer-facing brand that will act as the front door to attract consumers and in turn allow us to offer products and services in a range of verticals across the property ecosystem," he said.

"We are well on the way to forming a global-first conglomerate of proptech assets including portals, ad tech, lead generation, lead management solutions, media planning and buying, AI services, data and connections all under the one roof."