A decade after a poor home buying experience left Jason Spencer lamenting the fact he couldn’t read street and suburb reviews during the process, the solution he and his brother Adam created will celebrate a major milestone.
This week, online real estate search website Homely will celebrate its 10th birthday.
The idea for Homely started after Jason bought his first home in an area that was supposed to be one of the best in Melbourne, only to discover he hated it because the street wasn’t a good fit for him and his family.
He didn’t like the neighbours, the cut-through traffic, the flooding in the street or the waves of bats that would land in the backyard at night and scare his children.
“I remember saying to my co-founder, my brother, ‘If only I knew about the street before I bought the house’,” Jason told Elite Agent during Transform 2020.
“That was the lightbulb moment when Homely.com.au was born.”
Since then, Homely has grown into one of the largest real estate platforms in Australia.
“It seems like just yesterday we were wondering why there wasn’t a way for people to read reviews of suburbs and streets during the home buying process,” Homely Co-founder and CEO Adam Spencer says.
“I remember celebrating when we hit 100,000 visits to the site.”
As of this week, Homely.com.au has been visited more than 125 million times since it launched, become one of the highest rated real estate marketplace apps in Australia, and helped hundreds of thousands of Australians find their perfect place to call home.
Australians looking to buy, sell and rent visit the site more than 20 million times each year, and with one million unique pieces of content on the platform, Homely makes it easier for people to find out what it’s like to live somewhere before they buy or rent in an area.
Jason says what makes Homely truly unique is that it has fostered valuable partnerships with more than 700 strategic industry partners.
“We didn’t start out wanting to raise venture capital,” Jason notes.
“We knew – and still do – that the industry is unhappy with the status quo.
“We knew we needed to involve and engage the industry in our growth story to create deep change.
“That’s been successful for our strategic partners, who have direct ownership over our success, and it’s been meaningful to our strategy in terms of shifting the landscape.”
Jason says the Homely team remains just as committed as ever to provide authentic, user-driven insights to continue to redefine how buyers explore and understand suburbs across Australia.
“The trust and recognition we’ve built over the past ten years is testament to the potential the industry sees in our business,” Jason says.
“This anniversary is not just a celebration of what we’ve achieved, but a commitment to continued innovation and growth in the real estate industry.”
Adam says Homely is enthusiastic about the future and the role innovation and tech play at the heart of the portal.
“Our mission has always been to revolutionise the way Australians find their perfect home,” he says.
“We’re at an inflection point where we have an ecosystem of strategic partners and offerings to become a one-stop-shop for consumers while making it easier for agents to do better business.
“Despite the fluctuations of the Australian property market and macro trends, our fundamentals are strong, our offering is resilient and we have the team in place to continue to change the game.”
