Hitwise: servicemagic.com Bumps rent.com

The September results are in from Hitwise, with hotpads.com entering the top 100 US real estate websites list and home improvement professional website servicemagic.com rising two places in the top 10.
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cyberhomes.com Awarded Best Website

US property portal cyberhomes.com has been selected as the Best Real Estate website by the National Association of Real Estate Editors (NAREE) in the organisation’s 59th annual Real Estate Journalism Competition.
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cyberhomes.com Forecasts the Future

US real estate portal and information website cyberhomes.com has released the Cyberhomes Real Estate Market Forecast.

The report gives consumers a comprehensive tool to help predict future real estate trends in a local market by analysing key information such as credit details, loan repayment data, delinquencies and foreclosures, based on data and analytics provided by its parent company, Lender Processing Services, Inc (LPS).
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Good News for roost.com

US based property search engine roost.com has attracted the attention of self-proclaimed “digital goddess” Kim Komando, who named the website her Cool Site of the Day on 5th May, 2009. Previous Cool Sites in the real estate category have included home search and values estimate website cyberhomes.com.
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eppraisal.com Revamp

US home valuation and real estate information website eppraisal.com has relaunched.
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realtor.com Increases Market Lead

Of the 3,122 real estate websites Hitwise tracked in December, sampling 10 million US Internet users, realtor.com ended last year at number one in terms of US market share.

Overall, the top 5 places were held by the same websites in the same order as November, but there has been some movement. realtor.com increased its lead slightly from 6.43 percent in November to 6.7 percent market share in December, while Yahoo! Real Estate dropped slightly. trulia.com entered the the top ten at number ten and bumped realtytrac.com out.

The Hitwise top 10 for December 2008 was made up of:

1. realtor.com
2. realestate.yahoo.com
3. zillow.com
4. ziprealty.com
5. rent.com
6. servicemagic.com
7. remax.com
8. hud.gov
9. homegain.com
10. trulia.com

Further down the list there were three new entrants to the top 20: reply.com rose to number 17; move.com rose to number 19; and whitefence.com just made it into the top 20 at number 20.

enormo.com, which had entered the top 100 list in November, no longer made the cut, leaving the top 100 along with cyberhomes.com.

interestingly, The National Association of Realtors’ realtor.org was one of the fastest movers over a 4 month period, rising 25 places. Other fast movers to watch in the real estate category include: vacationsonly.com, homesandestatesonline.com, natefind.com, c21birchwood.com, stribling.com, halogenguides.com, KCCLLC.net, carletonsheets.com and apartmenthomeliving.com.

trulia.com Founders on Top 10 Newsmakers List

As part of the annual Swanepoel TRENDS Report that is published each February in the US, the top 10 Newsmakers in Real Estate list is compiled by the company’s research team.

Representing the world of property portals on the top 10 Newsmakers list for 2008 are trulia.com’s founders, Pete Flint and Sami Inkinen, who came in at number nine.

Author of the list, Stefan Swanepoel, blogged about the Top 10, saying of trulia.com:

“As founders of Trulia these two leaders, in spite of the current financial difficulties and the market downturn, continue to go against that flow and have raised funding in the amount of $33 million, which solidifies Trulia as a dotcom company that could survive the economic and/or Web 2.0 downturn to become one of the new paradigm companies to shape the future”.

At number one on the list is William Foley, founder and CEO of Fidelity National Financial (FNF). The company’s real estate division, Fidelity National Real Estate Solutions, provides real estate information, media and technology for homeowners and professionals, including the cyberhomes.com portal.

At number seven is Saul Klein, CEO of Point2 Technologies. And at number eight is Charles McMillan, the 2009 President of the National Association of REALTORS.

Newsmakers are defined by the company as those people that during the year made headlines as individuals, as a result of their actions and leadership of the companies or associations they are involved with in the real estate industry.

The second list to be released is the Top 10 Events Impacting on Real Estate for 2008. Among the key events for 2008 are: the election, ActiveRain reaching 100,000 members, twitter, NAR celebrating 100 years and, of course, the bailout, which comes top of the list.

Find out more about the Swanepoel TRENDS Report at their website: retrends.com

Cyberhomes Media Group Uptake

After successfully launching home search and valuation site cyberhomes.com in 2006, a new entity, the Cyberhomes Media Group was set up in May 2008 to help advertisers and publishers reach the huge, highly targeted real estate audience.

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Top 100 Sites Include trulia & cyberhomes

PC Magazine has listed both trulia.com and cyberhomes.com as part of their annual Top 100 Websites for 2008.

Real estate search engine trulia.com was honoured in the “classic” website category, alongside bloomberg.com (news) and indeed.com (job hunting) in the money and real estate section.

“This excellent real estate site lets you select a neighborhood or town and browse homes for sale on a Google Map. Search for foreclosures in your area, get community stats and pricing trends, and get home-buying advice from the Trulia community pages”, write PC Magazine.

Real estate information website cyberhomes.com was honoured in the “undiscovered” website category, alongside stockhouse.com (investment), glassdoor.com (employer and salary reviews) and billshrink.com (price comparison), also in the money and real estate section.

PC Magazine say:

“Cyberhomes has all the usual real-estate-site features, but adds a ton of nifty functionality to help you find not just the right home, but the right neighborhood, too. Get info and ratings for local schools, mine demographic data to find a neighborhood with (or without) children, or even search for a neighborhood by affluence. You can also track individual home prices and average price trends in the area.”

No other property portals or search engines were highlighted by PC Magazine.

Earlier this year, zillow.com was singled out by Webware in their “100 best web apps” vote.