REA GROUP LTD — AGM Information 2002

Nov 25, 2002

realestate.com.au Limited ABN 54 068 349 066

Registered Office:

Level 5 NAB House 255 George Street GPO Box 4231 Sydney NSW 2001

Phone (02) 9252 1933 Fax (02) 9252 2487

Facsimile Cover Sheet

	To: Company Announcements
Company: ASX
	Fax: 1 300 300 021
	From: Nick Geddes
	Date: 26 November 2002
Pages including this cover page: 5

Please find attached the Chairman's Address being delivered at the Company's Annual General Meeting today commencing at 11.00am.

NJV Geddes Company Secretary

(இ) realestate.com.au®

CHAIRMAN'S AGM SPEECH

26th November 2002

The last year is well characterised as the year that realestate.com.au clearly established itself as the leader in online real estate marketing solutions in Australia. Not only has the long-term financial viability of the business been secured, the company is now clearly differentiated from its competitors and has become the only true national online solutions provider for the real estate industry.

When we sat here last year, the share price was 11 cents, there were 1,510 agents subscribing, billed revenue was $490,000 per month, and there were 1 million visits to the site each month.

Today I am pleased to report that:

• The company's share price is $18.5$ cents $-$ up 68 percent,
• Paying agent subscribers are $2,300 -$ up 52 percent,
• Billed revenue has increased to $$729,000$ per month up 49 percent, and
• Visits to the site have increased to 2.1 million each month $-$ up 110 percent.

In recognition of this growth, realestate.com.au was ranked 39th in BRW's Fast 100 earlier this month. This award is based on revenue growth for companies with fewer than 200 employees.

The rapid growth of the business is highlighted in our record setting month of October this year. During the month:

• 151 new agents purchased subscriptions including all 43 Roy Weston $\bullet$ offices in Western Australia and all 23 Hocking Stuart offices in Melbourne who joined as platinum subscribers.
• For the first time there were 2.1 million visits to realestate.com.au. Of these 1.8 million came from Australia and 280,000 from overseas. As

Calestate.com.au®

a comparison, realestate.com.au is nearly triple the size of its nearest competitors domain.com.au which received 644,000 Australian visits and property.com.au which received 593,000 Australian visits (source: Red Sheriff, the leading Independent Internet Auditor)

Over 36 million page impressions were delivered to Australian visitors. ranking realestate.com.au in the Top 10 Internet sites in the country and with an average session time of 15 minutes and 19 seconds. realestate.com.au was the stickiest of all major Australian sites (source: Red Sheriff, the leading Independent Internet Auditor)

Three of the key drivers of this growth in consumer confidence with realestate.com.au were:

• 1. The consistent branding in over 90 News Limited Suburban Newspapers,
• 1. The continued strong performance of the News Interactive Network in driving traffic to realestate.com.au; and
• 1. The recent distribution deal with ninemsn that allows all visitors to quickly search for properties advertised with realestate.com.au on the ninemsn site.

During the year The Ray White Group acquired a 15.8 percent equity stake in realestate.com.au from the Macquarie Bank increasing the real estate industry's shareholding to over 25 percent. This brings together the media and real estate industries as major shareholders and Board members, providing a solid platform for future growth and helping drive greater acceptance of realestate.com.au within the real estate industry.

The expectation for the next 12 months is continued strong growth in all aspects of the business and, given current trends, we are confident of becoming profitable before the end of this financial year.

Over the next 12 months we expect strong growth in revenues from the residential agent segment driven by an increase in residential agents subscribers and an increase in the average spend by existing subscribers on products and services.

I am pleased to announce that in November realestate.com.au finalised an Australia wide advertising arrangement with the Raine & Horne franchise group. This arrangement involves the implementation of a data feed between the businesses and the offering of a special advertising package to Raine & realestate.com.au now has advertising Horne franchise offices. arrangements in place with the majority of franchise groups around the country.

The 2002 Financial Year saw solid growth in revenue from the Developer market and in the coming year it is expected that realestate.com.au will increase advertising revenue from this segment through innovative advertising solutions.

Recently realestate.com.au launched realcommercial.com.au - a new site targeted at the commercial real estate market. Advertising on realcommercial.com.au, which is through a separate subscription, is expected to deliver good revenue growth over the coming year.

realestate.com.au continues to provide web development services to the real estate industry. Over the last 5 years realestate.com.au has built over 600 web sites for real estate offices. There is now an emerging demand for realestate.com.au to provide total web site outsourcing solutions for franchise groups. Already realestate.com.au powers and manages the Raine & Horne Queensland franchise site on an outsourced basis and provides each of its 90 franchise offices with mini websites.

I am also pleased to announce that in November realestate.com.au entered into a web site outsourcing agreement with The Ray White Group to take over the management of the Ray White franchise web site (raywhite.com) and to provide mini-websites to each of its 450 offices in Australia, 100 offices in

Call realestate.com.au®

New Zealand and 50 offices in Indonesia and Papua New Guinea. This outsourcing arrangement will leverage the same technology that powers the realestate.com.au website. As a sign of the Ray White Group's confidence in our business, the term of this agreement is for three years with an option for an additional three years.

Finally, realestate.com.au is investigating the Internet enabled delivery of back office solutions for the real estate industry that will help increase overall office efficiency and effectiveness. These Internet based solutions are becoming more prevalent in the United States and realestate.com.au is well positioned to deliver these into the Australian market.

The Board and myself are very confident about the future prospects for realestate.com.au and with the combined input of the media and real estate industries we are well positioned to deliver sustainable growth in the future.

I pay a particular tribute to our CEO, Simon Baker, in leading the realestate.com.au team with such energy, skill and determination and thank Simon and all staff for their outstanding effort.

On behalf of the Board I would like to thank you, our shareholders, for the continued support of the business.

John Niland Chairman realestate.com.au