[+] Former Domain Boss Shows Off His Vertical Leap

Antony Catalano freely admits he wants it all. “I didn’t want to just be in the listings game. “The plan is to have a complete view of the market,” the journalist entrepreneur said of his vertically integrated View Media Group, which has the property listing portal RealEstateView.com.au at its core. “We want to build the real estate superstore of the future.” Catalano was the big finish to the Urbanity conference on the Gold Coast where he was speaking in conversation with Adam Di Marco, chief executive of The Urban Developer which staged the three-day knowledge and networking event for property professionals. ‘The Cat’, as Catalano is affectionately known, co-owns View Media with Melbourne billionaire Alex Waislitz. The ANZ bank and Kerry Stokes’ Seven West Media are also investors. In pursuit of its ‘superstore’ strategy, View has assembled a set of proptech tools, including the listing portal, advertising technology, lead generation and management, media strategy and purchasing, AI capabilities and data integration. This creates a cohesive property ecosystem where each entity enhances the value of the others, as View aims to profit from both the buying and selling sides of property sales transactions. ▲ Antony Catalano in conversation with The Urban Developer founder Adam Di Marco at Urbanity 2023. At its core is the listing portal, which competes against established heavy-hitters RealEstate.com.au and Domain.com.au, the latter led by Catalano until 2018. “We want to be a marketplace where you can come in and look at listings for free and list for free. “We want to have 11 million listings so we have every house in the country,” he told delegates at The Star, Broadbeach, about 90km up the M1 from Raes at Wategos, his exclusive Byron Bay guesthouse. Steep discount Also feeding into this ecosystem is Australian Community Media, a stable of more than 100 former Fairfax regional and rural newspapers and websites that Catalano and Waislitz bought from the merged Fairfax and Nine Entertainment in 2019. They paid $115 million for the business, which was a steep discount to the $3 billion Fairfax outlaid for it in 2007. The assets included a $60-million property portfolio. “I wouldn’t be spending $115 million without a plan,” Catalano said at the time. “With 8 million people [living in the regions] you’ve got a massive revenue opportunity. Deals like this don’t come along very often. “It shouldn’t be a surprise to anyone that I’m here. I think it’s a good deal.” ▲ Inside Catalano’s Raes at Wategos, Byron Bay. Mr Property At Urbanity, Catalano shared details of his origin story as Australia’s Mr Property. “I was always obsessed with it,” he said of real estate. “I wanted a holiday home before I had my own house.” He was aged 27 and working at Melbourne’s The Age newspaper when then-editor Alan Kohler, in need of a new property editor, learned that the young production journalist was converting a warehouse with Scott McElroy [now a Belle Property principal] and, out of the blue, he offered him the senior role. Kohler, now finance presenter on ABC TV news, has referred to Catalano as “one of the great entrepreneur journalists in Australia”. As Age property editor in the mid-1990s, Catalano wrote a widely read property gossip column called Trading Places, later Private Property, which allowed him to build a large and valuable network among Melbourne’s real estate agents. The promotions kept coming and he moved to the commercial side of the business as marketing director, before things soured at Fairfax and he was made redundant in 2008. The former high-flyer had hit some career turbulence. He was having no luck finding a replacement job and the financial pressure of a large mortgage and five children to support was building. ▲ Raes plans to bring its understated luxury services to a new hotel-style development in the heart of Byron in a deal inked with developer Podia. He considered buying a cafe with his redundancy payout. “I was going to buy myself an income because I clearly wasn’t qualified to do anything,” he said in a 2015 interview. “I didn’t have a degree, the economy was in tatters, I couldn’t get a call back from anyone and the media industry was falling apart at a rate of knots,” he said. It was now that the strong connections he formed while writing the Private Property column proved their worth, as he approached leading Melbourne real estate agents with a business proposition—back him as investors and become both co-owners and advertisers in their own suburban news publication. Overnight success The Weekly Review was an immediate financial success. In what must have been a satisfying deal for Catalano, just 18 months after launch Fairfax was losing so much agent advertising to Metro Media Publishing they were forced to buy half the business for $35 million and then acquire the remaining stake for $72 million in 2013. “It was really that column that transformed my relationship with the estate agents from being a journo to a trusted reporter within the industry to a friend and ultimately to a business partner,” Catalano has said. “People talk about overnight success stories. Mine was a 20-year overnight success story.” Fairfax: The Sequel Catalano was now wealthy and welcomed back to helm Fairfax’s Domain.com.au. Under his leadership the listing portal grew to generate the bulk of Fairfax’s profits and it listed on the ASX in November 2017 with a $2.2 billion valuation. Shortly after the float, Catalano left Fairfax again, to resurface most notably with the Australian Community Media acquisition, a key piece of his post-Domain plan. “All these big tech companies have big media partners and the reason is that you need the eyeballs,” Catalano said at Urbanity. Raes at Wategos Among the strategising, network building and deal making, Catalano finds time to pursue his passion for property from the development side. In 2016 he bought and refurbished the seven-room boutique hotel and restaurant, Raes at Wategos, at Byron Bay. And with developer Podia he is parlaying that brand’s luxury reputation into an exclusive residential project at Byron called The Bonobo by Raes, featuring 41 hotel-style apartments. Strategies, tech, relationships With a mix of forward-thinking strategies and tactical investments, Antony Catalano is cementing his leading place in Australia’s real estate landscape. His ambitions for the View Media Group are driven by his blend of media, technology, marketing and real estate expertise. The value he places on relationships highlights the importance of partnerships to business success. Up against stiff competition in Domain.com.au, Rupert Murdoch’s RealEstate.com.au and every other savvy operator who wants to dominate the hugely lucrative real estate transaction space, only time will tell whether Catalano’s View to making a killing will pan out as planned. But he is hoping the first portal of call for anyone looking for property in Australia will be his. The Urban Developer ’s annual Urbanity conference for the creators of cities in the Asia-Pacific was staged on August 29-31 at the Gold Coast. You are currently experiencing The Urban Developer Plus (TUD+), our premium membership for property professionals. Click here to learn more.

[+] Former Domain Boss Shows Off His Vertical Leap

Want to read more?

‘We are the Solution’: Land Lease Shake-Up Stirs into Life

Disconnection by Design: Why ‘Untech’ is the Next Big Amenity

Office Eyes Slowdown as New Stock Supply Becomes a Trickle

Why Salta Won’t Break Ground on $400m Pipeline

Precinct Proposals Bloom as Brisbane Middle-Ring Sheds its Past

[+] Former Domain Boss Shows Off His Vertical Leap

Want to read more?

‘We are the Solution’: Land Lease Shake-Up Stirs into Life

Disconnection by Design: Why ‘Untech’ is the Next Big Amenity

Office Eyes Slowdown as New Stock Supply Becomes a Trickle

Why Salta Won’t Break Ground on $400m Pipeline

Precinct Proposals Bloom as Brisbane Middle-Ring Sheds its Past

Electrification, Efficiency: Property’s Climate Target Challenge

‘We are the Solution’: Land Lease Shake-Up Stirs into Life

Centennial’s Paul Ford: From Vision to Industrial Vanguard

Electrification, Efficiency: Property’s Climate Target Challenge

‘We are the Solution’: Land Lease Shake-Up Stirs into Life

Centennial’s Paul Ford: From Vision to Industrial Vanguard

Court Freezes Assets as $160m Property Scheme Unravels