Real
estate shopping has changed drastically thanks to the Web, letting buyers find
the home of their dreams with just the click of the mouse. There are roughly
900 multiple listing services, or MLSs, where brokers post information about
homes they are selling. But buyers don't have to rely on the MLS listings
offered on Realtor.com anymore to find a home; not when there is a wealth of
other online resources available on the Web.
Here
are links to possible listing sites:
Zillow,
Realtor.com and most other listings sites earn money by selling ads to run
alongside homes for sale, or by selling more prominent placement to those who
want to promote certain home listings. But the trend toward more liberal
distribution of M.L.S. homes is also benefiting online real estate companies
with other business models, like Redfin, a virtual brokerage of sorts that is
based in Seattle.
Whether
you are in the real estate business or not, you have either heard of or used
Zillow, Trulia and Realtor.com before. These three websites account for the
majority of the entire market share for all real estate listing websites and in
recent years have become a preferred destination for real estate brokers to
list, promote and sell properties for their clients.
According
to comScore, Inc. (an analytics company), in the month of June 2015, the top 20
real estate listing websites accounted for 176.023 million unique website
visitors. Of these top 20 sites, Zillow.com, Realtor.com and Trulia.com were
the top three, taking a combined 68.21 percent of the market share. The
following pie chart shows how much of the market share from those 176.023
million unique visitors each of the top three sites had in June 2015.
www.besmartee.com/blog/zillow-trulia-and-realtor-com-dominate-online-real-estate
Trulia,
Inc., similarly to Zillow, is an online residential real estate website that
connects home sellers with buyers, renters and real estate professionals in the
U.S. With a business model similar to Zillow's, Trulia was acquired by Zillow
in 2014 for $3.5 billion.
www.investopedia.com/stock-analysis/041015/what-zillow-really-expects-trulia-z.aspx
Homesnap is an online real estate website that includes
features such an intuitive map-based search function and a robust amount of property
information.
Neighborhood Scout provides users with information regarding
neighborhoods in the U.S. All a user has to do to access the company's
neighborhood information is search by city or specific address. Once the search
criteria are entered, Neighborhood Scout provides average house values, local
school information, demographic data, crime rates, traffic data and more. While
most of the information is free for users, a subscription is needed for some of
the more robust data. However, at a $20 subscription fee for six months of
access, users are provided with detailed school reports, crime rates and
housing appreciation rates.
ListHub, the industry’s most widely adopted network for
listing distribution, provides brokerages with a single dashboard for
controlling their online marketing strategy – and at no cost.
Within the dashboard, brokerages can individually select
national website destinations, or “channels”, for listing syndication.
ListHub platform includes nearly 60 national channels. Those
national channels partner with other regional websites giving a combined
exposure of over 500 websites across the nation.
