Amid real estate crisis, Realtor.com traffic grows
Visitors to Realtor.com are spending more time on the site and reading more pages according to an October report from ComScore Media Metrix.
Consumer traffic increased on the site by 31 percent year-over-year and by 35 percent month-to-month. Visitors viewed 14 percent more pages on Realtor.com compared to the same month last year. And the number of minutes they spent on the site was up 11 percent from last year.
In addition to Realtor.com’s gains, Move.com also had good results to report. The site saw 12 percent month-over-month increases in unique users.
The greatest increases occurred in some of the most depressed markets in the U.S. Stockton-Lodi, CA was up 67.4 percent) Fort Myers-Cape Coral, FL showed an increase of 57 percent, Riverside-San Bernardino, CA increased by 44.9 percent, the depressed market of Las Vegas, NV was up 40.7, and Miami, FL showed a jump of 35.4 percent. The full list is at http://marketing.realtor.com/octobersearch/
Other data: more than two thirds of identified homebuyers said they’ve held off buying a home because of the overall economic condition. However, approximately five percent of consumers said they plan to buy a home in the next 12 months, and another 17.7 percent plan to buy a home in one to five years from now.
More details emerge on NAR’s ‘Gateway’ project
More details have emerged about the National Association of Realtor’s “Gateway” project, now renamed for the third time as the “Realtors Property Resource.” The project, which we initially speculated might pose direct competition to Realtor.com – which operates the NAR’s official consumer-facing site – is now being billed as “the largest database in the country of tax and assessment information,” with data on virtually every property in the U.S. “including residential and commercial properties and vacant land.”
The Realtor’s Property Resource may also include information about for-sale-by-owner properties, something that has long been anathema to NAR, as well as insurance claim and loss history data.
Will the project eventually morph into a national MLS? No, said Dale Ross, chairman of the project’s advisory board, but then added, “I believe there probably will be a national MLS (but) this is not going to be (it). This is not the intent.”
As a database, the project doesn’t have the same business model as Realtor.com. Rather, the advisory board is looking at ways to monetize the system by potentially reselling data to the MLS’s or by charging MLS’s for access.
The project’s advisory board – which has 22 members – met for the first time in Chicago. Recommendations for a proof of concept will be given during the NAR’s next big meet-up in May 2009.
Realtor.com redesign moves out of beta
Realtor.com finally released its redesigned Web site today. The site, which has been available for the past several months as a beta through a click on the Move Inc.’s flagship Web property, shows more listing data, including neighborhood and school reports, plots a home on a Microsoft Virtual Earth map, and displays Zillow-like home value comparisons.
The most visually compelling new feature is a scrollable photo carousel on the Realtor.com home page. Listing page photos are also larger – some more than 140 percent than on the “classic” site.
Realtor.com says data on the new site proves its effectiveness, claiming that visitors are five times more likely to surf from the home page to a listing details page than on the classic site. User registration grew by 9 percent in the second quarter of this year compared to the first quarter on the classic site, and the number of e-mail alerts doubled – more than 3.3 million have been sent since the beta site was launched in May.
Realtor.com also released some positive numbers from the September 2008 ComScore Media Metrics report. Realtor.com showed a 17 percent year-over-year growth in the total time visitors spend on the site. Visitors also spent 10 percent more time on the Move Network overall. User minutes grew 30 percent compared to the same period the previous year.
Local markets with the fastest year-over-year growth in September searches on Realtor.com included Stockton-Lodi, CA (137.5 percent), Las Vegas, NV (109.5 percent), Riverside-San Bernardino, CA (102.8 percent), Oakland, CA (87.9 percent), Fort Myers-Cape Coral, FL (78.2 percent), San Jose, CA (73.7 percent) and Sacramento, CA (73.1 percent).
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