Posts Tagged ‘realtor.com’

If your media site doesn’t have an IPhone app for its real estate listings, you may be missing an avid audience, and the opportunity to boost your weekend traffic.

That’s evidenced by Realtor.com’s accumulation of 1 million IPhone app users after only five months. Those who download the app search Realtor.com for listings on an average of twice each day, with visits that exceed 16 minutes.

The Realtor.com Real Estate Search app was recently named one of the four top IPhone apps by Money Magazine. Its features include Area Scout, which combines GPS with automatic search updates, and delivers listings that are near major roadways, for example, and shows average price per square foot, the average price of nearby homes, and the average size of nearby homes via map feature.

The IPhone app drives weekend traffic to Realtor.com, with an increase of 37 percent over weekday traffic. The app is free.

In addition to Move, Inc. Q110  net loss of $20.3 million – nearly double that of Q109 - the major earnings-call news was the revamp of Realtor.com, and perhaps of its contract with the National Association of Realtors (NAR.) The new platform will go live as an opt-in beta in two or three weeks from now. As any consumer or real estate professional goes to the site she or he will be asked if the preference is to view the new beta version of the site or the traditional one. Some time this summer, after feedback from users, the new Realtor.com will be live for everyone.

Saying that the site’s current “inflexible structure was a stumbling block,” CEO Steve Berkowitz added that significant work on the site is yet to be done but the real estate firm will “overcome a major hurdle with this pending release.” The goal is to make content more accessible more quickly. To do that they’ll make homes for sale, new construction, recently sold, off-market properties and rentals all searchable and discoverable from one place. The Finding a Realtor function will be improved, and consumers will now be able to search for a professional by certification.

One mission is for more targeted monetization opportunities. One of the keys to accomplishing this is in better analytics, providing better insight to customers and their activity on the site. As an example of current limitations, Berkowitz said that approximately 10,000 calls to real estate professionals from consumers are generated by clicking from the site via the IPhone, but that without improvements those are the only calls Move, Inc. can track.

“Our goal is to define the value relationship of what we provide to our customers, he said. “We will then get a better understanding of what a lead / referral is.”

While stressing that the agreement with NAR for Realtor.com remains in force, Krolik said that Move, Inc. needs to clarify the agreement by way of conversations with NAR. With market evolution, and real estate information out there from a number of competitors as well as Realtor.com,  “We believe that we have to have the most comprehensive and reliable information available,” he said. Discussions between the two will include a conversation around the agreement clause “must remain competitive” for example.

It leaves us to wonder, with the creation of Realtors Property Resource, and the NAR funding of Game Changer Challenge projects such as Brokers Listing Cooperative, if the study of competitor phraseology in the agreement might be Move’s way of saying, “NAR, put us first.”  There could be some Move, Inc. concern that NAR is trying to serve too many masters – and competitive  or cross-purpose masters at that.

“At the end of the day we’re a search site – we’re a find site,” said Berkowitz. “We will continue to add new and better search functionality, giving consumers and real estate professionals smaller bite size chunks of what they’re looking for, enabling them to get through the site more quickly.”

Changes will roll out first for Top Producer and will be eventually applied to rentals and other places.

Move reported what CFO Bob Krolik called a “good [Q110] quarter, with the market still tough but some stabilization in Move’s core business.”  Realtor.com revenue and listing counts (over 7 million)  were both flat quarter over quarter, and while subscribers were down many purchased the more costly Market Snapshot than in quarters past. Rentals and moving revenues increased slightly.

Deferred revenue dropped by half in the last 12-18 months but revenue itself did not. This happened because customers that used to pay a discount fee for their upfront payment are now habitually paying on a monthly basis. Deferred revenue from December 31, 2009 through March 31, 2010 actually stayed about the same, however, indicating this payment process is starting to level out. Another factor in revenue drop was the drop off of Realtors, as approximately 300,000 left the industry, bringing Realtor numbers from 1.4 to 1.1.million.

Realtor.com now has 400,000 real estate professional subscribers, and relationships with 900 MLSs. Berkowitz cited a Comscore report that ranks Realtor.com number one among real estate sites for unique users, with 50 percent more users than number two Yahoo Real Estate. In April 14.7 million consumers and real estate professionals visited Realtor.com

Here’s the earnings release.

Home sellers and buyers will be able to search for real estate listings from six Northeast Ohio counties on Trulia.com as the result of a new partnership between the real estate Web site and the Northern Ohio Regional Multiple Listing Service. Cleveland.com, the online home of The Plain Dealer and Sun News, reported that NORMLS is already collaborating with CyberHomes.com and Realtor.com, and says this is only the start of online collaboration for the MLS.

Carl DeMusz, president and CEO of NORMLS, told Cleveland.com that the MLS service is exploring similar deals to list properties on Google and Yahoo real estate platforms. “I would say it’s the wave of the future,” he said.

Do take a gander at the original story on Cleveland.com, and then look towards the bottom of the right rail and click on the Post Free Classifieds button. This will take you to an excellent free classifieds site. Do open up some of the listings to see all the bells and whistles. The folks at Cleveland.com have done a great job here. It just might give you some ideas.

The following Hitwise list shows Web sites for the industry ‘Business and Finance – Real Estate’, ranked by visits for the week ending 08/08/2009.

1. Realtor.com
2. Yahoo! Real Estate
3. Zillow
4. ZipRealty
5. Rent.com
6. Trulia.com
7. ServiceMagic
8. Apartments.com
9. Homes.com
10. RE/MAX Real Estate
11. Homegain
12. US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)
13. AOL Real Estate
14. Apartment Guide
15. MyNewPlace
16. Century 21 Real Estate
17. RealtyTrac
18. ForRent.com
19. Redfin
20. LoopNet
 

The latest Comscore results have Realtor.com still on top. And the numbers continue to inch up. The site had 11.3 million unique visitors in April. That’s 104 percent more than last April.

Move Inc., Realtor.com’s parent, says that those visitors looked at 303 million pages of real estate-related information, and that this was “more than the next nine competitors combined.” The number of minutes users spent on the site – 239 million – was up 30 percent from last  year.

Florida housing markets seem to be growing particularly fast in terms of searches. Fort Myers-Cape Coral, FL was up 100.5 percent, Naples, FL grew 86.8 percent, and searches in Miami increased 84.8 percent.

Las Vegas led the pack with growth of 111.4 percent.

Move.com and its daughter Web site Realtor.com have long held the top positions for the most traffic in the U.S. online property space. But faster and nimbler competitors have been steadily nipping at its heels, and now the company’s new president and CEO has acknowledged that, given the impact on the real estate industry of the worldwide recession, Move Inc. has no choice but to reinvent itself or risk becoming irrelevant.

That’s tough talk from the new head of the company who’s only been on the job for a few months now. But Steven Berkowitz, who took the helm in January, is not one to shy away from challenges. Berkowitz has held leadership roles at Ask.com, where as CEO he eased the company into profitability, and as president of IDG Books where he helped establish the “For Dummies” series.

Move’s traditional business – listings and lead generation – is under siege. The future, Berkowitz explained in a conference call with financial analysts, must be more hyper-local, more social and include significant homeowner-generated content. If that sounds like Berkowitz is learning the lessons of Facebook, you’d be right.

Berkowitz isn’t going as far as building an entirely new brand, he said, but the changes will involve shifting the focus of the company from “an organization built around individual products to one centered around common business functions” along with better integrating technology and operations around “everything related to the life cycle of home ownership.”

To say that the real estate market is hurting is, of course, by now an understatement. Move has already cut $20 million in costs, according to company CFO Lewis Belote.

First-quarter revenues were down nearly 11 percent, or $54 million, compared with the same quarter of 2008. New Homes and Media took the biggest hit, dropping 47 and 30 percent respectively. Compared to Q408, revenue was down 4.5 percent.

Berkowitz started the conference call by saying that, despite the challenges ahead, he was “more excited today than when I first accepted the job.”

The company has a great base to build on, he added. “In March we led the market with 7 million unique users and 196 million … our minutes of engagement in March were more than the combined minutes of Yahoo, AOL, MSN, Tulia, and Rent.com combined.”

Nevertheless, “our technology platform is relatively fragmented as we have bolted on new technologies from acquisitions and new initiatives,” and assets haven’t been integrated “the way they should be,” he said, citing as an example the need to create better synergies between Move’s back-end Realtor tool, Top Producer, and the Realtor.com consumer-facing Web platform.

Technology considerations aside, the real issue is that people are just not moving from home to home the way they used to. And “for someone who’s not planning on moving soon, they also care about their property values, taxes, relative news and content, and everything else that impacts their home and their community,” Berkowitz said.

Or put another way, if “we can bring information to consumers before they’re in the market to buy a home … I think that our ability to stay connected with them throughout the lifelong process gives us a much better chance to get more important to that part of the value chain,” Berkowitz said. And that means “not just listings available for sale.”

As we see it, that’s a pretty big deal for a company that’s built its empire on an exclusive listing relationship with the National Association of Realtors.
Move “needs to be the company to serve all of these consumer needs,” Berkowitz emphasized. And that involves more than just searching for home values which Berkowitz described as “more of a singular occurrence” and just “a piece of the puzzle.”

Partnerships with third parties are an important part of branding Move as the go-to place for all one’s real estate requirements. Berkowitz acknowledged that “in terms of our ability to do partnerships in our own industry, I don’t think we’ve executed extremely well.”

Structurally, Berkowitz envisions creating new leadership positions that will operate across all of the company’s divisions. He cited the roles of chief product, chief technology and chief revenue officer. Aral Samuelson, the current president of Realtor.com, will double in the job as chief revenue officer. Move is still recruiting for the other two positions.

Century 21 is beefing up its online advertising options. The company says it is generating 20 percent more leads for its agents via online advertising vs. TV ads. As a result, a new “Gold Standard Partnership” will subsidize the cost of listing enhancements for C21 franchise owners on Realtor.com

Enhancements include: a photo gallery of up to 25 large property images; detailed neighborhood information; open-house alerts; the capability to feature full-motion videos and virtual tours; multiple lead forms; and reports on consumer traffic to each property.

The advertising deal “underscores our transition from national television advertising to national online advertising,” said Bev Thorne, senior vice president of marketing, at Century 21.

The Century 21 franchise network, a part of Realogy Corp., includes about 8,500 broker offices in 64 nations and territories.

The latest Hitwise list for U.S.-based real estate Web sites has Realtor.com on top again with a 6.85 percent market share, followed by Realestate.Yahoo.com a distant second with 3.65 percent market share, then Zillow, ZipRealty and ReMax.com.

One new entry to the top 20: RealEstate.com, which came in at number 20.

The top ten Web sites in terms of visits were:

1. Realtor.com
2. Realestate.yahoo.com
3. Zillow.com
4. ZipRealty.com
5. ReMax.com
6. Hud.gov
7. Rent.com
8. ServiceMagic.com
9. HomeGain.com
10. Trulia.com

Here’s the latest round up of the top real estate Web sites, according to Hitwise, for November. And guess who came out on top. OK, we don’t really have to tell you, do we?

Here’s the list.

1. Realtor.com
2. RealEstate.yahoo.com
3. Zillow.com
4. ZipRealty.com
5. Rent.com
6. Remax.com
7. HomeGain.com
8. ServiceMagic.com
9. Hud.gov
10. RealtyTrac.com

Note that Trulia.com just missed out, coming in at 11, followed by Apartments.com and Homes.com at 12 and 13. RealEstate.msn.com was 15th, and MyNewPlace.com was 16th.

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.

Hitwise has released October numbers for real estate, based on US Internet usage. Not surprisingly, Realtor.com retains its spot at the top. And jumping back into the top ten: Trulia.

Overall, 26.8 percent of all visits in the real estate category went to the top 10 websites, 37.4 percent went to the top 20 websites and 65.9 percent went to the top 100 websites.

The average visit duration was 11 minutes, 8 seconds, very slight decrease from September’s average of 11 minutes, 24 seconds.

Here’s the latest list:

1.    Realtor.com – 7.68 percent
2.    Yahoo Real Estate – 4.11 percent
3.    Zillow – 2.5 percent
4.    ZipRealty – 2.3 percent
5.    ServiceMagic – 1.9 percent
6.    Rent.com – 1.8 percent
7.    RE/MAX – 1.7 percent
8.    US Department of Housing and Urban Development – 1.6 percent
9.    Trulia – 1.5 percent
10.  MSN Real Estate – 1.5 percent

Download the full report here.

ForSaleByOwner.com is marketing a service that puts private-party sellers’ listings on Realtor.com, the giant property portal operated by Move Inc. for the National Association of Realtors. But it’s not exactly a FSBO listing at that point, Move.com says, contending that ForSaleByOwner.com might be misleading customers, Inman News reported. (Subscription required.)

ForSaleByOwner.com acknowledged it was working with licensed agents to get the FSBO listings on Realtor.com, as part of a deal brokered in the settlement of the U.S. Department of Justice’s anti-trust lawsuit against the NAR.

The cost to private-party sellers is $200.

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).

Realtor.com has launched a new service that posts actual sales prices of homes within 24 hours. Dubbed “Find Home Values,” the offering is particularly interesting for home buyers who will now be able to get a quicker, more accurate look at what homes are selling for, increasingly critical in a down market where prices change seemingly daily. Realtor.com updates its Web pages every 15 minutes.

The first MLSs to send data to Realtor.com are:

-    First MLS in Atlanta
-    The Greater Las Vegas Association of Realtors
-    The Northern Ohio Regional MLS
-    The Tucson Association of Realtors
-    The Northeast Florida MLS in Jacksonville.

This week, SoCalMLS, Southern California’s multiple listing service, joined the program. Realtor.com research shows that Southern California is one of the most actively searched regions in the nation for real estate.

More at http://www.realtor.com/homevalues