zillow.com Gives Free Advice

US based property valuation site and portal zillow.com has added a new user-based advice feature to its website.

Zillow Advice combines the old Home Q&A and discussion forums into one Advice section where users can ask questions which are answered by other users in the zillow.com online community.

The new feature was revealed by David Gibbons, zillow.com’s director of community relations, in a blog post. It is designed to give users access to the 1.2 million agents, lenders and other professionals who use Zillow each month. Gibbons wrote:

“Zillow visitors post 40,000 contributions to the site each day. Many of those are Home Q&A, Real Estate Guides and Discussions. These features now live under a new Advice tab and we are adding local Questions to the list of ways in which Zillow users can help each other.”

It brings zillow.com in line with rival trulia.com, who offer a similar Q+A forum through Trulia Voices Real Estate Community.

Zillow.com came out number three in the Hitwise November 2008 top 10 US real estate websites. trulia.com has been rising rapidly, and came in at number 11.

In a blog by John Cook on Techflash, he quotes interesting compete.com data that shows a dip in traffic for both zillow.com and trulia.com in recent months.

realtor.com Still On Top

Of the 3,194 real estate websites Hitwise tracked in November realtor.com came out number one in terms of US market share, retaining its top dog status.

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Top 5 Crazy Names For Property Portals

Around the PPW office we’re always hearing of new portals with crazy names. So we thought we’d put together a list of our favourites.

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Turning Around Move - the US Leader

Move Inc, the owner and operator of move.com, realtor.com and Top Producer is trading at 5 year lows - can they turn around the business?

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zillow.com Consolidates Listings

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.

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immoweb.be Honoured in WebAwards

Winners in the Web Marketing Association’s annual WebAwards have been announced for 2008.

In the category of Best Real Estate Website, Emakina were among those honoured for their work on immoweb.be, Belgium’s leargest property website. immoweb.be is a member of the ProduPress group, and received the Real Estate Standard of Excellence for outstanding achievement in website development.

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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.

Winners and Losers from the Global Financial Crisis

Top property portal sites around the world have announced layoffs.  What does the global financial crisis mean for the rest of the property portals?  Who will be the winners and losers?

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redfin.com Announces Staff Layoffs While trulia.com Stays Optimistic

redfin.com, the first online brokerage for residential real estate in the US, is clearly feeling the pinch.

The company has announced on its blog that it has laid off around 20% of their staff.   This announcement follows closely on the heals of zillow.com announcing that it was laying off 25% of its staff.  

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zillow.com Lays Off 25% of Workforce, What Future Does it Have?

I recently wrote an article about how companies need to tighten their belts as time are tough and are likely to remain that way for some time.  Well it seems that well known US portal site Zillow is feeling the pressure and on Friday announced that they would be laying off 25% of their work force.

On the company’s blog, Rich Barton, the CEO, said “This was an incredibly painful decision for me and the leadership team, but, in the end, we concluded that we had no choice but to securely batten down the hatches as we sail into a major economic storm. 

The unprecedented economic events that are playing out on a global stage began in our own industry and have made a prolonged recession likely, in our judgment.  We are a young company that is not yet making a profit.  Despite having sizeable cash reserves, we deemed the responsible course was to meaningfully reduce expenses, so that Zillow emerges from the other side of the recession in a very strong position, even if the recession lasts many years.”

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