RefreshClassifieds

HGTV recently launched a new site called FrontDoor that is built on the concept of real estate services and fueled by property listings.

FrontDoor will be going head to head with Realtor.com and Zillow and Realtor.com, according to HitWise, was the most trafficked real estate site in the US, week ending December 8^th. So, competition will be tough for FrontDoor.

The HGTV real estate site launched with 1.2 million listings – not bad. Those listings however, are the result of current relationships Scribs HGTV has with aggregators of real estate listings and are not the result of organic growth.

FrontDoor is hoping that it will appeal to home seekers through their intuitive home-buying guides that are developed for the individual. They go as far as to create home buying tips for women, tips for those buying real estate with friends, foreclosure counseling and much more. They have tried to outwardly cover the services the other sites have not.

Given the turbulent times the American real estate market is going through, it is risky to launch another properties site, but if FrontDoor can leverage their services as their niche, it just may work.

If you are in the classified business or even a constant mover, and you have not checked out Zillow yet, I suggest you do. Although the real estate site is almost two years old, Zillow noise really began to peak just this year and I suspect we will hear much more from them, given their recent RE/MAX allegiance.

Zillow is unique in that they have coupled Web 2.0 elements and segmented the site search to match the user - For example, a FSBO’s functionality is specific to their needs and aids in their self-management and so on. If being compared to traditional real estate sties, Zillow’s overall functionality appears superior - Multiple search options, mapping functionality, the inclusion of FSBO’s (this in itself is big news), real estate guides, and discussions. Also, a never before seen feature that could be found on Zillow is something they call ‘Make Me Move’. Here, homeowners list a few details about their home, along with a dollar amount one would need to pay to - make them move. The house doesn’t have to be formally listed in the market place and this Zillow feature gives those toying with the idea of selling, an understanding of how easy or quickly their home could be shold.

Zillow is still in beta and if you follow the site long enough you will see that they are continuously improving appearance, tools and functionality. Nevertheless, even given its infancy they were able to strike a deal with RE/MAX. RE/MAX Realtor groups in DC, Virginia and Maryland will start to feed their listings to the Zillow site. The allegiance will work as a win win for all, as RE/MAX will get to benefit from Zillows advanced functionality and Zillow can rest assured knowing that it has a reputable and sizable base feed from RE/MAX agents.

ad-itions take is that Zillow has just begun and will have a long life span in the real estate market. I also suspect that within a couple of years, Zillow will expand its focus to include a light generalist classified concept, through e-garage sales and other service classifieds that would help the standard home buyer/seller, with their related activities.

Metro France is reporting a new partnership with AnnouncesJaunes.fr to provide housing listings into the Metro print publications.   The housing listings will be featured in a new section with a combination of editorial and classified listings.  The new section will feature 50 classified listings of the over 400,000 listings currently available on AnnoncesJaunes.fr.

This would appear to be a good partnership for both parties with Metro is reporting that 25% of its readers intent to my a new home within the next 2 years.   Both parties bring substantial exposure for the advertisers with AnnoncesJaunes.fr receiving over 600,000 unique daily visitors and Metro Newspaper receiving 2,000,000 daily readers.

Highrises.com has launched a new classified section focus on the classified market.  Highrises.com has been focused on providingReal Estate information around the Condomium and HighRise markets.  The site has typically focused on new buildings and professionally listed properties from Real Estate agents.  The new classified service allows anyone to place a classified listing for a property that they are selling through a privately or through a Real Estate agent.

We like the approach and lay out of the classified section but the process of creating an account before you could create a listing was cumbersome.  Ideally the site should allow the user to quickly create a listing and then create a username and password near the end of the process.  It also wasn’t clear if the classified functionality was available in all markets, we were only able to create listings for the Los Angeles market.

RealEstate.com.au has launched a new site focused on Holiday Rentals.  RealHolidays.com.au focuses on the holiday and recreational real estate rental markets.  The site uses the same interface as RealEstate.com.au, which makes it easy for Real Estate agents to cross advertise listings.  The site features over 19,000 holiday rentals, and is almost twice as big as their closest competitor in the Holiday rental category.

A large part of the Australian economy is powered by the Tourism market so the site should be well positioned to take advantage of this market.  In addition Australians are choosing to travel more and more around their own country with domestic air travel increasing by 50% as compared to the 10% increase in international flights.

Traditionally cottages, holiday and recreational property rentals have been harder for classified sites to monetize because of the investment required.  By combining the Holiday Rental aspect with their core Real Estate business RealEstate.com.au should be able to monetize the advertising with minimal increased investment in their website.  One disadvantage they may face is speciality sites that offer customize search parameters that RealEstate.com.au can’t ad fast enough.

RealEstate.com.au in Australia is reporting that they have renewed their agreement with NineMSN.com.au.  The Nine MSN web supports a joint ventured formed between MSN and Nine TV, one of Australia’s leading media companies.  The deal gives RealEstate.com.au exclusive access to Real Estate classified listings off the NineMSN.com.au site.  For real estate agents it means they can take advantage of the additional exposure and 8M monthly visitors to the NineMSN site.

MSN has done a good world wide of securing prominent media positions and the reselling components like real estate classifieds to partners.  As Microsoft, its parent company, becomes more involved with classifieds through its Live Expo classified server, its not clear what this will mean to local classified relationships.   Live Expo launched over a year ago and has most of its listings from the Seattle, WA region.

RealtyTrac, one of the leading providers of Real Estate foreclosure information has partner with Adicio, a software provider for the classified industry.  The deal provides Adicio clients access to approximately 1.3M foreclosure listings across the US.  Generally as the Real Estate market declines foreclosures increase.  Adicio has put itself in a good position to benefit from decline in the US Real Estate market.

Commercial terms for the relationship were not disclosed but the Adicio generally licenses its software on a subscription model.  Its expected that the foreclosure listings will be included as an additional pricing option.   The foreclosure information will be available to Adicio clients later this year.

Its expected that the foreclosure information will be used to generate demand for classified sites.  With more listings and hopefully more consumers visiting the classified site, with foreclosure listings, the classified provider should be able to increase the price for their general classified listing or be in a better position to defend against free classified sites.

Homescape.com has relaunched its web site with additional features focused on providing addition community and neighborhood information. Homescape.com features a local market snapshot feature that provides information about the community, schools, real estate market and lets consumers quickly jump into a property search in the area.

While the community information was readily available it was disappointed it was not more connected with the property search functionality.  For example it was not possible to find the closest school to a property and view its rating/review.

Homescape.com does provide the ability to get a property assessment through Homegain.com and quickly connect consumers that looking to upgrade their house with a local real estate agent.  Real Estate agents have the ability to add unlimted text and photo to provide more details online.  While Homescape.com has partner with 125 newspapers the future of Real Estate classifieds is definetly online and Homescape.com is making the necessary changes to provide value to consumers.

The Sun-Times News Group has just launched their free real estate site that enables Chicago users to search for homes in more than 10 counties, covering Northeastern Illinois and Northwest Indiana.

The launch of the residential site is the arrival of what is being called their ‘classified trio’. Via SearchChicago.com, browsers can look for cars, jobs and now homes. All the big elements normally found in an online classified entity.

The birth of SearchChicago.com came out of the original concept, to create a content heavy classified site that would attract both private users and commercial advertisers, and obviously allow Sun-Times to romp with the big boys, online. The smartest way for them to build the type of content necessary (fast and effectively), was to combine the classified listings in their regional publications (the Greater Chicago area), all on to one site.

“SearchChicago.com is one-stop shopping for people in Chicago and surrounding communities who are looking for necessities of life – jobs, homes and transportation,” said Cyrus F. Freidheim, Jr. , Chief Executive Officer of Sun-Times Media Group, Inc., the parent company for the Sun-Times News Group. “Users will have the advantages of our broad classifieds listings across the more than 90 newspaper titles that make up the Sun-Times News Group network and reach millions of readers each day.”

The SearchChicago Classified site has some distinguishing qualities that will allow it to differ itself from the rest. Mainly, the sites search capabilities are what stand out the most. The options and user tools to find information is extremely robust and user friendly. And just as impressive, the information served from a search, is delivered in a plethora of ways, allowing all viewer types to find items quickly.

When looking for a job, the sites advanced search allows a user to choose from 11 different criteria and at the end of the search form, the user has the option of receiving their job profiles in a long or short format view. This is extremely useful for those just wanting to browse. The newly launched homes vertical of the site, also has some interesting options to aid home buyers in making decisions. In addition to allowing browsers to search by community and home type, the site offers an interactive map search and video tours of homes. Another notable application on the homes site is their ‘School Report Card’ section. This allows browsers to review ratings of schools in a particular area they are thinking of moving to. This is key for all families with children and is usually information not found on a classified site – again promoting one stop shopping for site users.

Given that this is a fairly new venture for Sun-Times, I have excused some of the obvious fixes still required with the site. For example, while searching for autos you don’t have the option to hyper-link out to homes. If on either the auto or jobs section of the site, there is no easily navigated way to get back to the principal home page. Lastly, there is great content mix for both homes and jobs on the site, but auto results were somewhat light.

The one-stop shopping feel SearchChicago.com promotes, could be a real success for the Sun-Times News Group. However, ensuring the presence of healthy content that is easily found, will be the differentiator between success and heavy site traffic, versus being just another classified site attempt, by a group of newspapers, trying to compete against the online only elephants, in the publishing space.

The Sun-Times News Group in Chicago has launched a new Real Estate site  for their classified listings.  The new website allows consumers to search Real Estate listings from 90 classified listing titles around the greater Chicago area and 10 counties in Northeastern Illinois and Northwest Indiana.  The new website is located at SearchChicago.com/homes.

The SearchChicago.com  aims to be come the best source for local information including classifed search for automotive, real estate and employment.   SearchChicago.com also provides additional information, like school ratings, dinning and community information but we were unable to combine this with the new search functionality.  For example once we found an attractive condo in downtown Chicago, it was not possible to find the closet school and its rating.

The new site is an advantage for advertisers with 16 photos and enhanced description being included a no additional cost.  The search functionality also includes a detailed map generated using the Google maps product.  All of properties in a geographic region can be mapped on the map for a very visual search.   Each search also includes an RSS feed so that quick updates can be made available.  The search functionality is powered by Adico, one of the leading providers of classified website and search functionality.