Zillow Now Accounts For Nearly Half of All Real Estate Web Traffic: Analysis

The search behemoth far and away led market share for search portals, drawing 44 % of all actual property net visitors, however CoStar’s Houses.com leaped by bounds final month, in response to an evaluation.

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Zillow continues to dominate the market share for actual property net visitors within the U.S. — however different firms — notably, CoStar’s Houses.com — are making sizable good points, at the same time as visitors to actual property portals declines general amid market uncertainty, in response to a brand new evaluation launched earlier this week.

Search behemoth Zillow far and away led market share for actual property search portals between February 2022 and February 2023, gobbling up 44 % of the marketplace for actual property net visitors, in response to the digital intelligence platform Similarweb. Realtor.com adopted with 19 %, whereas Redfin boasted the third highest at 15 %.

Total, visits to actual property search portals decreased 5 % yr over yr in February as residence gross sales slipped amid excessive mortgage charges. Customers have continued to go to these websites, nevertheless, even when simply to browse.

“Whereas visitors has noticeably decreased for the class YoY, dreaming about properties and looking for them by shoppers continues although transactions have fallen considerably,” the examine’s creator, Raymond “RJ” Jones, vice chairman of communications and insights at Similarweb, advised Inman.

The report discovered 98 % of the whole share of actual property search portal visitors belongs to the highest 10 websites — and almost half of that share belongs to Zillow alone by means of the mix of Zillow-owned portals Streeteasy and Trulia.

Whereas Zillow took the lion’s share of net visitors, solely three of the 17 web sites tracked posted year-over-year will increase in visitors: Houses.com, RE/MAX and Compass.

CoStar’s Houses.com posted essentially the most fast progress, with its net visitors growing 86 % yr over yr. The report theorized that the portal could also be benefiting from a rise in commercial spending in 2022, a method that different CoStar property Residences.com has additionally carried out.

“Houses.com benefitted from efficient investing over the previous yr,” Jones mentioned. “A mix of refreshed UX, integrating HomeSnap exercise and operations into Houses.com, and focused model promoting spend off of a low visitors base to start with set them as much as acquire share from incumbents that haven’t been as efficient in investments.”

The positioning with the smallest market share proved to be Rocket Houses, which posted a 57.5 % annual lower in net visitors to solely 0.2 % of market share, which the report attributed to the fast rise in mortgage charges seen all through 2022.

Realtor.com posted a noticeable lower in customers over the previous yr. Its market share fell greater than 3 % yearly in response to the report, greater than some other portal, regardless of advertising and marketing efforts that included a brand new promoting marketing campaign throughout the fall.

“Houses.com benefitted to an extent from the legal guidelines of huge numbers, whereas Realtor.com didn’t – gross variety of visits, the place Houses.com gained tens of millions of visits, Realtor.com misplaced tens of millions of visits yr over yr,” Jones mentioned.

CoStar group engaged in talks with Realtor.com’s father or mother firm Information Corp throughout early 2023 a few potential sale, however the talks ultimately fell by means of. 

The report additionally discovered that residence search portals tied to particular brokerage manufacturers account for a small share of visitors, with RE/MAX and Compass’s in home search portals accounting for just one.5 and 1.3 % of whole search visitors throughout 2022. Coldwell Banker, Keller Williams and eXp every accounted for lower than 1% — whereas Century 21’s search portal posted a 43 % annual lower in visitors.

E-mail Ben Verde

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