Australians love property. On average, Aussies spend 2.5 hours per week researching the property market, more time than they spend at the gym or talking to their parents. Platforms like REA and Domain are household names, but they aren’t exactly equals.

With nearly 10x the market cap, superior traffic, and strong pricing powers, REA is clearly dominating the Australian property scene. At the heart of that dominance lies its ruthless product craft. This kind of product focus is becoming the ultimate moat today where AI is rapidly commoditising technology and software.

As one of the fellow Aussies who pour hours into REA and Domain every week, I’ve come to appreciate the subtle yet powerful ways REA delivers value and believe its market dominance has a product root.

The Illusion of Feature Parity

Copying features is common in tech. If Company A has a new feature and company B quickly follows, it’s easy to assume feature parity exists. But setting aside the well-known truth that copycats rarely win, the deeper problem is that the feature parity is often an illusion. The functionality might look the same on the surface, but even a small gap in execution. which could be a slower response, a clunky UX, an irrelevant result, can create a vast difference in customer experience. In product-led markets, that seemingly minor gap can lead to major divergence in adoption. The best product doesn’t just win, it kills.

One such example is property search.

Search, as a concept, wasn’t just a feature; it defined an era. It gave rise to Internet 2.0, where discovering information became frictionless, and relevance became king. In real estate, search is rough at best so the last thing customers need is more noises.

The first thing that jumps out when comparing REA and Domain’s search is that Domain fails to provide filters for exact price and sale method.

These might seem trivial but they are not. 72% of property buyers in Australia skip listings that don’t display a price. How to annoy 72% of your customers? By not allowing them to filter out the listings they are not interested in. Interestingly, this insight happens to be produced by REA.

Sale method is a similar story. I don’t have a stat but from personal experience: I never buy properties from auction and I know plenty of people who are just like me.

Then the keyword feature that both companies have also yields vastly different results. If I were to search for ‘dual income’ properties under $1M in Australia, REA gives me 213 results and there are almost no false positives in the results. However, Domain gives me 1586 results, the vast majority being false positives. It turned out that Domain searches for ‘dual’ and ‘income’ separately.

These three issues might appear small. But they each alienate a core group of buyers who rely heavily on search. Cumulatively, they represent a systemic failure in product thinking. In a high-intent, high-frequency marketplace like property, that’s a dealbreaker.

Fake Features are Costly Bait

Domain recently launched an off-market feature that sounds promising at first glance. But in most cases, these aren't genuine off-market opportunities; they’re just listings being prepped for public release. True off-market deals typically involve vendors seeking discretion or urgency, where agents facilitate a quiet transaction. What Domain labels as off-market, REA more honestly calls coming soon properties.

The label matters. Off-market evokes exclusivity, insider access, and urgency, and while that might attract more clicks initially, it also sets a high expectation. When users realise it’s just early-access to standard listings, trust erodes. The short-term traffic spike comes at the long-term cost of credibility.

If early visibility is the real value prop, then call it what it is. Coming soon may sound less glamorous, but honest features build lasting engagement. Misleading ones create churn.

AI Native Core Experience

While AI capabilities are evolving rapidly, majority commercial applications today remain concentrated in customer service and automation. The key value driver is cost cutting and human resource displacements. It’s a little disappointing how rarely we see AI truly elevate the user experience in a meaningful, product-native way.

On Domain, I haven’t found any sign of AI, neither native nor even tacked-on. In contrast, REA has quietly embedded AI in ways that feel natural, invisible, and useful. Two features stood out to me: property description summaries and intent-based suburb suggestions.

When I search for investment properties, I’m often screening a dozen candidates at a time. I need to quickly parse key information like rental yield indicators, renovation needs, the level of maintenance required before doing the math. Reading through long agent-written blurbs can be exhausting. REA’s AI-powered property highlights are a godsend. They extract the essentials, reduce fatigue, and help me stay sharp during early-stage filtering. It’s a small thing, but because the task is high-frequency, the value compounds fast.

The second moment of delight comes during suburb discovery. When exploring unfamiliar areas, I often don’t know what I don’t know and this creates blind spots which makes me slightly uncomfortable as an investor who wants to be thorough. But REA seems to reverse-engineer my intent from search history and recommend suburbs that match my investment profile. It’s subtle, but highly effective. I’ve since found suburbs I wouldn’t have otherwise considered.

In both cases, the use of AI is deeply embedded in customer’s core experience in a highly effective and non-promotional way. And this is what great product thinking looks like: when emerging technology meets deep user empathy. That’s not just innovation. That’s customer delight and engagement.

Engagement Beyond the Search

Property apps, if not thoughtfully designed, risk becoming like dating apps—once the goal is achieved, the user leaves. That is not necessarily a failure, but it limits long-term engagement. REA’s success shows what it looks like to go further.

To keep customers engaged, being able to keep providing value is essential. REA does it in two ways.

• An in-life feature tracking property values

• Timely, localised and engaging contents

Not only do these features have strong product-market fit, but the channels delivering them are fit for purpose. Property value updates arrive via email: timely, unobtrusive, and easy to revisit. Meanwhile, news content is surfaced through in-app notifications or third-party feeds, meeting users where their attention already is. The delivery is as thoughtful as the product itself, reinforcing REA’s deep understanding of user context and behaviour.

Putting it All Together

From sharper search to authentic feature naming, from intent-aware recommendations to AI-native utilities, REA demonstrates that product dominance is never just about shipping more features but about executing them better. Each of the examples above may seem small in isolation, but together, they form a tightly integrated, high-leverage experience that keeps users engaged, informed, and coming back.

Domain offers similar surface-level functionality, but the gaps in execution, trust, and post-conversion engagement compound quickly. What feels like a 1% difference in feature quality creates a 10x difference in user outcomes, and eventually, in market outcomes.

In a world where AI is flattening technical capabilities and levelling the playing field, deep product thinking is the last durable moat. REA understands that. And that’s why it’s not just winning. It’s killing.