Unreserved vs PropertyNow

Price and inclusions

What happens at 11pm on a Tuesday

This is the whole argument, so here it is concretely. A buyer is scrolling at 11pm. They like your listing. They want to know whether the second living area is heated and how big the garage is, and whether they can come Saturday.

On a product that forwards enquiries to you, the questions land as an email and an SMS alert. If you have set inspection times, the buyer may grab a Saturday slot online, but the heating and the garage wait until you see the message in the morning and dig out the floor plan. The buyer, meanwhile, has enquired on four other properties and one of them answered at 11:04pm.

On Unreserved, the AI Inspection Agent answers in under thirty seconds. It knows the garage is 6.1m by 5.4m because it has read your floor plan, and it knows the heating because it has read your Section 32 and your owner notes. It offers Saturday 11am, holds the slot, texts the address and confirms. You wake up to a booked inspection and a buyer who is still interested.

• Every channel, one inbox. SMS, email, portal enquiries and missed calls land in a single stream instead of four apps.
• Leads scored, not just collected. Pre-approval flags and serious-buyer scores, so you know which three of the twenty enquiries actually matter.
• Tracked to contract. Every enquiry followed from first message through inspection, offer and signed contract, with the digital paperwork handled.
• Your number stays private. Anonymous-relay SMS keeps buyer threads out of your personal phone.

The gap between yes and signed

Here is the part nobody markets, because it only bites once. A buyer says yes on a Saturday afternoon. What often happens next on a private sale is that everybody waits: you ring your conveyancer on Monday, documents get drafted, emailed, printed, signed, scanned and sent back. Three or four days pass with nothing binding anyone to anything.

Buyers cool off in that gap. They keep looking through the weekend, they see something else, or the enthusiasm they had standing in your kitchen simply drains away. It is one of the most common ways a private sale falls over, and it has nothing to do with price.

Unreserved runs a private sale workflow with contract templates built in, and buyer and seller sign digitally. Terms agreed and signed in the same sitting, rather than a week of momentum bleeding out over email.

The part that tells you what to fix

PropertyNow gives you a property value report. Useful once. The harder question arrives three weeks in, when the campaign has gone quiet and nobody can tell you why.

Every campaign throws off signals: how many people enquired, how many booked an inspection, how many actually turned up, how many rang, how many offered. On their own those numbers are just numbers. What makes them useful is knowing what they looked like on campaigns that went on to sell.

That is what our recommendation engine does. It reads your campaign’s signals week by week, compares them against successful campaigns, and tells you which part of the funnel is actually broken and what to do about it.

The diagnosis matters because the fix is different at every stage. Plenty of views and no enquiries is usually the photos or the price guide. Plenty of enquiries and no inspections is the availability or the follow-up. Full inspections and no offers is a pricing conversation, and that is the only one of the three where dropping the price is the answer.

• Signals, not vanity metrics. Enquiries, inspection bookings, attendance, phone calls and offers, tracked separately rather than rolled into one number.
• Benchmarked against sales. Your week measured against campaigns that finished, not against an average that includes everything that failed.
• Two or three specific moves. Refresh the hero photo, add a floor plan, revisit the positioning, change the inspection times.
• Never just drop the price. Price is one lever of several, and it is the one that costs you money. It gets recommended when the evidence says so and not before.

Where we are the same

Worth clearing this out of the way first, because a lot of comparisons in this category invent differences that do not exist.

• Both are licensed agencies. Not listing portals with a support address. That matters for trust accounts, disclosure and your pathway to a regulator.
• Both list on realestate.com.au and Domain. The listing a buyer sees is the same listing.
• Both staff licensed people you can talk to, seven days. Ours are included in the $900 and answer by phone, email or chat. If you have read elsewhere that the choice here is people versus software, that is not the choice.
• Neither takes commission. A fixed fee either way.
• Neither attends your open homes. You open the door on both.

What PropertyNow does better

Three things, and they are real.

• They have been doing it longer. The most established operator in this category in Australia, with the volume of completed sales and public reviews that only years of trading produce. We are newer and we have fewer. A comparison that hid that would not be worth reading.
• Wider syndication. They advertise exposure across 10 or more property sites beyond the two majors.
• A community of past sellers. Their customers can join a private Facebook group of homeowners who have sold this way, which is useful reassurance if you have never done it before.

The auction question

One more difference that is not a matter of preference: PropertyNow does not offer auctions and we do, including a reverse auction, where the price starts above your reserve and steps down in the open until the first buyer commits.

It will not suit every property. Auctions work where genuine competition is likely and the price is hard to pin down: renovated family homes in tight markets, unusual properties without clean comparables, deceased estates where the family wants a defensible result on a fixed date. On a standard three-bedroom in a street that sells one a month, private treaty is usually the better call, and we will say so.

Our auction guides set out how to judge it, including the cases where the answer is no.

The plans this page does not compare

PropertyNow’s sale package is $999. We sell more than one plan, and only Lite at $900 is on the table above.

Every comparison on this page uses Unreserved Lite at $900, because that is the like-for-like: a listing on realestate.com.au and Domain that you run yourself. The other plan most sellers weigh up is Plus, where a licensed campaign manager runs the campaign.

• Lite is the one everybody compares. $900, both major portals, the full toolkit. Most sellers should be on this.
• Plus is the one that removes the work. $2,000 up front and $4,900 only if it sells, so the larger half is contingent on the result. A licensed campaign manager runs the listing copy, pricing, buyer follow-up and negotiation. Photography is an optional upgrade, priced separately. You still open the door at your own open homes.

Who each suits

What neither of us does

• Neither opens your front door. You do, at both. That is true of our $6,900 Plus tier as well, and deliberately: you are going to be at the open home anyway, and paying someone thousands to stand in your lounge room for half an hour is exactly the kind of charge this whole category exists to remove. What Plus buys is everything around the open home, not the half hour itself.
• Neither sets your price for you. Both provide data; the decision stays yours.
• Neither replaces a conveyancer. Contracts and settlement sit with your legal representative either way.

Common questions

How much does PropertyNow cost?

PropertyNow publishes a Sell My Home package at $999 with no time limit on the listing. Unreserved Lite is $900. Captured from PropertyNow’s own pricing page, October 2026.

Is PropertyNow a licensed agency?

PropertyNow describes its team as licensed agents and is the longest-established operator in this category in Australia. Unreserved is also a licensed agency, in VIC, NSW, QLD, SA and WA. Both list on realestate.com.au and Domain.

What is the real difference between Unreserved and PropertyNow?

How much of the work each product does. PropertyNow’s package is the listing across the portals plus tools for running the sale yourself: an enquiry line that connects buyers to you, online inspection bookings against times you set, and an online offer form. In their own words, you handle the enquiries, inspections and negotiation. Unreserved does more of that work: the AI Inspection Agent answers buyer questions in under 30 seconds from your floor plan and Section 32, books and confirms the inspection, scores the lead, and tracks it through to signed contract.

What does PropertyNow do better?

Three things. They have been trading far longer than us, so they have many more completed sales and public reviews behind them. They advertise syndication across 10 or more property sites beyond the two majors. And their sellers get a private Facebook community. Support is not on the list: both companies are licensed agencies staffing licensed people seven days a week.

I want people, not software. Does that mean PropertyNow?

No, and this is the most common misreading of the two. Unreserved is a licensed agency with licensed agents available seven days by phone, email or chat, included in the $900. Neither company runs your campaign at its entry price. If you want a person who actually does, that is Unreserved Plus at $6,900, split $2,000 up front and $4,900 on a successful sale: a licensed campaign manager on the listing copy, pricing, buyer call-backs, qualifying and negotiation. PropertyNow has no equivalent tier. You still open your own front door at an open home on any of them.

What happens if my campaign goes quiet?

Unreserved reads your campaign signals every week (enquiries, inspection bookings, phone calls and offers) and benchmarks them against campaigns that went on to sell. It tells you which stage of the funnel is failing and gives you two or three specific moves, such as refreshing the hero photo, adding a floor plan or changing the inspection times. Dropping the price is one option among several, recommended only when the evidence points there.

How quickly can a contract be signed?

On Unreserved, as soon as terms are agreed. The private sale workflow includes contract templates and buyer and seller sign digitally, in one flow rather than a chain of emailed attachments. You still need a licensed conveyancer or solicitor for the contract of sale and vendor statement; what changes is that the deal is executed while the buyer is still committed, instead of days later.

Can I run an auction with PropertyNow?

No. Auctions and reverse auctions are not part of their offering. Both are included with Unreserved, and our auction guides explain when an auction is the right call and when private treaty will serve you better.

Which should I choose?

If you want your home advertised well and you are content to handle buyers yourself with experienced people to ring, PropertyNow. If you want the enquiries answered, the inspections booked and the buyers tracked without you doing it, or you want an auction, us. At $99 apart the price should not decide it either way.