I listed my own home. Here’s what Week 1 actually looked like.

I’m the founder of Unreserved. I’m also, this month, a vendor — my home in Cape Schanck went live last week. I’m running my own platform on my own house, in public, and writing the whole thing up as I go. This is the first instalment: the unedited Week 1 funnel, and the call I’m making before week two closes.

01 · The funnel

Five numbers tell the whole story.

Every listing on realestate.com.au and Domain produces the same five-step funnel. Each step is a filter — and each drop-off ratio is a diagnostic. Here’s what mine looked like at the end of day seven:

Stage	Count	Relative reach
Impressions (REA + Domain)	18,201
Saved-search notifications	6,010
Listing views	458
Saves & shortlists	14
Email enquiries	4

My Week 1 funnel — Cape Schanck, VIC. Bars are scaled to impressions, not to each other.

When I first looked at this, my instinct was to feel okay about it — 18,000 people saw the listing, the photos pulled nearly 500 to the page, and there are already a handful of saves. That’s the read most agents would give you on day seven, and it isn’t wrong. But it isn’t useful, either.

Three of those numbers are noise. Two are signal. Impressions and saved-search notifications mostly tell me the portal’s algorithm is working. Listing views are the first warm number — someone clicked. But the two numbers that actually predict an outcome are saves (a buyer is interested enough to bookmark) and email enquiries (a buyer is interested enough to act).

High views and low enquiry is the textbook profile of a listing buyers are pricing in their heads — and then stepping away from. Mine is sitting in that exact pattern.

02 · The benchmark

2–3% is the suburb floor. I’m at 0.87%.

Across Australian portals, a healthy listing converts 2–3% of listing views into email enquiries in the first seven days. The exact number varies by suburb, price band and property type, but the floor is remarkably consistent. Drop below 1% and you have a measurable problem.

My funnel converted at 0.87% — four emails on 458 views. That isn’t a marketing problem. The campaign reached 18,000 people. The photos pulled 458 of them through to the listing page. They downloaded the Statement of Information. Then they vanished.

When the pre-click funnel is healthy and the post-click funnel collapses, only one variable can produce that pattern. The buyer saw my price and said no — silently, without ever picking up the phone. The hard part of writing this paragraph is that I picked the price.

03 · The anchor

Find the closest under-offer transaction.

The single most useful data point in week one isn’t your AVM, your guide, or the suburb median. It’s the most recent under-offer transaction that resembles your home — same bed count, similar land, similar style, same suburb, settled in the last 90 days.

For my listing that anchor is 938 Boneo Road — a 3-bed home on 8,376m² that went under offer at roughly $1.32M after 97 days, sitting right on the CoreLogic suburb median of $1.3M. Two more comparables transacted in the $1.2M–$1.4M band. Buyers in that segment are active — but at that price point, not above it.

If your guide sits more than 7% above the closest under-offer anchor, you are not testing the market. You are educating it — and the market’s response will be silence. Mine was.

04 · The portal split

REA and Domain are not the same channel.

Most sellers boost both portals equally and assume both will convert at the same rate. They don’t. In my dashboard this week, Domain delivered 1.71% email enquiry per view; REA delivered 0.35%. Same listing, same week — Domain converted nearly 5× better.

For lifestyle and Peninsula-skewed properties, Domain’s audience tends to be higher-intent. For inner-metro family homes, REA usually wins on raw enquiry volume. The point isn’t which portal is “better” — it’s that the answer is in your own dashboard, and any week-two boost spend should follow the channel that’s actually converting.

Before I spend a dollar more on either portal, I’m confirming the higher-converting channel carries every photo, the floorplan, the SOI, and complete property details. Then any extra spend goes to Domain.

05 · The week-two playbook

Three moves before day fourteen.

1. Re-anchor the guide on the under-offer comp

If your top-of-range sits more than 5–7% above the closest under-offer transaction, walk it back to within that band. You don’t need to slash — a $30k–$50k adjustment on a $1.3M home resets buyer perception immediately and triggers a fresh wave of saved-search alerts. That’s the move I’m making on my own listing this week.

2. Double down on the channel that converted

Move any boost or upgrade spend to the portal with the higher enquiry-per-view rate. Your own week one beats every portal sales rep’s pitch. For me that means Domain gets the upgrade, REA stays as-is.

3. Watch the saves curve daily

Saves are the leading indicator. If saves keep climbing through week two, patience is justified — Cape Schanck’s average days on market is 84, and good lifestyle homes do find their buyer. If saves flatten while views stay high, that’s the prompt to refresh the headline image and revisit the guide a second time. I’ll publish the week-two numbers next Friday, whichever way it goes.

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If you want to run this same analysis on your own listing, start with a free AI valuation — it’ll surface the closest under-offer anchor and the realistic enquiry conversion you should expect. The same tool I used on mine.