I read a recent comment by the CEO of the National Association of Realtors, Dale Stinson, that the "technological relationship" between NAR and Move.com will remain stable. Move.com is the company that runs the realtor.com website. The comments were made on the stage at Inman’s Real Estate Connect conference. Also on the stage was the CEO of Zillow.com, Rich Barton.
Both of these websites, in my opinion, are terrible. The realtor.com website can be called stable, only in the fact that it has barely changed in the last 5 years. It is difficult to navigate and all my clients tell me so. I also have found out that prospective buyers who reply online through realtor.com to a listing, get redirected to someone other than the listing agent. I don't know where they go but a recent buyer called me up and asked why I didn't return her email. She sent it through realtor.com but I never got it. It's hard to return an email you never get.
Mr. Stinson has now informed us Realtors that our dues are going to be increased so he can spend $20 Million a year on 13 "projects" in the hopes that "something pans out". If he is giving any of the money to move.com, I can already tell you what will pan out. Nothing. Why do I say that?
Let's take a look a the growth rate of realtor.com. And while we are at it, let's put zillow.com and trulia.com in there as well.
This shows that the number of unique visitors per month to realtor.com has gone down 14.6% in the past 12 months. Zillow.com has done a little better and has only decreased 2.7%. Trulia on the other hand has had an increase of 475.9% in the same time period. Granted trulia.com started with a lot less visitors so the numbers are a little misleading but the fact remains that realtor.com is contracting dramatically and zillow is not growing at all. Let's look at another comparison.
This graph shows the number of pages a visitor views per visit to the site. Once again, realtor.com is down, zillow.com is flat and trulia.com is getting better in a hurry. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if they pass realtor.com in the latest month in pages per visit.
And the reason realtor.com and zillow.com aren't doing so well? Because when I put on my buyers hat and think about what website helps me best find a home and information about that home, trulia is the obvious choice. And it looks like buyers are coming to the same conclusion.
You make a great argument for the success of the newest wave of online brokerages. One you may have forgotten is Redfin which recently released its brokerage on the East Coast and I foresee being very successful. The problem with Realtor.com is the lack of incentive they have to keep up with the changing industry and the lack of feedback available to help them remain up-to-date with everyone else. Unfortunately, until the day comes when the profit driven sites outrank Realtor.com, nothing will be done to improve the site.
Read more at http://developersagent.com/
Posted by: Developersagent.com | August 02, 2007 at 06:44 PM
4.3 million unique visitors visited Zillow in July yet the 6M figure above seems to agree with R.com's reporting - don't draw too many conclusions based on Compete data. What would you like to see Zillow do differently?
Posted by: DavidG | August 02, 2007 at 09:54 PM
Hey David. The graphs were used as a way of illustrating how poorly the website that is endorsed by NAR is doing compared to the ones with no built in audience or guaranteed listings. I commend you on getting and keeping eyeballs on your site. The problem is that I, as a real estate agent, don't sell more homes because I put my listings on your website. It doesn't help me sell the ones I have listed and I don't get very many leads even though I have sold more homes and have more listings than any agent in my area. I did get one purchaser call me in January and mention zillow as the place where they saw my name and he did in fact purchase a home with me. But I haven't received another since then and I have between 20 and 40 active listings on your site any given month. To answer your question, I am not sure what I would do differently but as of now, I don't feel you help me do my job better. And in some regards, you make my job more difficult when your "zestimates" are extremely inaccurate.
Posted by: Tony Arko | August 03, 2007 at 08:16 AM
I'm suprised to see that zillow hasn't made more of an improvement in this area.
Posted by: Louisville Real Estate | August 03, 2007 at 05:21 PM
Good points about Realtor.com's user experience. There're actually various efforts at Move to improve this situation, but internal political conflicts are making progress slow.
"I also have found out that prospective buyers who reply online through realtor.com to a listing, get redirected to someone other than the listing agent."
Where'd you find this out? Generally, when a consumer submits a lead for a property listing on Realtor.com, an email is automatically sent to whatever email address Realtor.com has on file for that listing's agent. They don't redirect the information anywhere.
You might want to check with your Realtor.com account, and make sure they didn't mess up your email info...
Posted by: Ernie Tabel | August 03, 2007 at 06:06 PM
You said:
"And the reason realtor.com and zillow.com aren't doing so well? Because when I put on my buyers hat and think about what website helps me best find a home and information about that home, trulia is the obvious choice"
While, I don't watch all the traffic stats of other companies in the category, with this comment you just made my day! Thank you!
I'm happy you like the product, we do believe we are just at the beginning of where we want to be, so I hope that you'll be pleased with all the new things that we're planning to add in.
Pete
Posted by: Pete Flint from Trulia.com | August 04, 2007 at 12:59 AM
Ernie, I have checked with realtor.com about my email address and they have the correct one. Since January I have received 7 emails from realtor.com regarding buyers interested in my listings. I get 60 to 100 per month from number1expert.com sources. The traffic at all the number1expert.com sites combined barely equals the traffic at realtor.com. So either they send the inquiries somewhere other than to the listing agent or they have no idea how to capture a lead. My guess is both.
Pete, I'm just telling it like it is and your welcome. Keep innovating. But could you make the pushpins a little smaller?
Posted by: Tony Arko | August 04, 2007 at 07:30 AM
Homegain beats Zillow hands down on compete
http://siteanalytics.compete.com/homegain.com+zillow.com?metric=uv
AND homegain was the first to have a web based homevaluation and you can try it at Http://www.homegain.com
Zillow is just a copier six years after the fact.
Posted by: Louis Cammarosano | August 07, 2007 at 10:57 PM
Louis - Thank you for pointing that out in the pursuit of shameless self promotion. Perhaps you and David G should chat some time :)
Posted by: Danilo Bogdanovic | August 08, 2007 at 06:40 PM
I happen to like Realtor.com. It is very user friendly. The front page lets you see similar housing and you can locate land, housing, rentals.
Posted by: Susan Penn | September 05, 2007 at 09:44 PM
Why is Louis Cammarosano so hell bent on attacking Zillow every chance he gets? He is always disparaging the Zillow tool yet he trumpets his own tool on HomeGain which is even more inaccurate than Zillow's. I think it is just a bad case of envy because of the attention Zillow is garnering. BTW anyone who thinks a computer generated program can substitute the services of an appraisser or real estate agent deserves the ill-effects of their lack of common sense.
Posted by: Louis Cammarosano is a shameless self-promoter | October 22, 2007 at 07:29 PM
Zillow is a great company i'm sure they will pull through.
Posted by: Tommy Martin | September 03, 2008 at 06:32 PM