Domain and PEXA announce data collaboration with new research report

Domain (ASX:DHG), a leader in the property technology industry and PEXA have today announced a strategic collaboration to bring together their proprietary data assets to unlock new unique insights and value across the property market.

This collaboration is the beginning of a relationship between Domain and PEXA, two companies that operate across highly complementary segments of the property lifecycle from listing, search, research and property value tracking, through to purchase, settlement and ownership.

In their first research report, Domain and PEXA have collaborated to close the loop on the property journey, uncovering if changes in buyer demand translate into changes in the property settlement volumes across New South Wales and Victoria.

The key finding of the report is that the Domain Buyer Demand Indicator, which tracks weekly demand for houses and units across Australia, can be used as a leading economic indicator to forecast settlement property activity.

Commenting on the collaboration and findings, Domain CEO Jason Pellegrino said, “The health of Australia’s property market is a topic that generates immense interest to a wide range of Australians.  This collaboration is the start of PEXA and Domain working closer together to unlock unique and powerful insights into Australia’s property market that will benefit everyone with direct or indirect interest in property.

“Many of the current indices such as auction clearance rates, have significant limitations and are largely directional indicators. There has long been an assumption that buyer search activity is correlated with actual property settlements and for the first time, Domain and PEXA can not only validate this correlation, but also establish an accurate leading indicator of housing activity”.

PEXA Group Chief Executive Officer Glenn King said, “With more than 80 per cent of all property transfer settlements in Australia now handled on the PEXA platform, our PEXA Insights business has access to a range of timely, authoritative national datasets that can deliver valuable property trend insights for policy decision makers, industry and the wider community.

“PEXA Insights has already published over 200 individual research reports to date and has established a team to build out our unique data platform. Working with partners like Domain, who share our belief in unlocking the value of property industry data, we are confident of creating valuable data insight products and services for our customers”.

The collaboration with PEXA represents one of the many purposeful opportunities Domain is pursuing to extend its business beyond the core listings and service more customer groups that play across the property lifecycle.

“We continue to invest to set the foundations in place to advance our ‘property data solutions’ offering, building on the assets of APM and Pricefinder. This represents a significant market opportunity given the unique data and tailored product solutions that we could provide to a wider range of organisations” concluded Jason.

Research report findings:

Closing the loop on the Australian Property Journey

• Across New South Wales (NSW) and Victoria a statistically significant relationship was found between the Domain Buyer Demand Indicator (Domain BDI) and property settlements.
• This confirms that the Domain BDI can be used as a leading economic indicator to forecast settlement property activity.
• As the Domain BDI rises and falls there is a lagged rise and fall of property settlement activity.

We can reveal that:

• In NSW a rise in the Domain BDI will lead to a rise in settlements 8 weeks later.
• In Victoria a rise in the Domain BDI will lead to a rise in settlements 11 weeks later.
• In both states the ‘lag time’, which can be interpreted as ‘online search to settlement’ time frame, varies by region.
• Understanding the ‘search to settlement’ time, banks and financial institutions can look to the Domain BDI as a leading indicator of property settlement volumes across the market, and tailor product strategies and marketing campaigns accordingly.
• Property agents now have a data point to guide potential vendor expectations on settlement times and help shape a marketing strategy that reflects the changes in buyer demand activity.