r Real Estate Companies Join Forces For Website

Media Statement

For immediate release 19 February 2001

MAJOR REAL ESTATE COMPANIES JOIN FORCES TO CREATE INTERNET BENEFITS

Six of New Zealand's largest real estate companies have joined forces to set up a new company to own and operate a national real estate website, in which all real estate companies will be given the opportunity to participate.

PropertyPage NZ Ltd is owned by Barfoot & Thompson, Harcourt's, Harvey's, LJ Hooker, Leaders and Ray White.

Their new combined web page, www.realestate.co.nz swings into action from the beginning of February with more than 25,000 listings nation-wide. These include rural and city properties, bachs and commercial properties.

Chairman Mark Thompson says all real estate agents are welcome to join, and prominent industry participant Bayleys Real Estate has already signed up with its residential listings, with the result that an estimated 60 percent of the real estate sales in New Zealand are transacted by the participating subscribers to the site. http://www.realestate.co.nz also links directly to PropertyPage Australia, currently containing in excess of 140,000 residential listings.

The costs of participation are geared to enable even the smallest real estate company to list properties on the site, and several software houses have developed simple programmes to give small, local companies the necessary tools to keep their own listings up to date on a daily basis.

The site is expected to quickly grow to include more than 50,000 houses, apartments, holiday homes and commercial properties, making it the largest real estate website in New Zealand.

It has been designed for ease of use and even inexperienced computer users can follow simple instructions to view the sort of properties that interest them, print off a selection and then make contact with the appropriate agent.

"The experience of many real estate agents today is that the Internet is quite often the starting point for buyers. It lets them do their homework in a really convenient way, and then progress to the next stage when they are ready," said Mr Thompson.

Rather than expecting the potential buyer to access a dozen or so different websites, http://www.realestate.co.nz groups the majority of listings in New Zealand on a single site, making comparative evaluation very straight forward.

Mr Thompson said he expects other agents will quickly join the scheme, and create a single site displaying the bulk of all real estate available for sale in the country, updated daily.

ENDS

For more information, please contact: Mr Mark Thompson Barfoot & Thompson Phone: (09) 307-6300 Email: mark@barfoot.co.nz

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