Murdoch’s News Corp has moved into the mortgage business. Where are the regulators?
Murdoch’s News Corp has moved into the mortgage business. Where are the regulators?
If you want to advertise a house online in Australia, you don’t have many options. Just two companies dominate the market.
Australia’s largest property listings platform, realestate.com.au, belongs to digital media company REA Group, which is majority-owned by Rupert Murdoch’s US-based media conglomerate News Corporation (News Corp).
REA claims average traffic of 11.9 million viewers per month, substantially more than that of its nearest rival, Domain.
That’s led to widespread concern about REA’s dominant market power and the potential for price-gouging, which are currently subject to an ongoing probe by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC).
Meanwhile, my research has revealed that REA has expanded into mortgage lending, an important new direction which, until now, has escaped attention.
The implications here are worth considering. News Corp, a foreign-owned media company, now has a direct stake in framing the Australian housing narrative and influencing policy, while profiting through its property platform from listings, data, and its own mortgages.
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