Australian-based REA Group, which owns property listings sites realestate.com.au and casa.it, has announced record results for financial year 2010.

The company recorded revenue of A$194.335M (US$174.516) and an EBITDA of $77.981M (US$70.033M). This was up from A$167.795M in revenue and an EBITDA of $62.491M for financial year 2009.

While the figures suggest a global company travelling at full steam the reality is that REA’s revenue and profit overwhelmingly stem from its flagship Australian operation. In fact, realestate.com.au is so dominant in REA’s portfolio of real estate sites that it accounts for almost 92 per cent of revenue. Meanwhile Italian site casa.it had revenue of just A$8.881M and posted an A$6,637 loss.

Interestingly, the discrepancy is not representative of any enormous gulf in the performance of the Australian and Italian property markets over the past 12 months. True – the Aussie market rose sharply on the back of a robust economy and, if you believe some analysts and most politicians, also on the continued pressure a high migration intake is placing on real estate prices in the main cities.

But then, Italian property prices remained reasonably resilient too – particularly when compared with most other European countries. It wasn’t as though a depressed market meant no one was listing.

Nor is the gap indicative of a gulf in the market position of REA’s holdings. Both casa.it and realestate.com.au are in the top two real estate listings sites in their respective markets – and Italy’s population of around 60 million people dwarfs Australia’s 22 million.

Instead, the gap might reflect the widely different cultures of Australia and Italy.

For instance, 50 per cent of Italians between 18 and 34 still live with their parents. Compare that to Australia where somewhere between 80 and 90 per cent of 25 to 29 year olds have left home.

Just think of the number of times the average person changes their address in their early years and you begin to get a feel for why realestate.com.au has around 450,000 listings at any given time and around 4.1M unique visitors while casa.it has 2.4M. Moreover, Australians share the English speaking world’s obsession with property and are likely to continue changing and upgrading houses throughout their lives (as well as keeping an eye on the market just in case).

But then, even that doesn’t fully explain why realestate.com.au turned over so much revenue and was just so profitable, especially when compared to its Italian stable mate. For that, you probably have to look at the relative strength of the big two in Australia. After all realestate.com.au and its Fairfax-owned rival Domain.com.au account for more than 90 per cent of Australian property searches. And realestate.com.au boasts that 95 per cent of properties for sale in Australia are listed through its site.

There’s a benefit to being a big fish in a little pond.