Unlike those in the print media, companies involved in the online real estate classifieds market said there are no signs of it succumbing to an advertising slowdown.

The number of visitors to property portals is in fact growing, according to operators of websites such as iProperty.com Malaysia, propertrack.com and thinkproperty.com.my as well as real estate agency Zerin Properties which operates four websites.

iProperty.com Malaysia, part of iProperty.com Group and owned by IPGA Ltd, gets over 515,000 visitors a month.

For propertrack.com, the property search portal operated by Asia Move Machine Sdn Bhd, a Malaysia-based international property advertising and marketing agency, it has been getting an average of 10,000 hits a month, with 60 per cent of them from the domestic market and 40 per cent from international markets.

The number of visitors to thinkproperty.my (formerly thinkproperty.com.my), operated by Think Media Sdn Bhd, averages 1.2 million a month.

Zerin Properties, which operates four property portals � www.klcc-living.com, www.officespace.com, www.expathomekl.com and www.sentul-lifestyle.com � receives 18,000 to 2.1 million hits between them.

iProperty Malaysia reported RM12 million worth of transactions last year while Zerin Properties's klcc-living.com site chalked up RM40 million. Meanwhile, propertrack.com is said to contribute 20 per cent of Asia Move Machine's total revenue.

Nevertheless, though the numbers confirm the property portals' online advertising potential, the country's property industry is still very much a "brick and mortar" business, as opposed to "click and mortar".

iProperty.com Group executive chairman Patrick Grove said while the growth of online property websites in the United Kingdom and Australia has been phenomenal in the past eight years with 70 per cent to 90 per cent of agents paying to advertise in those markets, the figure is still under 10 per cent in Asia.

However, Grove said the online real estate listings market is still one of the world's fastest growing segments, with global comparables enjoying growth of up to 75 per cent a year for the last five years.

Stephen Hodgson, Asia Move Machine managing director and propertrack. com team principal, said the traditional method of matchbox-size classified advertising cannot cope with the speed of online advertising.

"And with the relatively low cost of international travel, international property consumers and investors want more information, which can be made available to them expeditiously with online advertisement," he added.

On the other hand, Zerin Properties chief executive officer Previndran Singhe said while it uses Internet marketing as it is cost effective for buyers and sellers, people still call his company offline to inspect properties.

Real estate consultant Regroup Associates Sdn Bhd managing director Allan Soo said while the company would use international property portals to advertise its listings of high-end residential properties based on targeted international and regional investors, it would still resort to traditional advertising media such as print and below-the-line advertisement such as signboards, brochures and direct mail.

"The use of property portals lies with how much importance investors and buyers place on them. For example, projects that involve high targets, say a RM700 million investment, will not see industry players advertise online. They would prefer meeting up with the investors face-to-face. But for the masses such as young professionals, they are more likely to use these websites to buy or sell property," said Soo.

According to REA Group, an Australian operator of residential and commercial real estate websites such as realestate.com.au, realholidays.com.au and realcommercial.com.au, there has been no projected slowdown in the growth rates.

Chief executive officer Greg Ellis said the company recorded a 15 per cent rise in monthly readership of its web portals from 7.1 million to 8.2 million and is looking at adding 3D imaging and video technologies to its sites.

"We'll also improve the ability of real estate agents, who are our main advertisers, to promote their own brands on the websites in order to attract more of their display advertising budget from newspapers to the Internet," he said.

In another report, Nielsen Online, a service of The Nielsen Company, found that 87 per cent of property buyers in Australia use the Internet to support their research and search process, while 85 per cent of renters do the same.

The study also found that while as much as 79 per cent of property sellers continue to list "contact with agents" as a key resource, they are now far more likely to use online resources than they did in 2006.