So I get this on an email from GlobalX just now:
Since the platform was released to market, there has been over $2 billion in property value exchanged via Property Exchange Australia (PEXA) across 28,000 transactions.
To the average punter – and I include myself in that number – that claim says there’s been $2 billion worth of property transferred across the country since the platform went live.
Impressive.
But wait!
$2 billion divided by 28,000 transactions is an average transaction of $71,428.
Now perhaps PEXA is specialising in property transactions in Widgiemooltha. Maybe they’ve cornered the cheap end of the market. If that’s the case good for them.
But I think that’s probably not the case.
Rather if we take the $2 billion and divide it by the weighted median Australian property price of $576,100 (ABS, March 2015) then we arrive at 3,472 property transfers.
Now that sounds like a big number.
But it’s not!
In the six months between 1/10/14 – 31/03/15 there were 9,491,700 property transactions…in the eight capital cities alone.
Now, when you consider that PEXA went live in Victoria in June 2013 the number of properties they’ve transacted electronically is but a drop in a very large ocean.
But what’s most disturbing here is the manner in which PEXA and their ‘sponsors’ (read cronies) are willing to manufacture truth.
Their marketing conflates facts and glides over the inconvenient in attempt to win our hearts and minds and change our behaviours for their own corporate ends.
And, if the real estate industry’s history with the big property portals is any indicator, achieving their ends will come at great pain to our industry.
So, please PEXA & Co, we may not have your fancy boardrooms but we’re not idiots.
Stop treating as such and start giving us the facts and not your version of the truth.