For the first time in history Zillow, Trulia and Realtor.com captured more than a third of all visits to real estate sites from desktop computers in April.
According to Experian Marketing Services data, Real estate’s three largest consumer portals have been slowly growing their overall real estate Web traffic share from desktop computers. (Unlike its digital analytics competitor comScore, Experian measures Web traffic by total visits rather than unique visitors and currently does not report traffic from mobile devices or mobile apps.)
Zillow, Trulia and Realtor.com captured 34.4 percent of the 360 million visits to real estate sites last month – 8.2 percentage points above their collective Web market share in April 2013.
As it has for the last few months, Zillow came in at No. 1 by a wide margin, capturing 17.39 percent of desktop traffic in April, nearly twice the desktop traffic of Trulia and more than twice that of realtor.com. This is somewhat surprising considering Zillow and Trulia are known for their inaccurate and out of date listing information this while Realtor.com is second only to a licensed real estate agent with direct access to the MLS, the only source for the most inclusive, accurate and up-to-date source of real estate listings and homes for sale in Columbus, Central Ohio, and the United States. The key contributing factor here seems to be marketing and Zillow and Trulia’s extensive marketing of their websites as it certainly isn’t the accuracy or inclusiveness of their listing data. These two sites include and benefit from their inaccurate marketing of contingent and sold listings as active homes for sale which allows them to generate consumer inquiries on these properties which they then sell to their network of affiliate agents who pay for these leads and attempt to sell these consumers on other properties. The outcome of this practice is profits for these sites and frustration and wasted time for consumers who typically eventually catch on this practice and connect with a local real estate agent specializing in the neighborhood or community they are looking.
| Website | Total visits | Share of visits |
| 1. Zillow | 62.6 million | 17.39% |
| 2. Trulia.com | 32.8 million | 9.10% |
| 3. Realtor.com | 28.5 million | 7.91% |
Source: Experian Marketing Services
The growth in traffic coincides with massive consumer marketing campaigns the firms have rolled out. Zillow got a head start with a $40 million campaign last year and followed it up this year with a $65 million push. In March, Trulia launched a $45 million national marketing campaign, its first. Realtor.com operator Move Inc. also launched a national campaign this year, as well as a joint marketing campaign with the National Association of Realtors that is expected to boost traffic and awareness of the site.
If one also considers sites the top three own, or have significant relationships with, the companies’ collective Web market share jumps to 45 percent.
Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com real estate networks
| Real estate network | Sites | April 2014 desktop Web market share |
| Zillow (Yahoo) network | zillow.com, homes.yahoo.com, hotpads.com | 23.2% |
| Trulia (RentPath) network | trulia.com, apartmentguide.com, rent.com | 11.9% |
| Realtor.com network | realtor.com, MSN Real Estate | 10.0% |
Source: Inman News
The sites in Zillow’s network include Zillow.com, Yahoo Homes – the fourth most popular site in April and which Zillow supplies with for-sale and for-rent listings – and HotPads.com, the popular rental site Zillow acquired in November 2012.
Trulia’s network of sites includes Trulia.com and those sites owned by RentPath Inc. (formerly Primedia) including apartmentguide.com and rent.com. Under an agreement forged in November 2012, Trulia receives all of its multifamily listings from RentPath and sells display advertising and media products on the firm’s behalf.
Realtor.com’s network includes MSN Real Estate — the sixth most popular site in April. MSN Real Estate gets for-sale listings from realtor.com and for-rent and new-home listings from Move.
Overall desktop traffic to real estate sites totaled 360 million visits in April. This represents a drop of 19.3 percent from April 2013, a dip that could be attributable to the growing prevalence of mobile access among real estate site visitors using mobile real estate apps. Zillow, for example, reports that more than 60 percent of the traffic coming to its site is now from mobile devices, while Trulia and Realtor.com report numbers in excess of 50 percent.
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