Published on the 22/10/2020 | Written by Heather Wright

Analysing buyer behaviour from search to settlement…

Kiwis should gain greater insight into the property market and the full ownership lifecycle following a new deal between Trade Me and real estate data and analytics provider CoreLogic.

The two companies are promising new products and insights from the new partnership, which sees datasets from both companies aggregated to increase analytics abilities and provide insights into consumer behaviour, demand and the property ownership cycle.

“What’s very exciting is the opportunity to connect our deep research capabilities with Trade Me’s unique consumer demand insights.”

Trade Me’s property insights portal will be powered by CoreLogic data, in a move Nick Goodall, CoreLogic NZ head of research, says will mean consumers get improved and more timely property data. The portal provides access to information for more than 1.5 million Kiwi homes, including sales history, estimated values and sold prices.

It’s a two-way deal, with CoreLogic also gaining access to some property data from Trade Me in order to improve its own research, products and services. The company claims coverage of 99 percent of the New Zealand property market and more than 500 million decision points in its database.

Jeremy Wade, Trade Me head of property, told iStart the property data is ‘hugely valuable’ to the platform’s real estate agent clients to help them effectively market and sell properties, and for buyers who go to Trade Me trying to secure their dream home or an investment.

“Understanding recent sales data, RVs and more helps buyers put a realistic offer on the table,” Wade says.

Trade Me previously purchased the data directly from councils. Now it will instead receive one data set and also gain the benefit of CoreLogic’s quality processes such as addressing. The CoreLogic addressing data includes more than 2.3 million ‘fully verified’, primary in use physical addresses, with ‘thousands’ of weekly updates verified by data maintenance team. It’s used by New Zealand emergency services, among others.

The two companies are vague about the exact opportunities the deal will present. Wade says those opportunities are yet to be defined ‘but we think we have great sets of complementary data that used together could be valuable in providing insights to both our business and consumer customers’.

Goodall, meanwhile, says the companies are ‘yet to fully explore all the opportunities’ the deals could provide the New Zealand market in terms of research.

However, he says bringing together the two organisations will provide a ‘combined knowledge that will assist more informed decision making for consumers, business and government’.

Lisa Jennings, CoreLogic CFO and acting head of New Zealand, says “Along with the obvious and immediate benefit of enhanced data, what’s also very exciting is the opportunity to connect our deep research capabilities with Trade Me’s unique consumer demand insights to provide a never-before-seen view of New Zealand’s property market.

“We’re bringing together the best analytical minds from both companies to conduct joint research and uncover exclusive insights for consumers and industry players alike on buyer behaviour from when they first search a property through to settlement.”

Goodall told iStart it’s that potential for a deeper understanding of the New Zealand market that is most exciting.

“This is what I’m most looking forward too. We will be able to better understand the full property ownership lifecycle better – from the first search on New Zealand’s best listings portal, through to sale and settlement.”