zillow.com Consolidates Listings
November 11, 2008 by Emma Sorensen
Last week was a big one for US based property valuation and portal site zillow.com. It announced it was relinquishing its brokerage licences for all but two US states, and also revealed new relationships with two key realtor groups, all of which has the property press buzzing.
The fact that zillow.com have relinquished almost all their brokerage licences has put an end to long-running speculation in the market over whether it would go down the brokerage path.
zillow.com have always denied an interest in entering the brokerage business, and maintained the brokerage licences were simply held to make sure they were legally able to operate. The two remaining licences for Texas and Washington are being kept for legal, business and relationship reasons.
Inman news quoted company spokeswoman Amy Bohutinsky as acknowledging that cutting the licences out was also a cost cutting measure.
This news came alongside the announcement of two new relationships with realtor groups, which reinforce zillow.com’s consolidation of its expertise as a listings website, working with realtors rather than competing with them.
Both the Houston Association of Realtors and Weichert Realtors have signed up as new additions to zillow.com’s Listings Feed program, which launched in November 2007, and has grown to now include more than 3.2 million listings.
The addition of the Houston Associtation of Realtors will bring over 60,000 listings to zillow.com in a syndicated feed. Similarly Weichert Realtors, which has more than 40,000 listings nationwide, has entered a partnership which enables it to automatically feed all of its listings to zillow.com on a regular basis.
- zillow.com: Don’t Tell Us It’s For Sale
zillow.com has withdrawn its contentious “tell us it’s for sale” function from its website. ...
- zillow.com Not on Top
On Friday, we drew attention to zillow.com’s announcement, based on comScore figures, that it had received more unique visitors in November than realtor.com. Now, zillow.com has retracted its statement, saying the comScore data may not be correct. “After discussions with comScore, it appears that the comScore data we cite below may be unreliable and it includes a different approach to Zillow’s measurement than other sites,” zillow.com’s updated blog post explains....
- HAR Feed Listings To trulia.com
The Houston Association of Realtors (HAR), which is the second largest local Realtor association in the US, and Trulia, Inc., have announced a partnership that enables the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) to automatically feed more than 50,000 for-sale property listings throughout the greater Houston area to trulia.com. ...
- zillow.com Bigger than realtor.com?
After announcing its expansion into the rentals market, US real estate marketplace zillow.com now says it was the most trafficked real estate domain in November, quoting comScore figures....
- zillow.com Expands with Windermere
zillow.com has partnered with Seattle based agency network Windermere Real Estate....
Loading ...
[...] says that the move to eliminate this function from the website has parallels to its recent decision to drop real estate brokerage licenses. It consolidates further zillow.com’s expertise as a [...]