The Online Real Estate Boom
While real estate prices are still on the rise in most metro markets, the Internet real estate landscape is booming as well. There’s a slew of new vertical real estate sites for the curious and the serious investor.
While approximately $12 billion dollars is spent annually on real estate marketing, much of it is still going to traditional media, according to the National Association of Realtors. Only $1 – 2 billion of that is expected to be spent online in 2006. Yet, a whopping 77% of U.S. home buyers user the Internet during their housing search, up from 2% in 1995. The growth potential for online real estate advertising is obviously significant.
This vertical is growing up – quickly. No wonder real estate vertical sites abound, from instant home value appraisal tool, Zillow, to MyNewPlace, an apartment rental search enginel, to nationwide search aggregators for new and existing homes and rentals, such as Home.com.
U.S. real estate sites saw a 23% increase in traffic from April 2005 to April 2006, according to comScore Networks. This represents 42 million unique monthly visitors to sites such as Move.com, MSN Real Estate, HomeGain, AOL Real Estate, RealtyTrac.com, Rent.com, Apartments.com and Zillow.com.
Property Centric entered the real estate vertical this year. Their service offering is geared toward local search specifically designed for residents of property management companies and home owners associations. By providing an online daily-use resident amenity, Property Centric’s search provides more loyalty, rentals/home purchases and profitability for real estate companies. For more about their case study with a Phoenix-based property management firm, Mark-Taylor Residential, check out our latest newsletter, “Apartment Management Company Seeks Local Search Engine Amenity.