THE online property advertising company REA Group will next year introduce changes on its website to let home owners ”upgrade” ads without using their estate agent.

The plans have prompted complaints from real estate agents worried the company will directly approach owners of houses listed by agents on realestate.com.au.

”We’d like to roll that out from early [2012],” the chief executive of REA, Greg Ellis, said at the company’s annual meeting yesterday. But Mr Ellis stressed the change, being trialled by a select group of Queensland estate agents, would only be made in consultation with individual agents.

”We’re never going to go direct to vendors. They’re going to be customers of the agent before we ever do anything with them at all,” REA’s chairman, Richard Freudenstein, said. He told shareholders net profit was up 37 per cent to $67.5 million on turnover of $238.4 million. It returned a fully-franked dividend of 16¢ a share.

Unlike its major shareholder, News Ltd, REA would not return excess cash to shareholders in the form of a buyback but would keep

it to fund potential purchases. The company was intent on diversifying its income stream beyond

realestate.com.au.

An industry-wide reshaping of online audience measures had not undermined REA’s audience, time-on-site or page view position in the marketplace, Mr Ellis said.

Despite its lead position – REA has 70 per cent of the online property ad market – the business faced competition, particularly in Sydney, from Fairfax Media’s real estate portal, domain.com.au, he said.

”Our most competitive market is in Sydney and it’s specifically around 18 suburbs that centre around the inner-east, lower north shore and inner-west,” Mr Ellis said.

”To suggest that Fairfax is making ground on us, I would strongly reject,” he said.